San Andrean Spanish stylistic variation in academia

Abstract

Style variation, as described in Style. Language variation and identity (Coupland 2007), describes linguistic features that are influenced by the identity of a community or an individual speaker. This chapter describes how the Raizal ethnic identity underlies phonetic style variation in two segments ([j] and [s]) distributed in academic and informal speech produced by students from different higher educational institutions in San Andrés and Bogotá. Here, I describe how Creole-Spanish bilingual speakers create style repertoires based on their own perception of themselves and their ethnic identities. These data included 30 Raizal participants, 15 who were studying in San Andrés and 15 in Bogotá. To investigate style variation among Raizal students, I followed a mixed methods approach with ethnographic data (journal entries and participation in social events in San Andrés Island), a sociolinguistic interview, three different speech elicitation tasks, and a language background questionnaire. For data analysis, I used a mixedeffects regression model that considered formal and informal speaking contexts. The results showed a clear pattern of style variation that favored Creole-related phonetic segments (for example, [ʝ], as opposed to [j], in /jo voy a la plaja/). I concluded that style variation was influenced by both speech context and social interactions among the students. Raizal students actively modified their ethnic identity according to their personal experiences in their academic institutions, which was sometimes imposed upon them by their jobs, and even by their housing situation. This variation was also influenced by the students’ gender, age, and reported proficiency in San Andrés English Creole. Gender was one of the main factors driving this variation, which suggested different arrangements of overt and covert prestige in both genders. This chapter focuses on the social experience that shaped Raizal students’ behavior and behavioral adaptations, and the necessary modifications to the methodology that I had to implement in order to consider the totality of the Raizal experience in Bogotá, bringing to light the linguistic and social challenges that ethnic minorities face in academia.