articulo_actitudes_aveplefe_noventa_y

The issues

Attitudes are responses people give to social situations (Fasold 1984: 148). Language attitudes are of course about language and they are related to issues such as prestige, power and presentation of self.

Labov discovered that people do not necessarily speak the way they say they do. The difference between how people speak and the way they describe their speech has been considered as the language insecurity measure (López Morales, 1993). According to variation theory, attitudes relate to prestige varieties because speakers generally prefer such dialects even though they may not speak them. Speakers of the prestige varieties are usually considered more intelligent than speakers of non-standard varieties. Non prestigious speech, on the contrary, can be related to other human qualities, such as sympathy, affection and so on.

Language attitudes are studied in various ways from different points of view and also the interdisciplinary by sciences such as sociology, psychology and linguistics. Studies on language attitudes are inherently related to group identity. "When a society has linguistic varieties in a diglossic relationship, the usual attitude is that the high language is a purer and better language than the low language" (Fasold, 1984: 158).

Not even in questions concerning likeability vs. status are low prestige varieties prone to score well among their own speakers. D’Anglejan and Tucker conducted research involving European French and two varieties of Canadian French in Quebec, finding that the European French speaker was rated not only more intelligent and better educated, but more likeable than Canadian French speakers (D’Angeljan and Tucker, 1973: 22, cited by Fasold, 1984: 158). Similarly, the results of attitude research with Mexican Americans conducted by Carranza and Ryan (1975:99) were that both Anglo and Mexican Americans rated English higher than Spanish on status scales, as expected, but also on solidarity scales, an unexpected outcome for the Mexican Americans (Fasold 1984: 158).

An important issue about prestige comes about when it is related to school issues. Physical characteristics such as skin colour and hair quality are seen together with intelligence, independently of the real "voice". The issue of presentation of self may be important, in our opinion, when considering adolescents. Some studies (cited by Giles, Coupland , & Coupland, 1991) reveal that people manifest their preference of the prestige varieties in order to increase their likeability. This might explain some of the results obtained by this study. Teachers are responsible in school settings for transmitting the prevailing cultural values about language and might so be more inclined than the general population to report official attitudes. Students, working in a test-like situation, often in school buildings, might be inadvertently led by the setting to report the "official" viewpoint (Fasold, 1984: 160).

Even though the notion of prestige is very closely related to power, these issues do not overlap entirely. Some sociolinguistic patterns associated with the speech of males and the phenomenon of covert prestige suggest the need to maintain both notions, prestige and power, separated from each other. This is important in respect to dialectal and identity issues, because of the fact that people may both recognise the prestige variety but want to assert their regional identity on the other hand.

This has become apparent in studies carried out in Mérida, Venezuela (Alvarez & Villamizar 1999, Alvarez & Barros and Alvarez & New in press). Peasants of the Andean mountain belt (the Páramo) recognise the pronunciation of alveolar /s/, labiodental fricative /f/ and vibrant /r/ as well as the archiphoneme /R/, as prestige features, but especially men may want to differentiate themselves from women and maintain their identity as mountain people with their preference towards apical /s/, bilabial /f/ and assibilated /r/ and /R/. In the same region, but regarding urban speech, research carried out in Mérida, regarding the use of second person singular pronouns has found that the distinction among (+/ reverence) maintained in Spanish standard speech is apparently losing vitality in Venezuelan Spanish. The diverse regions of the country use tú, usted and vos in the (-reverence) category, with a flavour or regional identity. In Mérida City, the preferred pronoun is usted which is also the pronoun of intimacy. Alvarez & New (in press) show an increase of the use of tú in younger speakers of the higher socioeconomic group. This can be either a sign of change in progress or an instance of age grading. Another possibility is accommodation. Giles, Coupland, & Coupland (1991) explain dynamic movement among the participants of a speech event towards or from each other using any level of linguistic production or any feature of language. The recordings used for the study elicit a semiformal style that would normally account in Mérida for the use of tú.

In general, studies about ethnic identity have shown that the concepts of power and prestige may not be identical. Examples from Puerto Rico (López Morales 1993) show accommodation regarding age in the use of the T/V pronouns.

