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Stereotypes versus experience: Indexingregional identity in
Bolivian Valley Spanish1
Anna M. Babel
The Ohio State University, U.S.A.
Stereotypes of highland and lowland identity categories in the
Santa Cruzvalleys of Bolivia are linked to phonetic variation in
the Spanish discoursemarker pues. Highlanders are believed to say
[pwes] or [ps] while lowlandersare believed to say [pweh] or [pwe].
However, these beliefs erase two types ofdifferences. First, they
erase a distinction among highlanders. Whilehighlanders from the
Potos-Oruro area pronounce pues as they arebelieved to, highlanders
from Cochabamba do not. Secondly, these beliefserase intra-speaker
variation. Highlanders sometimes use the lowlandvariants of pues,
and vice versa. When people use atypical pronunciations,they invoke
an indexical field linked to the group associated with thatvariant.
This indexical field references stereotypical ideas about groups
evenwhen they are inaccurate. Specifically, highland variants index
pushy oraggressive stances, which are associated with people from
Cochabamba,even though people from Cochabamba do not use highland
variants of pues.
Los estereotipos de las categoras de identidad de alte~no y
terrabajense enlos valles cruce~nos de Bolivia se vinculan con la
variacion fonetica en elmarcador de discurso pues. Se cree que los
alte~nos dicen [pwes] o [ps]mientrasque los terrabajenses dicen
[pweh] o [pwe]. Sin embargo, estas creenciasignoran dos clases de
diferencias. Primero, ignoran una distincion entre losalte~nos de
manera que los alte~nos de la zona de Potos y Oruro pronuncianpues
segun lo que se cree, mientras que en los alte~nos de Cochabamba
este noes el caso y no lo dicen como se cree. Segundo, estas
creencias ignoran lavariacion intra-hablante. Los alte~nos suelen
usar las variantes terrabajensede pues de vez en cuando, y
viceversa. Cuando la gente utiliza las formasatpicas, invocan un
campo indexical (indexical field) que se vincula con elgrupo
asociado con esa variante. El campo indexical se refiere a
ideasestereotpicas sobre los grupos, aun cuando estas son
inexactas.Especficamente, las variantes alte~nas se usan para crear
actitudesagresivas o enfaticas, las cuales se asocian con la gente
de Cochabamba apesar de que ellos no utilizan las variantes
alte~nas de pues. [Spanish]
KEYWORDS: Awareness, stereotypes, erasure, indexical
fields,Andean Spanish, pues
Journal of Sociolinguistics 18/5, 2014: 604633
2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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INTRODUCTION
In this article, I describe a mismatch between speakers ideas
about a highly
stereotyped linguistic variable and their experience with
language in a small
town in the Santa Cruz valleys of central Bolivia. The
stereotyped variable that
I examine, the discourse marker pues, is a highly salient index
of regional
identity. In this area, people hold strong ideologies that
contrast two social
groups, highlanders and lowlanders. People say that highlanders
pronounce
pues as [ps] or [pwes], and they consider this to be especially
typical of people
from neighboring Cochabamba. However, in natural production
data, people
from Cochabamba do not appear to follow this pattern. There is
an apparent
discrepancy between peoples ideas about language and their
experience with
language.
I structure my discussion using three sets of evidence. First, I
discuss the
explicit ideologies that people from the town in which I do my
research hold
about language use and social groups. Second, I use quantitative
analysis of a
corpus of naturally produced speech that I recorded in a variety
of settings in
the community to establish how speakers use language in daily
interaction.
Finally, using close analysis of transcripts, I examine the way
that speakers use
variants of pues that are highly atypical for their group.
This study participates in a body of research that characterizes
linguistic
usage not only as reflecting meaning, but as producing it
through the links
between sociolinguistic features and the social categories that
they participate
in (Bucholtz and Hall 2008; Eckert 2012; Irvine and Gal 2000).
The ideas that
speakers hold about language do not always line up with their
actual
experience. However, these ideas do influence the way that they
use language
as a symbolic resource.
This work has two main theoretical contributions. First, it
contributes to
research on awareness and control. Research in speech perception
and
sociophonetics demonstrates that the ideas that people hold
about social
groups can influence the way they perceive the speech signal.
This article
furthers this research by examining how beliefs about social
structures can
shape the way that people produce linguistic signs. Secondly, it
contributes to
work on indexical reference and indexical fields. When there is
a mismatch
between peoples beliefs about a highly stereotyped variable and
their
experience with that variable, indexical fields are constructed
based on
peoples ideas about language rather than their experience with
language.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Awareness and control
Most existing work on the topic of awareness and control of
sociolinguistic
variables takes Labovs (1972) classic distinction between
markers, indicators,
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and stereotypes as its starting point. Labov suggests that there
is a distinction
between linguistic variables that vary across social groups but
which people
are unaware of (indicators), variables that show stylistic
variation (markers),
and variables that people are aware of and can discuss
explicitly (stereotypes).
The variable that I examine in this article is clearly a
stereotype. Labov notes
that stereotypes are often inaccurate, as I find them to be in
my data.
In sociophonetics and speech perception, it has been
demonstrated that the
social categories that people are presented with can affect the
way that they
perceive the speech sounds that they hear. When stereotypes
conflict with
what people actually hear, they appear to block peoples ability
to perceive
fine-grained phonetic details (Niedzielski 1999). Conversely,
people may
perceive linguistic variables even when they are absent because
of
stereotypes that they hold about categories of speakers (Munson
2007;
Rubin 1992). It has also been argued that mismatches between
peoples
expectations of typical speech and what they actually hear
prompts slower and
less accurate processing of linguistic variables (McGowan 2011;
Sumner et al.
2013).
The ideas that people hold about language and speakers also
affect their
evaluation of speakers who use highly stereotyped variables. The
perception of
regional accents affects listeners evaluation of speakers who
use regionally-
indexed variables, particularly when they speak in a way that
listeners
consider unexpected or atypical for their group (Campbell-Kibler
2008;
Carmichael to appear; Squires to appear).
As the aforementioned studies demonstrate, people come to the
task of using
and understanding language with pre-existing expectations about
the way
that members of social groups use language. However, a
persistent question is
how these expectations are constructed, including knowledge
gained from
experience and from stereotypes (Drager and Kirtley to appear;
Hay, Warren
and Drager 2006; Johnson 2006; McGowan to appear).
These perception studies demonstrate that peoples experience
with
language use, when tested in carefully controlled experimental
settings, can
be overpowered by the stereotypes that they hold. These studies
complement
another body of literature that considers the explicit
stereotypes that people
hold about language varieties. This literature can be grouped
broadly under
the labels language ideologies (e.g. Coupland and Jaworski 2004;
Irvine and
Gal 2000; Silverstein 1979; Woolard 1998), language attitudes
(Garrett 2001,
2010; Garrett, Coupland and Williams 2003) and folk linguistics
(Niedzielski
and Preston 2003; Preston 1996, to appear). These approaches
study the ideas
that people hold about language. However, unlike perception
research, this
area of scholarship focuses on data gathered mainly from peoples
explicit
opinions about language.
