Actitudes y creencias hacia las variedades del español de España: castellano, andaluz y canario

Abstract

Linguistic attitudes are related to perceptions and beliefs as well as to emotions, feelings and reactions (López Morales 2004). As the study of attitudes became more frequent in the 70s of the 20th century, it has been considered very useful to delve into the processes of linguistic variation and change. This paper presents the direct and indirect attitudes and the degree of identification and proximity towards Spanish, Andalusian and Canarian varieties (Moreno Fernández 2009) of a group of young Mallorcan speakers, all of them philology students. This research follows the methodology of the precaves xxi project, based on the matched-guise technique. The conclusions of the study suggest: (1) that the most recognizable varieties are the Castilian and the Andalusian; (2) that direct and indirect evaluations do not reflect the same feelings depending on the variety, and this produces cases of covert prestige in the Castilian and Andalusian varieties; and (3) that the degree of identity is reflected towards Spanish, although the speakers perceive differences between the central Spanish of Madrid and the peripheral Spanish spoken in Mallorca.