DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY Supervisor: Dr. Margaret Gibbon School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies "Changes in Contemporary Standard Spanish: A Socio-phonetic Appraisal" A thesis submitted to Dublin City University in candidacy for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Begona Alvarez-O'Neill September, 1998 I,da. Filologia Inglesa, M. Phil., H. Dip. Ed. DECLARATION I hereby certify that this material which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of Doctor of Philosophy, is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. X l£ i£ i- I.D.: 91701406 Date: 11. September. 1998 ABSTRACT "Changes in Contemporary Standard Spanish: A Socio-phonetic Appraisal" This thesis aims to highlight recent developments in the spoken Spanish of educated speakers, and challenges the relevance of published accounts of what currently constitutes standard spoken Spanish. Based on a large case-study of predominantly upper-middle class speakers (largely diplomatic corps and newsreaders), it proves, by means of phonetic analysis, that linguistic variables considered to represent non-standard speech are increasingly used and accepted by such speakers. The data upon which these findings were founded were obtained by means of taped recordings of televised newscasters over a three year period, and interviews involving a variety of reading tasks and introspection. The analysis points to the significance of age, gender, education and socio-economic background in accounting for differences between speakers. Nonetheless, differences are outweighed by similarities. All speakers were found to produce many and varied non-standard phonetic realizations. This thesis shows that the existing descriptions -or more clearly prescriptions- of contemporary spoken standard Spanish need to be revised in the light of the enormous gap between official accounts, and the reality of spoken Spanish among those regarded as being representative of the most prestigious spoken Spanish. For Harry ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to convey my most sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Margaret Gibbon, for her invaluable guidance, illuminating advice, ideas and for reading many drafts of this project. Her gift of time, attention, knowledge and encouragement is very much appreciated and will never be forgotten. Also I must thank the School of Communications at Dublin City University and Dr. Martin Croghan in particular for their initial help. Also thanks to Prof. Michael Townson and the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies. No usual thanks would be sufficient to acknowledge my gratitude to two members of the Real Academia Espanola, Don Camilo Jose Cela and Don Rafael Lapesa. To Don Camilo Jose Cela for his time, for his opinions, for providing me with many examples from his own experience, for his encouragement and for his invitation to become his friend. To Don Rafael Lapesa for sharing with me a minute part of his enormous wisdom and knowledge, for giving me many examples of essential value to my work and for allowing me to report on his erudition. My debt to Profesor Amando de Miguel is also sincerely acknowledged. His enormous generosity with his time and his subsequent enlightening help and advice were great contributions to my developing ideas and essential part of my work. I am also profoundly thankful to Profesor Hernan Urrutia for references and encouragement, to the director of the Escuela Diplomatica of Madrid, students and staff who took part in this study, to Dona Ysabel Caro y Aznar and to His Excellency the Spanish Ambassador in Ireland, Don Fermin Zelada. Many others were helpful at different stages of my work, discussing ideas with me or offering light upon many obscure areas. Even though I list them together, each person's contribution is individually appreciated: Profesor Antonio Quilis, Dr. Carmen Garcia, Des McGuinness, Dr. Francis Nolan, Antonio Lopez, Anamaria Crowe-Serrano. Also, a posthumous thanks to Dr. Renate Zoeller. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to my family in Spain and Ireland for their support, to my sister Loli for her help in acquiring many different sources of reference, and to my mother. Special thanks to my husband, Gerry O'Neill, for bringing some reality to my life. My most emphatic thanks to all of them for their constant support and love. Also to Alison Drummond for her help, much beyond the call of duty. I shall acknowledge my immense gratitude to my son Harry Alvarez-O'Neill. The impetus that his life has given mine never fails to amaze me. Finally, thanks to those whom I quote throughout my thesis. Table of Contents List o f Tables........................................................... .................................. (i) List of Figures............................................................................................ (iii) List of Graphs............................................................................................ (iv) Introduction..............................................................................l CHAPTER 1 Initial observations and questions...................... 5 CHAPTER 2 Evolution o f Spanish towards a national standard language.................................................................... 8 2.1 Castilian or Spanish, the significance of a nam e............................ 8 2.2. The development of the Spanish language, a process towards standardization....................................................................................... 10 2.2.1 Language standardization and the role of the R.A.E..........10 2.2.2 Historical evolution of phonetic/phonological features, a review of their changing status in a process towards standardization.................................................................. ..16 CHAPTER 3 Contemporary Spanish......................................31 3.1 The evolution of linguistic perceptions in Spain............................ 31 3.1.1 The evolution of perceptions of standard and non-standard Spanish.........................................................................................31 3.1.2 The evolution of perceptions of regional varieties........... 37 3.2 Phonetic description of standard and non-standard Spanish........ 46 3.3 The influence of the English language, the media and the R.A.E. upon Spanish......................................................................................... 55 3.4 New tendencies in spoken Spanish and particularly in the speech of Madrid..................................................................................................... 65 CHAPTER 4 The evolution of social classes in Spain and its implications for language.....................................................................72 4.1 A sensitive subject........................................................................... 72 4.2 The mobility of social classes and its relevance in language 78 4.2.1 A socio-historical view...................................................... -.78 4.2.2 Education and occupation as factors in the social class equation.......................................................................................81 4.3 Social class divisions.........................................................................85 4.3.1 Difficulties encountered in setting social class divisions ..85 4.3.2 A snapshot picture of the Spanish social class structure...87 4.3.3 Socio-economic and cultural associations in Spanish occupational strata...................................................................... 88 CHAPTER 5 Language and gender differences................... 90 5.1 Spanish women, a late start..................................................... 90 5.2 Observations on women's speech.................................................97 5.2.1 Considerations on women's linguistic make-up...................97 5.2.2 Socio-phonetic research into Spanish female speakers ....111 CHAPTER 6 Theoretical framework and literature reviewil9 6.1 The emergence of sociolinguistics within the study of language....119 6.1.1 Sociolinguistics as a discipline............................................119 6.1.2 The links between sociolinguistics and other disciplines .121 6.1.3 Spanish sociolinguistics....................................... 123 6.2 Basic concepts of study in sociolinguistics...................................... 127 6.2.1 Participants in communication...........................................127 6.2.2 Linguistic variability.......................................................... 130 6.3 How we communicate with others on the basis of our language choice: standard and non-standard varieties ....................................... 134 6.3.1 Prestige as a factor in the choice of standard and non­ standard varieties........................................................................ 134 6.3.2 Further considerations on language choice social approval and group membership.......................... 137 6.4 Sociolinguistic variation........................................... 144 C H APTE R 7 H y p o t h e s e s ...................................................................... 159 CHAPTER 8 Methodological criteria ............................................... 162 8.1 Methodological procedures in sociolinguistics...............................162 8.2 Initial methodological approach...................................................... 168 8.2.1