The confluence of these two types of approaches has demonstrated
that there
are multiple dimensions and aspects to awareness and control. We
must
approach the study of awareness and control from multiple angles
and
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understand it to include multiple levels or dimensions. In
particular, awareness
and control are embedded in systems of power that influence
social perceptions
of language (Babel to appear-b; Choksi and Meek to appear;
Zimman to
appear). The interconnections between language and social
systems require an
integrated, socially informed approach to awareness and
control.
Indexicality and erasure
Two key concepts that I use in this article to link social
systems to language
are indexicality and erasure. Erasure is one of a group of
language ideological
processes that structure the ideas that people hold about
language (Irvine
and Gal 2000). Erasure simplifies relationships by ignoring or
denying
real-world complexity in the process of creating an abstract
system of
reference. Indexicality is the process by which ideas about
social structures
and values are linked to particular linguistic signs or
variables. A linguistic
sign is an index of the ideas that people hold about social
groups, linking
the structural elements of language to the larger social context
in which it
is used. Sociolinguistic variables can incorporate or generate
reference not
only to a single meaning, but to a hierarchy or field of related
meanings
(Eckert 2008; Silverstein 2003). Because sociolinguistic
variables have
an array of possible meanings, they must be interpreted both in
terms of
large-scale tendencies and in terms of particular speakers and
contexts of
use (Kiesling 1998: 69). Interpreting the indexical field relies
on context,
and varies both in terms of who uses a variable and in terms of
who hears it
(Babel to appear-a).
Pues as a discourse marker in Spanish
Pues is generally described as a discourse marker. Most
commonly, pues has
been described as having functions relating to causation,
coordination, and
contrast (Travis 2005: 227286). Pues can be used to mark
hesitation or
consideration when used at the beginning of a sentence, to mark
an answer
and also serves for stance-taking (Portoles 1989; Serrano 1997).
Serrano also
considers pues to have a significant component of assertion and
an affective
charge (significado emotivo). In Colombia, pues has been
described as reinforcingan illocutive act (e.g. Anda pues Go ahead,
go on, hurry up) (Grajales Alzate
2011).
The greater part of the literature on pues in the Andes has
considered its
status as a contact feature (Calvo Perez 2000; Olbertz 2013;
Zavala 2001).
There is no clear parallel in Quechua to support these claims;
however, pues in
the Andes is both more frequent and subtly different from pues
in other parts of
the world. Andean pues shares some features that have been
reported in the
broader Spanish literature, such as being used for stance-taking
and for
assertion. It may connote emphasis and contribute to the logical
structure of a
conversation or argument (Pfander et al. 2009: 126130). However,
it is
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generally not used at the beginning of sentences or to mark
hesitation. Pues in
the Andes is used to structure and organize relationships
between elements of
discourse, a function that can imply and encompass
stance-taking, assertion,
and emphasis.
Vowel and consonant variation in Spanish
In my data, pues has a number of phonetic variants:
fully realized [pwes];
final consonant reduction or elision ([pwe] or [pweh]);
diphthong elision ([ps]); or
both diphthong and consonant elision ([p]).
These variants represent the results of two types of processes:
(1) syllable-final
consonant reduction and elision; and (2) vowel elision.
There is an extensive literature on the elision of
syllable-final /s/ in dialects of
Spanish. As discussed in Brown (2009a, 2009b), a number of
factors have
been shown to influence /s/-reduction and elision, such as word
length (Terrell
1979), prosodic stress (Alba 1982), and most importantly, the
following
phonological context (Lipski 1984). Brown (2009a) confirms that
the
following phonological context is the most important
conditioning factor for
the reduction of /s/, while also demonstrating that word
frequency plays a role
in its realization. There is an interaction between the position
of /s/ within the
word and frequency as factors in the reduction or elision of
this phoneme
(Brown 2004; Brown and Torres Cacoullos 2002, 2003; File-Muriel
2009;
Minnick-Fox 2006). Terrell (1979: 32) notes that in Puerto Rican
Spanish,
pues is unique among monosyllabic words in having an
exceptionally highfrequency of /s/ elision.
Vowel reduction and elision is a much less-studied phenomenon in
Spanish.
Unstressed vowel reduction has been documented in central and
northern
Mexico (Lope Blanch 1983; Serrano 2006) and the Andean
highlands
(Delforge 2008). While Lope Blanch finds no social factors
affecting unstressed
vowel reduction, Serrano suggests that men tend to use more
extreme forms of
reduction (i.e. elision) and that they shift styles, avoiding
elision when they
read word lists. Serrano (2006: 15) also mentions pues as an
environment inwhich vowels are often reduced or elided.
In the Andes, Delforge (2008:107) notes that unstressed vowel
reduction is
most frequent when associated with a following /s/. Delforge
concurs with
previous studies that the most common environment for devoicing
is between
voiceless consonants. Lipski (1990: 3, 13) discusses vowel
reduction in
highland Ecuador, concluding that vowel reduction usually occurs
in contact
with /s/ and is generally most frequent in the final syllable
and in the
environment of /e/. Lipski (1990:1), too, mentions pues as a
prototypical, evenstereotypical, environment for vowel
elision.2
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While both vowel and consonant reduction and elision have been
the focus
of study in research on Spanish, to my knowledge there are no
existing studies
that specifically examine reduction in the lexical item
pues.
THE SANTA CRUZ VALLEY REGION
My field site is located in central Bolivia in the transition
zone between the
Andes mountains and the Eastern Bolivian lowland plains. The
local dialect of
Spanish has many phonetic features in common with lowland
dialects of
Spanish, such as syllable-final consonant reduction and elision.
At the same
time, there is considerable grammatical and lexical influence
from Quechua
due to extensive contact influence.
I refer to the town in which I work by the pseudonym Iscamayo.3
Iscamayo
is a relatively large town of about 10,000 residents and is a
regionally
important population center. In Figure 1, the circle marks the
approximate
location of Iscamayo, halfway between the cities of Cochabamba
and Santa
Cruz. The cities of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz are located in
provinces of the
same name. Iscamayo is positioned precisely on the border
between the
provinces of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. In Iscamayo, everything
to the west
of the Cochabamba border is considered a highland area, even
though western
Santa Cruz and eastern Cochabamba are geographically similar.
This contrasts
with discourses in other parts of Bolivia, especially the
highland altiplano
region, where Cochabamba is not considered part of the
highlands, but rather
part of the valley region. In Iscamayo, those who are considered
vallunos
people from the valleys were born and raised either in the town
of Iscamayo
or in smaller towns surrounding the Iscamayo valley. This
regional
identification is part of a broader identification with the
Santa Cruz valleys
that forms a common link between towns that lie within the
Andean foothills
in the western part of the Santa Cruz province.
Iscamayo is a migration center because of its productive
agricultural
economy. The town is linked to the cities of Cochabamba and
Santa Cruz by
major roads, economic activity, cultural ties, and relative
geographical
proximity. Passenger buses travel two or three times a day to
Santa Cruz (a
journey of six to seven hours) and three times a week to
Cochabamba (11
hours). It is only via these two cities that Iscamayo is
connected to other major
cities, such as La Paz, Potos, and Oruro. The latter cities are
considered
relatively remote and people travel to them only occasionally.
As can be seen
in Figure 1, Potos and Oruro are located at some distance to the
south and
west of Iscamayo. For these reasons, in discussions of
highlanders the group
of reference for people from Iscamayo is generally Cochabamba
rather than
Potos or Oruro. A small number of residents of Iscamayo come
from Potos
and Oruro. They tend to be relatively well-educated individuals
teachers,
nurses, doctors, and some merchants.