Attitudes in the Venezuelan Andes

Venezuela has been ruled centrally since the war of independence. One problem concerning the Andes is the fact of their closeness to Colombia. Andean people, especially those from Táchira, do not like to be considered Colombian (Obediente, 1998b). The central aristocracies have traditionally manifested disrespect over Andean people mostly for political reasons. There may be some resentment from the side of the Andean population against other regions of the country. However, this is not a popular feeling, because on the other hand, the Andes is very well known for tourism and for entertainment: the nation-wide known "ferias" from Mérida and Táchira. The Andes have given birth to very important Venezuelan writers and they have also one of the most prestigious universities of the country. The cities where this study was carried out are all locations of the University of Los Andes.

Dialectal differentiation has been established in Venezuela both in the intonational patterns (Mora, 1996) and in the segmental features (Obediente, 1998a). However, according to Obediente (1998a) the most accurate dialectal division is the prosodic one, since segmental features are not distinctive in every dialect and they disappear in most of the cases. The speech of the Andes is generally considered more careful, more formal, less loud, more paused and characterised by the use of usted as a unique pronoun, which even if used intimately gives a flavour of politeness to casual talk. Conversely, other varieties of Spanish used on the Venezuelan western and eastern coasts have overtones of informality and nonstandardness.

A study on language attitudes towards the dialect of the central region (Cañizales & Joven 1999) finds out that among interviewees of all Venezuelan regions, the central "voice" is considered more learned, intellectual and reflexive. Associating all five Venezuelan dialects (Andes, Centre, East, Llanos and Zulia) with different professions, the dialect of the Centre, that is the one from the capital, Caracas, was associated with university professors, psychiatrists, and members of higher social strata.

We erroneously hypothesised that there would be a great difference between what was considered as varieties of prestige and the variety of power. That is to say, that the dialect used in the capital city could well be considered the variety of power, but not that of prestige. According to what we had understood from informal conversations with elder people in all three Andean states, (Mérida, Táchira and Trujillo) we supposed that the central dialect of Caracas would be considered as a dialect of political power, but not of prestige. We thought that we might rather encounter a preference for the regional Andean norm, however, this was not the case.

About this study

This study was carried out in six secondary schools, of San Cristóbal (Táchira), Mérida (Mérida) and Trujillo (Trujillo State), in adolescents just before high school graduation. Two high schools, one public and one private in each of the cities, two classrooms in each school, with 25 students in each class.

Totally indirect studies keep speakers from knowing that their language attitudes are being investigated. This was a questionnaire with closed questions, based on that elaborated by Bentivoglio and Sedano (1997) for their study of language attitudes towards different Spanish dialectal varieties in Latin America and Spain. Their study focused on attitudes of citizens of Caracas and Madrid towards major varieties of Spanish of the Spanish speaking world. Different to Bentivoglio and Sedano’s, our questionnaire focuses on regional varieties of Venezuelan Spanish.

Our instrument was designed to measure language attitudes in the Venezuelan Andes. In the first of two sections we included six questions asking informants about their attitudes towards the seven different varieties we chose. The second section was based on reactions towards speech samples of seven men belonging to the different regions that represent the dialects of our country.

Dialects where chosen according to Mora (1996), who establishes five different dialectal zones, based on differences in the suprasegmentals. Her zones are Centro, Llanos, Zulia, Oriente and Andes. When constructing our questionnaire, we took Mora’s classification into account, but with one modification.

Instead of taking the Andes as one dialectal zone, we divided this region into three different dialect zones, one for each of its states, namely Táchira, Mérida and Trujillo dialects. In this way, the dialects we took into account when elaborating the questionnaire summed up to seven instead of Mora’s five: Centro, Zulia, Oriente, Llanos, Táchira, Mérida and Trujillo. The reason why we decided to make this change to Mora’s division was the nature of our universe of informants. Even though the rest of the country perceives the Andes dialect as a whole, people in this region are able to identify and establish differences between their way of speaking and that of the other two states.

Once these dialects were accounted for, a tape recording was prepared including the speech of seven different men representing each one of the dialects. Women voices were excluded from the recording so as to avoid interference of the gender factor. The chosen speech samples were put together on a five minute recording, which was presented to the informants as a part of the questionnaire1.

Results

This section presents the questions, the answers, and our comment concerning both questions and answers, in numerical order.

Question one: If intelligent life were found in Mars and you had the responsibility of choosing one person from our country to send a greeting, to which region would this person belong?

The sending of a message to the outer space could mean the choosing of the most representative variety of the language. That is to say, to paraphrase Bentivoglio and Sedano, the variety with sufficient attributes to represent us toward intelligent alien living things. Results showed regional loyalty in two of the three states. Only informants in Mérida prefer the central variety of the country instead of their own variety of Venezuelan Spanish.

