Doing being <italic>boricua</italic>: Perceptions of national identity and the sociolinguistic distribution of liquid variables in Puerto Rican Spanish.

This dissertation examines patterns of phonological variation in two Puerto Rican (PR) communities with different kinds of language contact situations. It compares a community where Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS) is the only language spoken by most of the population (Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico) with a community where PRS is a minority language (Grand Rapids, Michigan). I describe the sociolinguistic distribution of (rr), (r), and (l)---, focusing on their stigmatized realizations: velarization ([x]), lateralization ([l]), and rhotacization ([[turned j]]), respectively. Besides the contributions of linguistic context, life stage and gender, I explore whether the degree of integration into the PR community of the 22 informants on the Island and the 20 participants on the mainland offers explanatory insight to differences between the communities in terms of the variables' distribution. I consider the speakers' perceptions of national identity---based on the meanings and uses of the word boricua, typically associated with core Puerto Ricanness---and I explore whether those judgements relate to the use of [x], [l] and [[turned j]] in the two communities. The general distribution of (rr) was very similar in the two populations, and that was also the case for (l), but the samples contrasted in the distribution of (r). Although the main realizations of (rr) and (r) were strongly conditioned by linguistic environments in the two communities, differences were found in their social conditioning. Variable (l) did not show meaningful sociolinguistic variability in either location. As regards (rr) and (r), the following patterns emerged in both communities: women favored the prescribed variants ([r] and [[turned j]]); middle-age speakers favored the stigmatized realizations; men favored [[turned j]], the innovative variant of (rr); and women and adolescents favored [[turned r]], the non-prescribed, non-stigmatized variant of (r). Differences in the level of integration into the PR community did not influence the sociolinguistic distribution of (rr), but had an effect on the distribution of (r). Also, speakers related [x] and [l] to the linguistic projection of core Puerto Ricanness, and I associate the preference of a different variant to describe typical boricua speech in each location with differences in the demographic composition of the communities.Ph.D.Language, Literature and LinguisticsLinguisticsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/126976/2/3287649.pd