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I have carried out long-term ethnographic fieldwork in this
area. My
connection with the community dates to 2002, when I arrived
there as a
Peace Corps volunteer. Over the subsequent years, I married into
a local family
and continue to return for long visits on an annual basis. I
began doing
sociolinguistic research in the area in 2004. My involvement
with the
community allowed me to gather a range of data, including
unselfconscious
speech from speakers who might ordinarily resist being recorded.
In the field,
I make recordings in WAV format with a hand-held solid-state
recorder. I also
keep field notes and collect ethnographic data through
participant-observation
activities.
Figure 1: Map of Bolivia (based on United Nations Map No. 3875
Rev. 3 August
2004). Circle indicates approximate location of Iscamayo
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My recordings are field recordings. Like any other data source,
this brings
with it strengths and weaknesses. The strength of recordings
made in the field
is that it is possible to collect relaxed, natural data in
conversational settings.
The weaknesses of field recordings are that their sound quality
is often poor
because of ambient noise and speakers moving around, and it is
virtually
impossible to control the demographics of the participants in
the recordings.
Likewise, I cannot generally control the participation structure
or the relative
quantity of speech from a particular participant.
The recorded data that I discuss in the following sections come
from
conversations, interviews, and meetings that I recorded over
several trips to
the field between 20082012. They also include observations from
my field
notes and participant-observation activities. I discuss the
particular
methodologies for each data set in the corresponding section
below.
DATA I: LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES REGARDING HIGHLANDERS
This section consists of an overview of language ideologies
regarding the
use of pues as an index of regional identity in Iscamayo. The
main portion
of these data come from July 2012, when I carried out thirty
interviews as
part of a perception experiment, though they also include
comments and
observations from prior fieldwork periods. The interviews were
intended to
guide the respondents to focus on regional language stereotypes,
as well as
to learn more about their understandings of typical language use
among
people of different social categories. The responses I received
were similar to
responses that I heard in language ideologies interviews that I
carried out
on other occasions.
Three relevant points emerged from the language ideologies
interviews.
First, people associated /s/-retention with people from the
highlands and
specifically with people from Cochabamba. Secondly, people
associated the use
of [pwes] and [ps] with people from the highlands and
specifically with people
from Cochabamba. And thirdly, people characterized people from
Cochabamba
as aggressive, rude, and pushy.
Highlanders whistle when they talk
Consultants of all backgrounds commented that people from the
highlands
made the s whistle or whistle when they talk. This observation
was
repeatedly linked specifically to people from Cochabamba. These
comments
were consistent across speakers. Alejandro named a town on the
border of the
Cochabamba province and told me that from that point on, con
puro S hablan
They speak with all S-es. Remedios told me that she heard un
sonido sssss en
Cochabamba, y en Santa Cruz no es as An sssss sound in
Cochabamba, and in
Santa Cruz its not like that. Alba told me that En Cochabamba la
S mas leaumenta In Cochabamba they add S more, an idea that was
echoed by Liliana,
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who said that En Cochabamba usa con S las palabras In Cochabamba
[they] use S
with words. Likewise, Berta told me that En Cochabamba la S lo
incluyen en todo
In Cochabamba they include the S in everything. Mario contrasted
this
pronunciation with Santa Cruz. He told me that Quechua-speakers
[i.e.
highlanders] mas pronuncian la S, J en Santa Cruz pronounce the
S more, in
Santa Cruz [they say] J.4
Ps, ps in the highlands, Pueee-e-e-eh in the lowlands
Pues emerged again and again as one of the most salient markers
of regional
identification in the course of my fieldwork in the community.
Consultants
commented that highlanders emphasize pues more and that they
generally
use this discourse marker frequently. Performances of highland
speakers
speech included frequent use of [pwes] and [ps]. People from the
lowlands, on
the other hand, were characterized as using an extended [pwe] or
[pweh] with
a long diphthong and rising prosody. This performance included
consistent /s/
reduction or elision.
Many of the same consultants who mentioned /s/ also mentioned
pues.
Liliana told me that people from Cochabamba said Claro pueSSS o
s pueS
Naturally or of course. She drew out the [s] sound as she
imitated these
phrases. Isabel gold me that En Cochabamba dicen puro pueSSS In
Cochabamba
theyre always going pueSSS, emphasizing the final sibilant.
Other consultants
contrasted this with Santa Cruz. Inocencia told me that in
Cochabamba people
said pues [pwes], while in Santa Cruz people said pueh [pweh].
Similarly,
Rosala imitated people from Santa Cruzs pronunciation of pues
[pweh] andcontrasted it with Cochabamba, where she said it was
pronounced [pwesssss].
Jhesica told me that in Cochabamba people said ya pues [pwes]
okay, while in
Santa Cruz people used la jota, orthographic J (see Note 2). In
his interview,
Mario agreed, saying that in Santa Cruz people said pueh
[pweh].
This consistency in the responses that I obtained is all the
more striking
because I never mentioned nor asked about /s/ variation or the
pues discourse
marker in the interviews. The perception experiment was designed
to elicit
attitudes about non-standard vowel height, a common Quechua
contact
feature. For this reason, /s/ was not manipulated in the
stimuli, nor was it
intended to be an object of analysis. In the interview
questions, I never made
any mention of /s/ or pues, although in follow-up questions I
would sometimes
ask about tone, accent, or words that are typical of regional or
language
groups to elicit a more specific answer from a participant. All
the interviews in
July 2012 were carried out individually, so consultants were not
responding to
what other people said. Nevertheless, 22 of the 30 respondents
mentioned the
pronunciation of /s/. Fifteen participants mentioned the lexical
item pues. Onlyfour respondents volunteered neither /s/ nor pues as
an important marker of
regional distinction.
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Two consultants also mentioned Potos as a distinct category.
One, himself a
Quechua-speaking migrant from Cochabamba, said that people from
Oruro
speak silbando con S whistling with S. The other, from Potos,
did not mention
any difference in the use of pues or the use of /s/. Rather, she
commented that
people from the Potos-Oruro area no lo pronuncian correctamente
dont
prounounce [Spanish] correctly and use the discourse marker i
(borrowed
from Quechua).
Aggressive, rude, and ill-bred
My interviewees held negative ideologies about highlanders in
general and
people from Cochabamba in particular. In these comments,
highlanders were
framed as aggressive, rude, and pushy. Because my consultants
were reluctant
to express baldly negative statements during recorded
interviews, I look not
just to the July 2012 interviews but to my broader experience in
the field to
support this claim.
In his interview with me, Octavio imitated the speech of a
person from
Cochabamba. Wawa anda trae tantarme i! Go bring me bread, child!
he said,
using a mixture of Quechua and Spanish. When I asked him to
explain the
differences that he perceived, he mentioned the Quechua
deference suffix ri in
Cochabamba Spanish and the use of affectionate terms such as the
Quechua
loanword waway my child, but added, sin embargo ya despues te
echan palo but
they beat you with a stick afterwards anyway. This contrast was
projected to
linguistic practice in a comment by Tomas, the son of
highlandmigrants. He told
me that En Santa Cruz mas lo alargan las palabras . . . en
Cochabamba mas secos, masdirectos son In Santa Cruz they draw their
words out more . . . in Cochabamba
they are drier, more direct. In this context, I understand seco
dry to mean
abrupt having a conversational style with little politeness or
mitigation.
