Perceptual Categorization of Dialect Variation in Spanish

Paper presented at the 11th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, November 1-4, 2007, University of Texas at San Antonio.The present paper explores perceptual categorization of dialect variation in two groups of Spanish speakers from Latin America and Spain. We expand our knowledge of how listeners perceptually categorize different Hispanic dialects, as well as explore the role that linguistic experience and familiarity with a certain dialect play in this process. Twelve talkers, 6 males and 6 females, from six different Hispanic countries (Spain, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico) were selected from the oral corpus Catalogue of Spanish Sounds. The results revealed that contact (e.g., family and friends) has a positive effect on dialect recognition, while experience (e.g., travel) does not show a clear pattern for all groups. Regular contact with other dialects contributes to the encoding and retention in memory of information, which helps listeners to relate different speakers to where they are from