PERFORMING ANDALUSIAN IN POLITICAL SPEECH: POLITICAL PARTY AND SOCIOPHONETIC PATTERNS ACROSS PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION

Abstract

I examine Peninsular Spanish politicians’ use of performative style, a sociolinguistic variable permitting identity formation, using a sociophonetic approach. While all speakers style-shift between prestige and non-prestige variants, politicians in particular use language both to reflect social position and to appeal to voters. Using quantitative and qualitative methodologies, I examine variation in Andalusian and Madrid Spanish, determine how style-shifting occurs at the individual level, and consider how Andalusian voters perceive political speech. Using a composite approaches, I determine that speakers’ use of linguistic resources differs by political affiliation and gender. Stage one of the analysis tracks how 32 peninsular politicians produce ten regional phenomena associated with Andalusian Spanish. While geographic and linguistic factors condition variation, additional social factors including speaker gender, political party, interlocutor gender, and age also explain variation. In Stage two, politicians were examined using Lectal Focusing in Interaction, tracking regional variation and style-shifting over time. Liberal politicians used moments of regional peaks as a means of emphasizing working-class solidarity, while conservatives used regionalisms more performatively to convey southern and friendly indexical meaning. Finally, the perceptual instrument in stage three showed how Seville listeners applied different criteria to community and political speech, evaluating regional variants positively, and associating them with female liberal and male conservative voices. The composite results suggest the rising populism in Spain is leading to a change, whereby conservative voices produce more Andalusian features than liberals, and young listeners associate ix regional speech with the political right. Meanwhile, female politicians navigate a web of indexical meaning, avoiding the stigma of overly vernacular speech while using regionalisms to craft unique identity. While there is an automaticity to the unmarked register of political speech that follows pre-established norms and expectations, politicians can also agentively sidestep them at times to perform identity work. This finding deepens our understanding of political discourse and Andalusian Spanish, presenting a methodology for in-depth examination of a speech community. This dissertation offers a means of generalizing beyond geographical and linguistic contexts, offering insight into stance accumulation and the connection between perception and production.