These attitudes were also evident in interactions that I
observed in previous
fieldwork periods. In 2008, I interviewed a schoolteacher,
Carmen, who told
me that she didnt like immigrants, meaning highlanders.
Continuing on the
same topic, she told me that she didnt want her children to
marry people from
Cochabamba because they were malos mean. When I asked her what
shemeant, she elaborated on this idea. No son como nuestra gente,
te hablan muy
lindo pero si le niegas algun favorcito ya no te miran Theyre
not like our people,
they talk to you very nicely but if you ever deny them some
little favor they
wont even look at you, she told me. Another interviewee, Sandra,
told me
that she didnt like the Quechua language becauseMe da rabia por
lo que, por las
personas que son tan ignorantes, no? It ticks me off because of,
because of the
people who are so ignorant [rude], right?
In daily interactions, I also observed negative attitudes
towards highlanders.
A woman who complained about her neighbors unfriendly and
inconsiderate
conduct was met with the reply Colla es pues Its that shes a
highlander. After
a party that was put on by a family from the Cochabamba area got
out of
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hand, a consultant who was a native of the Santa Cruz valleys
characterized
the people who attended as agresivos, maleducados y malcriadotes
aggressive,
rude, and terribly ill-bred, adding no son como nuestra gente
theyre not like our
people. I was told more than once that I was lucky that my
mother-in-law,
who people described as kind and good-natured, was from Santa
Cruz rather
than from Cochabamba. When I asked why, I was told that
highlanders were
demanding and critical and would not shy away from verbally and
physically
abusing a daughter-in-law in their household. I heard
highlanders in general
and migrants from Cochabamba in particular blamed for everything
from
water shortages to local petty thefts and disputes between
neighbors. I was
strenuously advised not to rent my house in Bolivia to a family
from the
highlands while in absentia in the United States, on the
presumption that they
would destroy the property and resist paying rent.
Even people who were themselves migrants from other parts of
the
highlands were hostile towards people from Cochabamba. Sara,
originally
from Potos, told me that En Cochabamba mas habladores son People
from
Cochabamba are more malicious-gossips. This echoed a
conversation I had
some years before, speaking with Lorenza, also a migrant from
the highlands,
who used nearly identical words in describing people from
Cochabamba as
malicious gossips. She added Unas viboras son Theyre snakes. A
teacher from
Potos commented to me that children from the Potos area were
well-behaved,
obedient, and respectful, while children from the valleys which
in this
context I understood to include both Santa Cruz and Cochabamba
were
rambunctious, difficult to discipline, and talked back to
teachers.
When people made positive comments about people from Cochabamba,
they
emphasized their hard work and their ambition to advance in the
world. In
separate interviews, Marina and Silvio told me that all the big
businessmen in
Santa Cruz were originally from Cochabamba. Marina added that
highlanders,
who she identified as people from Cochabamba, a ellos les gusta
trabajar,
y ahorrarse y tener algo they like to work, and save, and have
something.5 She
contrasted this with lowlanders, who she said were happy even
when they had
nothing at all. This attitude was summed up in a common saying:
Colla burro,
camba flojo. This exchange of insults contrasts highlanders,
whom people called
burros donkeys meaning they were hard-working but stubborn and
rather
stupid and lowlanders, whom people called flojos lazy.
Discussion: Language ideologies
In interviews, consultants repeatedly associated highlanders
with s-retention
and lowlanders with s-reduction. Overwhelmingly, my consultants
associated
people from Cochabamba with s-retention, especially in the
context of pues.These perceptions were very consistent across
participants, regardless of the
age, gender, place of origin, identification as a language
speaker, or other social
attributes of the interviewees.
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My consultants expressed negative attitudes towards highlanders
in general
and in particular towards people from Cochabamba. Whether
positively or
negatively framed, all interviewees agreed that people from
Cochabamba were
hard-working but aggressive and badly behaved. These negative
attitudes were
not limited to interviewees from the Santa Cruz valleys, but
were also expressed
by migrants from the Potos-Oruro area.
DATA II: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF PUES VARIATION
In this section, I describe results from a quantitative study in
which I examined
the distribution of pues in my corpus of recorded interaction in
the Iscamayo
area. Using categories that emerged from my interviews, I
examined pues
variation as a function of place of origin, identification as a
Quechua-speaker,
and length of residence in the Iscamayo area.
Following language ideologies I found in the interviews I
carried out, locals
include people who were born and raised in Iscamayo or in the
local valleys
surrounding Iscamayo (the latter are referred to as vallunos).
Highlanders, onthe other hand, were born and raised in the
Cochabamba province or in the
Potos-Oruro region. One town that has special status is
Carapar
(a pseudonym), which is something of a sister city to Iscamayo,
just over
the Cochabamba border. In interviews, Carapar came up frequently
as a place
where people talked like highlanders, though this was not
attached to the same
negative ideologies that people associated with immigrants from
the highlands.
I added Carapar as a separate highland category due to its
special relationship
with Iscamayo. Based on the language ideologies I found in
interviews,
I expected to find a clear split in the pronunciation of pues
between
highlanders, including Cochabamba, Potos-Oruro, and Carapar, and
locals,
including people from Iscamayo and the local valleys.
Methods
The data that are presented in this section come from a data set
that was
collected in Iscamayo during an 11-month fieldwork period in
2008. During
this period, I made recordings of 16 conversations, 16
interviews, and 16
community meetings. The second 10 minutes of each recording
were
transcribed for a separate project (Babel 2010). I selected a
subset of
recordings based on the presence of non-standard orthographic
transcription
of pues.6 This subset comprised 26 10-minute recordings, in
which
approximately 56 speakers participated. Twenty-nine of these
speakers were
Valluno (from the valleys surrounding Iscamayo). Thirteen were
born and
raised in Iscamayo, six were from Cochabamba, four were from
Carapar and
four were from the Potos-Oruro area.
A trained research assistant used the transcriptions to listen
through the
original recordings. He clipped the part of the WAV file that
contained each
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instance of pues and provided a transcription of the token in
IPA. When
possible, he used WaveSurfer (Beskow and Sjolander 2011) to
generate a
spectrogram, which he used to check his auditory analysis.
Because the
recordings were field recordings, not collected in a lab or a
sound booth, they
were often noisy. When the spectrogram was not useful, he relied
on auditory
analysis alone. I checked each of the transcriptions and
discussed any
questions with the research assistant. When we did not agree on
a positive
identification of a particular token, it was discarded. In all,
a total of 359
tokens were used in the analysis. Of these tokens, 132 were
produced by
Vallunos, 78 by people from Iscamayo, 55 by people from
Potos-Oruro, 53 by
people from Cochabamba, and 26 by people from Carapar. Fifteen
tokens of
pues were produced by speakers whose origins I was unable to
determine. The
latter tokens were used for the linguistic analysis but not for
the social
analysis.
