Cohesion and dispersion: sociophonetic analysis of idiolectal variation in the situation of dialectal contact

• Grant number: 23/00968-7
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: August 01, 2023
• End date: July 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Sociolinguistics and Dialectology
• Principal Investigator: Livia Oushiro
• Grantee: Livia Oushiro
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Jennifer Nycz ; Plinio Almeida Barbosa
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/03058-4 - Sociophonetic analysis of the speech of Alagoan and Paraiban migrants in the state of Sao Paulo, BP.TT; 23/09652-2 - Sociophonetic analysis of the speech of Alagoan and Paraiban migrants in the state of Sao Paulo, BP.TT; 23/09670-0 - Sociophonetic analysis of the speech of Alagoan and Paraiban migrants in the state of Sao Paulo, BP.TT

Abstract

This research project, in continuity to the Project Accommodation (FAPESP 2016/04960-7; Oushiro 2016a), aims to analyze the role of the Individual in processes of dialectal accommodation in the speech of Alagoan and Paraiban migrants living in São Paulo and in Campinas. More specifically, it aims to analyze, through a sociophonetic perspective (Thomas, 2011; Di Paolo; Yaeger-Dror, 2010), four sociolinguistic variables that differentiate Northeastern and Southeastern dialects of Brazilian Portuguese - pretonic midvowels /e/ and /o/, coda /r/ and coda /s/ -, to investigate (i) whether migrants' speech is more dispersed than that of non-migrant native speakers; (ii) to what extent the Individual determines the variability in migrants' speech, in comparison to macrocategories, such as their gender or age of migration; and (iii) to what extent migrants are cohesive in their patterns of acquisition of multiple dialectal traits of the host community (e.g., the simultaneous accommodation to retroflex /r/ and pretonic midvowel [e]). To achieve these goals, 165 recordings of sociolinguistic interviews from the Accommodation Project and the control-samples VALPB, PORTAL, SP2010 and Amostra-Campinas will be acoustically segmented by forced aligners and analyzed regarding their variance for each individual and sample, to examine data dispersion; in linear regression analyses, including Speaker as a random effect along with social and linguistic fixed effects, in order to measure the role of the Individual in the process of accommodation; and in covariation analyses, with the objective of examining cohesion in variation patterns among different sociolinguistic variables. In addition to discussing idiolectal variation, often neglected in sociolinguistic studies, this project will contribute to the development of Sociophonetics in Brazil and to the advancement of studies on dialectal contact. (AU)