Regional identity in Highland Ecuador

Abstract

Of considerable interest to linguists recently is the variable voicing of intervocalic /s/, which has been attested in dialects as diverse as Ecuadorian ( Chappell, 2011 ; García, 2015 ; among others) and Catalonian Spanish ( Davidson, 2014 ; McKinnon, 2012 ), among others. While our knowledge of the production of this variable has advanced, the question remains of how /s/ voicing is evaluated socially (although see Chappell, 2016 ). This chapter details a matched-guise experiment comparing the evaluation of intervocalic [s] and [z] in one coastal and three highland Ecuadorian cities. The results show that this variable is a regional marker within the highlands, and that it is also associated with status, pleasantness, and age, but only for female speakers. In contrast to other studies on social meaning, it is only females’ use of intervocalic [z] that is socially-charged, whereas males’ use is not strongly associated with any of the social characteristics examined.

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