Regression analysis
In order to understand patterns of phonetic reduction of pues
and their
correlations with social groups, I used mixed effects logistic
regression to
examine the social and linguistic factors that influenced vowel
and consonant
elision in my corpus. The predictive factors were analyzed
collectively within
type (social, linguistic). I analyzed the data for four
dependent variables in four
separate logistic regression models:
Consonant elision: [pwe], [pweh], [p]
Vowel elision: [ps], [p]
Both consonant and vowel elision: [p]
Vowel elision only: [ps]
The five independent variables were grouped into social factors
and
linguistic factors. The three social factors were place of
origin, length of
residence in Iscamayo, and self-identification as a Quechua
speaker. The two
linguistic factors were sentence position and following sound.
The models
included all of the fixed effects in Table 1 as well as a random
effect of speaker
with random intercepts.
While my consultants mentioned only consonant vs. vowel elision,
I found
in transcriptions and recordings that my local consultants
sometimes elided
both the vowel and the consonant in a single production to form
another pues
variant, [p], which was simply a bilabial stop with a release.
Because [ps] was
the variant most often mentioned as a typical highland variant,
I examined
that variant separately.
As shown in Table 2, for consonant elision (yielding [pwe],
[pweh], or [p]),
people from Potos-Oruro (14%) and Carapar (62%) were
significantly less
likely to delete the consonant than the Valluno comparison group
(87%).
Neither people originally from Iscamayo (95%) nor Cochabamba
(94%) were
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significantly different from the Valluno comparison group for
this data set;
indeed, their rates of elision were virtually identical. Neither
length of residence
nor self-identification as a Quechua speaker was found to be
significant.
For vowel elision (yielding [ps] or [p]), the results were
similar. People from
Potos-Oruro (65%) were significantly more likely to delete the
vowel than the
Valluno comparison group (34%). People from Iscamayo (36%),
Carapar
(29%), and Cochabamba (33%) did not vary significantly in their
usage from
the Valluno group.
Further investigation showed that the [ps] variant was indeed
significantly
more likely to be used by people from Potos-Oruro (44%), while
people from
Iscamayo never used this variant (0%). However, no significant
difference was
found between Valluno (4%), Cochabamba (2%), Carapar (8%), and
Iscamayo
(0%). For elision of both the consonant and the vowel [p], once
again there was
no significant difference between Valluno (52%) and Cochabamba
(47%),
Carapar (37%), or Iscamayo (61%), but people from Potos-Oruro
almost
never elided both the consonant and the vowel (2%). The latter
finding was
significant and once again there were no significant differences
between any of
the other factors. When the table was rotated so that
Potos-Oruro was the
reference level, significant differences were observed between
Potos-Oruro and
Cochabamba for both vowel elision only ([ps], p
-
Table 2: Results of regression analysis for social factors
Social factor Level
Number of
pues tokens
% likelihood
of consonant
elision
(p-value)
% likelihood
of vowel
elision
(p-value)
% likelihood
of vowel
elision only
(p-value)
% likelihood
of both consonant
and vowel elision
(p-value)
Place of origin Valluno 132 87 (N/A) 34 (N/A) 4 (N/A) 52
(N/A)
Iscamayo 78 95 (.083) 36 (.577) 0 (.998) 61 (.246)
Potos-Oruro 55 14 (.000)* 65 (.008)* 44 (.000)* 2 (.001)*
Carapar 26 62 (.003) 29 (.735) 8 (.416) 37 (.315)
Cochabamba 53 94 (.272) 33 (.959) 2 (.432) 47 (.746)
Long-term
resident
Yes 308 76 (N/A) 30 (N/A) 0 (N/A) 9 (N/A)
No 36 79 (.818) 48 (.082) 0 (.397) 68 (.000)*
Self-identified
Quechua
speaker
Yes 149 75 (.617) 35 (.483) 0 (.135) 25 (.161)
No 195 80 (N/A) 42 (N/A) 0 (N/A) 38 (N/A)
*Statistically significant at p < 0.01.
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R to carry out an unsupervised cluster analysis. The purpose of
this analysis
was to analyze patterns of vowel and consonant elision in pues
with reference
to place of origin groups. The technique used was agglomerative
clustering,
which is carried out using the hclust() function in R. This
technique allows us
to easily visualize the groupings within the data set based on
statistical
similarities between the data points for each group (see Baayen
2008:
118164).
The dendograms in Figures 2 and 3 were produced to visualize
the
relationship between different groups of origin according to
their tendency to
elide or weaken the consonant (lowland-indexed [pwe] or [pweh])
or to elide
the vowel (highland-indexed [ps]). For both measures,
Cochabamba, Iscamayo,
and Valley speakers were closely related, while Potos-Oruro
stood apart.
In these dendograms, the y axis indicates the magnitude of
the
difference between the place of origin groups. These results
support and
illustrate the regression analysis. According to groupings from
this data set,
Potos-Oruro always stands as a separate category. Cochabamba,
Iscamayo,
and the local valleys, on the other hand, are closely related,
though the
configurations of this relationship vary somewhat depending on
the factor
selected.
Discussion: Quantitative factors
In their metalinguistic commentary, my consultants clearly
grouped
Cochabamba together with Potos-Oruro and Carapar as regions that
make
the s whistle. Indeed, this was the most prominent feature
associated with
Cochabamba speakers in comparison with local speakers. In
contrast, the
quantitative results show that it is Potos-Oruro speakers and to
some extent
those from Carapar who show a clear difference from Valley
speakers in the
pronunciation of pues. The results differentiating Potos-Oruro
from Iscamayo
Table 3: Results of regression analysis for linguistic
factors
Linguistic
factor Level
Number of
pues tokens
% likelihood
of consonant
elision (p-value)
% likelihood
of vowel
elision
(p-value)
Position Phrase-final 256 68 (N/A) 35 (N/A)
Phrase-medial 100 72 (.573) 31 (.604)
Following
sound
Consonant not /s/ 123 81 (.886) 38 (.051)
Pause 140 81 (N/A) 26 (N/A)
/s/ 23 35 (.000)* 43 (.099)
Vowel 70 74 (.275) 27 (.844)
*Statistically significant at p < 0.01.
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and Valley speakers are robust. Potos-Oruro speakers also stand
apart from
Cochabamba speakers, despite metalinguistic commentary linking
the two
groups as highlanders. Table 4 summarizes the differences
between the
qualitative analysis of language ideologies and the statistical
analysis of pues
realizations.
The fact that people hold such strong ideologies linking people
from
Cochabamba to the use of /s/ in pues should not be dismissed out
of hand,
however. One possible explanation is that permanent, long-term
residents of
Iscamayo who were originally from Cochabamba have assimilated to
the Santa
Cruz pronunciation, at least in this aspect of their speech. The
fact that length
of residence was not selected as a significant factor may be due
to the fact that
Poto
siO
ruro
Cara
pari
Vallu
no
Coch
abam
ba
Isca
may
o
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
hclust (*, complete)
Dis
tanc
e be
twee
n gr
oups
Figure 2: Grouping by consonant-deletion rates [pwe], [pweh]
Poto
siO
ruro
Isca
may
o
Cara
pari
Coch
abam
ba
Vallu
no
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
hclust (*, complete)
Dis
tanc
e be
twee
n gr
oups
Figure 3: Grouping by vowel-deletion-only rates [ps]
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the great majority of my data come from people who are long-term
residents of
the Santa Cruz valleys.
If there were evidence to support this hypothesis, there would
still be a
mismatch between the way that my consultants perceive people
from
Cochabamba and their personal experience with people from
Cochabamba.