Discussion

Our results are somewhat unexpected. We had prognosed that the language of power, that of the capital, may not exactly be the language of prestige in the Andean region. Older informants of the Andes may have negative attitudes towards people in the central region, including the capital. But although for previous generations in the Andean region the most prestigious variety of Venezuelan Spanish was their own variety, the results of our study show this tendency to be changing. The preference of the younger generation shows us where linguistic change is headed. Instead of preferring their own variety in all situations, in some - those related to a more public concern- informants show preference for the one spoken in the central region of the country, where political and economic power is concentrated.

However, the idea of change toward the central variety can be mitigated twofold. On the one hand, these results could be the result of age grading. In this first case the preference for the dialect of the capital may be considered as temporary; meaning that kids may be preferring the central dialect of the country during adolescent years and then move back to having a positive attitude towards their own way of speaking. Adolescents show this type of behaviour in many ways, and in Venezuela it is usually the case that youngsters have a special register during these years, close to a jargon. This is of course even more the case in Caracas, a city with a strong tendency towards fashion and consumer values.

To favour the dialect of the capital could also be interpreted as a problem of presentation of self. In this case, the preference for the prestige dialect may, according to Giles et al. (1991), bring about an increase in positive face. This may be the case if we consider that teachers may advocate the prestige dialect, that the setting of the questionnaire was where the school kids normally attend and also that the dialect of the Central region is the one mostly heard in radio and TV, and in many formal government settings.

A very interesting and somewhat new way of studying attitudes towards language is the communication accommodation theory (CAT). Our study was not carried out according to its methodology. However, its principles can explain some of the results obtained in this study. The idea that people accommodate each other in various ways and in one or the other level of language is very interesting. For example, speakers of a foreign language may preserve their intonation so as not to sound too proficient in the language, for identity reasons. In our case, youngsters may want to sound as liking the Central variety in some issues, but not in others, as is the case.

As we have seen, questions 1 and 2 concerning intelligence and likeability are ethnocentrically answered. Question 3 was answered negatively towards one region and question 4, the speaking about love question, seems to have been influenced by the media. Question 5, the dubbing question, may have been biased by the fact that dubbing is not a normal practice in the country. Again, the populating the country question received an ethnocentric answer. As for these questions, the Andean youth seems to favour their own dialects but for practices not common in Venezuela.

As Van Dijk (1998) has shown, ideology is a mechanism of belief closely related to language behaviour. Also, based on sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic considerations as community attitudes and proficiency, speakers select their discourse modes as well as the semantic/pragmatic messages they with to convey (Caron Myers Scotton in Coulmas 1998:224) The second part of the questionnaire shows low consciousness of their own dialectal varieties and also the idea that the Central variety is representative of the country. This has also to do with a tradition towards centralisation on the political and economic levels.

Conclusions

We studied the attitudes of adolescents in three Andean states in Venezuela towards their own dialects and that of other regions of the country. Our instrument was a questionnaire based on Bentivoglio and Sedano (1997) about attitudes toward various dialects of Spanish.

Youth in the Andean region appears to value their own variety of Spanish in some ways; the answers of those questions concerning intelligence and likeability reveal this. However, questions concerning foreign representation of the country show the low prestige of Andean dialects.

Results may be considered signs towards linguistic change. On the other hand age grading and insecurity in presentation of self may explain these tendencies as temporary trends closely related to adolescence.

REFERENCES

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Cañizales, Isaías and Joven Best, Carolina. (1999). Los dialectos del español de Venezuela: actitudes frente al dialecto de prestigio. Paper, unpublished. Mérida: ULA. Cátedra de Fonética y Fonología II.

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Obediente, E. (in press). La importancia de la toma de conciencia fonética en el aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera, ponencia en el IV Congreso Nacional de AVEPLEFE. Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, 11-13 de octubre de 1995.

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Notas en este documento.
[1] Elsa Mora herself facilitated the samples used to prepare the recording, for which we express our gratitude. Nevertheless, since in this research project the Andes dialect had been divided into three different dialects, Medina recorded the speech of two other men, one from San Cristóbal, Táchira and another one from Trujillo, capital of Trujillo state. No recording of Mérida was needed, because Mora has a sample of this dialect as representative of the Andes dialect