STYLISTIC CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE REALIZATION OF THE /S/ PHONEME IN SPANISH: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE INFLUENCE OF AUDIENCEFitzpatrick, James (2014) STYLISTIC CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE REALIZATION OF THE /S/ PHONEME IN SPANISH: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE INFLUENCE OF AUDIENCE. Master's Thesis, University of Pittsburgh. (Unpublished)
AbstractThe weakening of the /s/ phoneme in Spanish is one of the most studied phenomena in Hispanic linguistics in recent decades, with a considerable body of literature describing variation in /s/ across the dialects of modern Spanish. The present study expands that body of literature with a case study of Representative Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL), a bilingual, U.S.-born Congressman of Puerto Rican heritage. Given his visibility as a public figure on Spanish-language media in different geographical areas, Gutiérrez engages in a significant degree of intraspeaker variation with respect to weakening when addressing different audiences. This study examines Gutiérrez’s /s/-weakening according to three factors: intended audience, rate of speech, and following segment. While weakening is well-attested in the literature, many existing accounts rely on language-internal factors drawn from the fields of phonetics, phonology, and morphology. The addition of the language-external factor of intended audience into the model invites a reframing of the analysis to include the sociolinguistic concepts of style and audience design, reflecting the shifting paradigm of “third wave” sociolinguistics and its focus on intraspeaker variation. The data for this study are drawn from two Spanish-language interviews with Gutiérrez: one with U.S. television and one with Puerto Rican radio. These interviews were divided into intonation units and tokens of syllable- and word-final /s/ were extracted and coded for three independent variables: intended audience, rate of speech, and following segment. /s/-weakening was coded as a binary dependent variable. Subsequently, a logistic regression was performed on the data using the aforementioned variables. An omnibus F test for the model as a whole revealed a significant prediction of weakening by the combination of the predictors as entered, χ2(5, N=325) = 65.142, p < .001, Nagelkerke R2=.243. Further, the logistic regression revealed that while intended audience and rate of speech significantly contributed to weakening, following segment did not contribute significantly in the model as entered. These results highlight the influence of style as a potential complicating factor in the ability of other factors to account for weakening and raises questions for further inquiry about the balance of language-internal and language-external factors in accounting for weakening. Share
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