Length of residence was not a factor that emerged from the
interviews as being
important in the way people spoke. Quite to the contrary, on
several occasions
people emphasized to me that people spoke in the manner of the
region where
they grew up, no matter where they currently lived. It is
important to
remember, too, that the direction of migration is overwhelmingly
from the
highlands to the lowlands. Very few of my consultants from the
Santa Cruz
valleys spent long periods of time in Cochabamba or other
regions of highland
Bolivia. Therefore, their experience with and representations of
highland
speech come largely from people who have migrated to and settled
in the
Iscamayo area.
DATA III: INTRA-INDIVIDUAL VARIATION ATYPICAL
PRONUNCIATIONS OF PUES
Ideologies that link social groups to particular pues variants
erase internal
differentiation among highland groups. However, this is not the
only type of
variation that they erase. They also erase the variation that
occurs in the
speech of a given individual. In this section, I discuss
speakers who employ
atypical pronunciations of the discourse marker pues. These are
forms that
are very unusual for these speakers and for their social groups.
Through
these examples, I turn to a third perspective on this data the
use of pues in
Table 4: Summary of groupings in qualitative versus quantitative
analysis
a. Language ideologies
Highland (pwes], [ps]) Lowland ([pwe], [pweh])
Potos-Oruro Iscamayo
Carapar Valleys
Cochabamba
b. Statistical groupings
Group 1 ([pwes], [ps]) Group 2 ([pwe], [pweh])
Potos-Oruro Iscamayo
Carapar [pwes] only Valleys
Cochabamba
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natural conversation as a link between social groups and
linguistic
stereotypes.
Methods
The data presented in this section are a subset of the data
presented in the
previous section, collected during my 2008 fieldwork. The groups
that I focus
on are people from the local valleys surrounding Iscamayo
(vallunos) and
highlanders from Potos-Oruro, each of which displayed strong but
not
categorical tendencies for the use of these variables.
Because each of these groups has a strong tendency to use their
own regional
variant, the total number of examples from which I sampled is
relatively small.
Since I am unable to discuss them all individually for reasons
of conciseness,
I chose representative examples for detailed discussion. For the
Potos-Oruro
group, there were six cases in which people used pues with
consonant reduction
or deletion ([pwe] or [pweh]). Three examples are discussed
below. For people
from the local valleys, there were 11 cases in which people used
a form withoutfinal consonant reduction ([pwes] or [ps]) when not
followed by an /s/. I have
chosen four of these cases to examine in detail in the following
section. In addition
to being representative examples, these cases were selected
because they were
used by speakers who I knew well due to a long-standing
relationship and who
I recorded on more than one occasion. Based on my familiarity
with these
speakers and their attitudes and habits of speech, I felt that I
could make a
confident assessment of their stances in particular situations.
Additionally, since
they were well-represented in the recordings, I had a set of
pues tokens on whichto base my analysis of their patterns of
speech.
I analyze each of these cases in which an atypical pues occurred
in detail, in
context, as part of a transcript and in the context of the
conversation. I also
present the total distribution of realizations of pues for each
speaker and include
ethnographic information and background on the speaker and the
topic. While
regional groups have a particular profile in terms of the way
that they use pues,
individual speakers may more or less closely resemble their
group. In Table 5,
I give the distribution of pues forms for the four speakers
whose speechI examine closely in this section.
Potos-Oruro
Sara and Pedro, a married couple, were both teachers in the
local school
district. Pedro was one of the most educated people in town and
had served as
the director of the school district. Sara taught Quechua and
Spanish at various
levels in the local schools. Both were originally from small
towns in the Potos-
Oruro highlands.
Sara used the [p] variant of pues twice. The two instances of
Saras use of thisform occurred one after the other as she discussed
language mixture in
Iscamayo.
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Transcript 1 (S = Sara, A = Author, P = Pedro)
1. S: Ellos piensan que es todo
Quechua.
1. S: They think its all Quechua.
2. Mejor dicho, que es
castellano. No estan
hablando Quechua.
2. I mean, Spanish. Theyre not
speaking Quechua.
3. Ahora le vas a preguntar
aqu que estan hablando
ellos, le escuchas?
3. Now, if you ask them what
they are speaking, do you
hear them?
4. Eso esta en castellano,
no es en Quechua,
le dices.
4. This is in Spanish, not in
Quechua, you tell them.
5. Ellos te van a decir
que es castellano.
5. They will say its in Spanish.
6. Pero no es pues [p]. 6. But its not pues [p].
7. A: No es 7. A: Its not.
8. S: No es pues [p]. 8. S: Its not pues [p].
9. P: No es 9. P: Its not.
In this transcript, Sara claimed that people from Iscamayo think
theyre
speaking pure Spanish, when in fact they mix Spanish with
Quechua. As she
asserted Its not [pure Spanish], she added an emphatic [p].
The lone instance of consonant reduction in her husbands speech
also
occurred in this context, as we discussed the mixture of Spanish
and Quechua
in the local area.
Table 5: Phonetic realizations of pues by individual speakers
(P-O = Potos-Oruro; V= Valluno)
Speaker
(place of
origin)
Vowel
elision
[ps]
Neither
[pwes]
Consonant
elision
[pwe],
[pweh]
Both
[p] Total
N % N % N % N % N %
Sara (P-O) 13 72 2 11 1 6 2 11 18 100
Pedro (P-O) 2 20 7 70 1 10 0 0 10 100
Prima (V) 3 10 4 13 14 47 9 30 30 100
Marina (V) 0 0 2 14 8 57 4 29 14 100
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Transcript 2 (A = Author, P = Pedro, S = Sara)
1. A: Y en, en Quechua Usted
ha notado que se mezcla
tambien? Con castellano?
1. A: And, in Quechua have you found
that people mix too? With
Spanish?
2. P: Si. Tambien mezclan. 2. P: Yes. They mix too.
3. S: Mezclan, [grave]. 3. S: They mix, [terribly].
4. P: En Quechua mismo,
hablan muchas palabras
mezclado con el castellano
pues [pweh], no?
4. P: Even in Quechua, they talk with
many words mixed with Spanish
pues [pweh], no?
5. Ese es el objectivo de la
Reforma Educativa es
pues [pwes], eh, hablar
bien el
5. That is the goal of the Educational
Reform, its pues [pwes], um, to
speak better
6. S: Puro Quechua 6. S: Pure Quechua
7. P: Quechua, limpio, o sea
hablar puro.
7. P: Clean Quechua, that is, to speak
purely.
In these transcripts, Pedro and Sara discussed the mixture of
Quechua with
Spanish, which they evaluated negatively. While discussing the
local mixture of
Spanish with Quechua, Pedro used a variant of pues with
consonant elision[pweh] immediately after theword Spanish. In the
following sentence, speaking
of the Educational Reform act, he used the unreduced [pwes] that
was typical of
his speech. This phonetic alternation mirrored the contrast that
he presented
between cleanor pure languageand themixed-up languageof the
local valleys.
Sara and Pedro used variants with consonant elision variants
that were rare
both for them personally and for their social group as they
talked about people
or places that were associated with Santa Cruz or the Santa Cruz
valleys, both
areas in which pues with consonant elision is common. Other
examples ofconsonant reduction and elision used by speakers from
the Potos-Oruro region
shared this tendency.
