babel, anna (2014) - stereotypes versus experience. indexing regional identity in bolivian valley...

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

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,

STEREOTYPES VERSUS EXPERIENCE 605


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



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.



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,



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



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



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

616 BABEL


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.

618

BABEL

2014JohnWiley

&SonsLtd

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.



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]

620 BABEL


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



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.

622 BABEL


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



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.

624 BABEL


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].



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

626 BABEL


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].. . .



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

628 BABEL


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.



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]



babel, anna (2014) - stereotypes versus experience. indexing regional identity in bolivian valley...

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