Vallunos
Marina and Prima were speakers from the local valleys who used
pues without
final consonant reduction or elision. Both were women I knew
well and had a
social relationship with. Both women worked with their husbands
in
agriculture and had relatively little formal education.
I recorded Marina several times, including a conversation with
her family,
an interview about her experience as a local politician, and a
language
ideologies interview, as well as some community meetings in
which she was a
participant. Marina was in her thirties at the time of these
recordings. In the
conversation represented in Transcript 3, she discussed her
ideas about the
differences between highlanders and lowlanders.
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Transcript 3 (M = Marina, A = Author)
1. M: Porque los, cambas tienen
cabalito para el da,
tienen que tener.
1. M: Because the, lowlanders have just
enough for the day, they need to
have.
2. A: Mhm 2. A: Mm-hmm
3. M: Mientras los collas en
cambio, es, pues
[pweh], a ellos les
gusta trabajar, y
ahorrarse y tener
algo pues [pwes],
no ve? Trabajar,
pues [p]. Y los
cambas en
cuanto no tengan
nada. Estan siguenfelices.
3. M: While the highlanders on the
other hand, its, pues [pweh],
they like to work, and save and
have something pues [pwes],
right? Work, pues [p]. And the
lowlanders even when they
have nothing. Theyre still happy.
In this discussion of differences between highlanders and
lowlanders, Marina
voiced common stereotypes lowlanders are lazy, while highlanders
are hard-
working. In turn 3 of the transcript, Marina used three pues
variants in a row,perhaps an allusion to the perception that
highlanders use the discourse
marker more. One of these variants, following her main idea a
ellos les gusta
trabajar y ahorrarse y tener algo they like to work and save and
have something
was unreduced [pwes]. In the same turn, she used a grammatical
construction
that is typical of Quechua-dominant speakers, estan siguen
felices theyre still
happy. This construction is highly ungrammatical in most Spanish
varieties,
and is not common among Spanish-dominant speakers in this area.
This use of
a highland pues variant and a highland-linked grammatical
structure in adiscussion of highland groups mirrors the way that
highlanders from Potos-
Oruro used lowland variants when discussing topics related to
the lowlands.
This is not the only way that Marina used pues with final
consonant
retention, however. In Transcript 4, in a recording made on
a
different occasion, Marina used highland-indexed pues in order
to express
emphasis or exasperation. In this recording, she was trying to
comb nits from
her daughters hair and was having trouble getting the right
angle and light. It
was an informal occasion, and several family members were
gathered around.
This exchange occurred between Marina and her young daughter,
C.
Transcript 4 (C = Marinas daughter, M = Marina)
1. C: Ay, no ponga su pie. 1. C: Hey, dont put your foot
[there].
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2. M: Es muy abajo pues
[pweh], no veo!2. M: Its too low pues [pweh],
I cant see!3. C: Su pie, pues [pwej] . . .
Esta su pie muy abajo?
3. C: Your foot, pues [pwej] . . . Is your
foot too low?
4. M: Tu cabeza, pues [pwes]. 4. M: Your head, pues [pwes].
In this exchange, Marina was exasperated by her daughters
wiggling and
uncooperative attitude, and she had just lost her temper and
raised her voice at
her (turn 2). The little girl continued to protest in a whiny
tone of voice. Pues,
in this exchange, was used as part of a construction of
emphasis, as Marina
responded to her daughters confusion about what was too low (her
mothers
foot or her own head). In turn 4, using more affectionate tone
of voice, but still
a bit shortly, she explained that its the childs head, not her
own foot, that was
too low. It was on this repetition that Marina used [pwes]. This
response, along
with her tone of voice and body language, communicated an
assertive and
rather impatient stance in response to her daughters
protests.
This assertive stance contrasts with the ambivalent stance that
Marina
expressed when I asked her about her election to the town
council. In Transcript
5,Marina discussed her reluctance to participate in local
politics given her lack of
formal education. She eventually agreed because, she told me,
she liked to help
people and she felt that a person like herself would do a better
job than a rich
person who didnt understand the needs of the community. In
Transcript 5, she
told me about having been talked into running for the
position.
Transcript 5 (M = Marina, A = Author)
1. M: Yo, pues [pweh], casi no quera
aceptar. Aqu me vinieron, a
pedir, digamos, la comunidad,
la, unas cuantas personas de
la comunidad, me pidieron.
1. M: I, pues [pweh], really
didnt want to accept.
They came to me, you
know, the community
asked me, the, a few people
from the community, they
asked me.
2. A: Mhm
. . .
2. A: Mm-hmm
. . .
3. M: As yo acepte estar en la lista.
Paso un tiempo, ya, me
dijeron, pues [p], no hay mas
opcion, que tienes que entrar.
Yo no quera, casi no me
animaba, porque no se,
pues [p].
3. M: So I agreed to be on the
ballot. Then some time
passed, then, they told me
pues [p], theres no other
alternative, you have to
take office. I didnt want to,
I didnt feel like it, because
I dont know, pues [p].
A similar pattern can be seen in Primas uses of pues. I recorded
two interviews
with Prima, one on the topic of language ideologies and one of
the topic of
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cooking practices. In Transcript 6, taken from the cooking
practices interview,
we discussed the scarcity of firewood. Then I asked Prima how
she thought the
mountains where she went to gather firewood looked, expecting
her to say that
they were bare or dead-looking due to over-collection of
firewood. Instead, she
responded that they looked fine to her. After a five-second
pause while I wrote
down her responses, I returned to one of her earlier statements,
confirming that
her experience was that there was a scarcity of dead wood for
firewood.
In her response, Prima responded to my implicit challenge of her
answer by
strongly re-asserting her original position, first using pues
with diphthong
elision only ([ps], turn 2) and then, as she modified her
answer, pues with
consonant elision.
Transcript 6 (A = Author, P = Prima)
1. A: Pero dice que no hay le~na ya? 1. A: But you say theres
no
firewood anymore?
2. P: Ya no hay le~na ya pues [ps]. 2. P: Theres no firewood
anymore
pues [ps].
3. Hay le~na, pero muy lejos ya
pues [pweh].
3. There is firewood, but its very
far away now pues [pweh].
I understood Primas use of [ps] to indicate emphasis or perhaps
annoyance
at being asked to repeat her answer a strong, assertive
response. The use of
[ps] indexed a more authoritative, less deferential stance to my
repeated
question. The discursive effect of shifting back to [pweh] was
to move from a
strong assertion to a more polite explanation of her answer.
The language ideologies interview that I conducted with Prima
and her
husband returned to the topic of English again and again. Prima
emphasized to
me how much she had wanted her children to study the language
and perhaps
even become English teachers. The following excerpts are drawn
from several
minutes of recording.
Transcript 7 (J = Primas husband, P = Prima)
1. J: Ojala, pues [pwe], que pudieran
aprender ellos el ingles.. . .
1. J: I wish, pues [pwe], that
they could learn English.. . .
2. P: Por lo menos que entiendan,
pues [p], que fuerza que hablen,
porque hace mucha falta
[no ve].. . .
2. P: At least understand [it],
pues [p], it doesnt matter
if they speak, because its
so necessary [you know]. . . .
3. P: Porque ellas [mis hijas] tambien
han estudiado ingles pues
[pwe].. . .
3. P: Because they [my daughters]
also studied English pues
[pwe].. . .
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4. P: Hay, pues [pwe], [una
oportunidad] pa salir y, ser,
profesora de ingles estan,
no ve?
4. P: There is, pues [pwe], [an
opportunity] to graduate
and be, an English teacher,
isnt there?
In these short excerpts, Prima and her husband constructed
aspirational
stances towards higher education and towards English, a language
that stands
for social status and upward mobility to many Bolivians. In
doing so, they often
used pues as they expressed their sincere desire tomotivate
their children to studyEnglish. In this conversation, Prima and her
husband used the local versions of
pues ([pwe] and [p]). In contrast to Primas assertive stances in
Transcript 6, in
this conversation she did not use the highland-indexed pues
variants.
Discussion: Atypical uses of pues
People from Potos-Oruro used lowland pues variants to index
topics associated
with the lowlands (Transcripts 1, 2). Likewise, Vallunos used
highland pues
variants in order to index topics associated with the highlands
(Transcript 3).
However, Vallunos also used pues in making strong assertions or
projectingfirm stances, even when they were not explicitly
discussing highlanders
(Transcripts 4, 6). This is perfectly in line with the semantic
and pragmatic
functions of pues as a discourse marker, which include the
construction of
assertive stances (e.g. Zavala 2001) or conveying emphasis (e.g.
Pfander et al.
2009:126130). However, it contrasts with the local phonetic
variant of pues
that the same speakers used when constructing ambivalent or
aspirational
stances (Transcripts 5, 7).
Beyond the status of pues as a discourse marker, there is
meaning attachedto the phonetic variants that speakers used in
these transcripts. Speakers use
pronunciations of pues that are unusual for them to index places
and people
who are associated with that variant. When people from the
valleys construct
particularly assertive stances, they use highland varieties of
pues.
These atypical pronunciations of pues are anything but
accidental. Rather, they
are revealing of the way that people think about language as a
symbolic resource.
Speakers draw on and produce the indexical field surrounding
pues as they make
these references, linking linguistic form to geographical region
and to stereotypes
about people from that region. The patterns of use of pues with
and without
reduction correspond to different levels of indexical reference.
The speakers most
common or unmarked variant of pues alternates with socially
meaningful
instances in which they use variants that index aspects of
another social group.
CONCLUSION
In this article, I have examined phonetic variation in a
discoursemarker, pues, that
is a highly stereotyped index of regional identification. People
in the Santa Cruz
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valleys of Central Bolivia believe thathighlanders pronounce
pues as [ps] or [pwes],
while lowlanders pronounce pues as [pwe] or [pweh]. However,
these stereotypes
erase an internal distinction betweenhighlanders. Natural
production data shows
that highlanders from the Potos-Oruro area do generally
pronounce pues as they
are believed to. However, immigrants from the Cochabamba
valleys, the most
commonly mentioned group in interview data, differ significantly
from people
fromPotos-Oruroand closelymirror the pronunciationof speakers
from theSanta
Cruz valleys. Peoples beliefs about the way that regional
identity groups use the
discoursemarker pues donotmatchupwith theway thatmembers of
these groups
use the discourse marker in my corpus.
The stereotype of the highland [ps] or [pwes] pronunciation also
erases
differences within individual speakers. It is true that people
from Potos-Oruro
have a strong tendency to maintain the consonant and elide the
diphthong,
while people from the Santa Cruz valleys tend to elide or reduce
the consonant.
However, these tendencies are not categorical. In cases where
people from
Potos-Oruro use the lowland-associated consonant reduction or
elision, they
are referring to people, places, or practices associated with
Santa Cruz. When
people from the Santa Cruz valleys use the highland variants,
they refer to
people from the highlands, but also project assertive stances
that reference
stereotypes of highlanders as pushy, bossy, or aggressive.
Atypical uses of pues
are not used by chance or at random; they are meaningful acts
that are
imbedded in a particular social system.
This study contributes to the study of indexical reference and
indexical fields by
examining the links that people believe exist between particular
phonetic variants
and social groups. These beliefs shape the way that people use
and interpret
language.However, beliefs about language are not necessarily
faithful reflections
of experience with language. Previous studies have shown that
the ideas that
people hold about social groups can influence the way that they
perceive
linguistic variables. The present research shows that they can
also influence the
way that people use language in natural contexts to refer to
social groups and the
qualities that are associatedwith them. The data I have
presented here show that
people construct higher levels of indexical reference based on
their stereotypes
about language use rather than their experience with
speakers.
Most studies of awareness and control have focused either on
speech
perception, using experimental methods, or on explicit
stereotypes that speakers
hold. This work bridges experimental studies of speech
perception and qualitative
investigations of attitudes and stereotypes. Previous research
has shown that
awareness and control of linguistic variables works on many
levels and in many
dimensions. This study connects three aspects of awareness and
control:
what people say about language when they are discussing
stereotypes;
what people do when they produce language in natural contexts;
and
what people are referring to when they use variables in ways
that are
unusual for their group.
STEREOTYPES VERSUS EXPERIENCE 629
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Through an examination of these three aspects of language use,
this study
offers an evaluation of the relationship between beliefs about
highly
stereotyped variables and experience with language use in
natural contexts.
Not all highlanders say ps, but the fact that people believe
they do affects the
way that people understand and use this variable.
NOTES
1. I gratefully acknowledge the help that I received in
developing this article. Asalways, thanks go first and foremost to
my consultants in Iscamayo for their
great patience and generosity in sharing their lives with me. My
very sincere
thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an
initial version of
the manuscript, and to the editors for their vote of confidence
on the initial
submission. I am indebted to Kathryn Campbell-Kibler and Kevin
McGowan for
giving me detailed comments on a later draft. In the
quantitative data section,
Steven Naber of the OSU Statistical Consulting Service assisted
me with the
regression analysis, Lauren Squires helped me to think through
my approach to
the data, and Kevin McGowan produced Figures 1 and 2. My very,
very
appreciative thanks to Shukri Zanika, my research assistant, for
the many, many
pues tokens that he painstakingly clipped, coded, and analyzed,
and especially forhis willingness to disagree with me. Thanks to
Karen Lopez Alonso for her
assistance with the Spanish abstract. Parts of this research
were funded by an
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the Rackham Graduate School of
the
University of Michigan, the College of Arts and Sciences of the
Ohio State
University, and the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies.
2. It is not entirely clear from these articles whether pues
would (or would always)count as an unstressed vowel. As a
monosyllabic word, it would seem that the
vowel might generally be considered to be stressed. Regardless,
it is identified as
a prototypical environment for vowel reduction by these
authors.
3. As mandated by the IRB, and following my practice in other
published articles,I use pseudonyms for places that are not major
cities and for people who are not
public figures.
4. Orthographic J is pronounced as [h] or [x] in Latin American
Spanish.5. This conversation is quoted at greater length in
Transcript 3 (p. 625).6. The original transcriptions were
orthographic in nature and were not meant to
be phonetically accurate. As it turned out, my impressionistic
transcriptions had
a low degree of phonetic accuracy, so the sample is perhaps a
better (in the sense
of more random) one than it might have been.
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Address correspondence to:
Anna M. Babel
The Ohio State University Spanish and Portuguese
298 Hagerty Hall
1775 College RdColumbus, Ohio 43210
U.S.A.
[email protected]
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