Sociolinguistic Artifacts

Alejandra Baez, a young Puerto/Rican Boricuan woman, gives an overview of four different regional Puerto Rican accents: Bayamon y Carolina, Guaynabo, Manati, and Condado (an upper class neighbourhood in San Juan). The accents are fascinating to watch, but even more interesting in the things being indexed. For the Bayamon and Carolina accent, Alejandra wears a baseball cap, slouches, and talks in rapid-fire Spanish about a woman (her grandmother?) that she can't stand, to the point of violence; for Guaynabo, she rolls her eyes, twirls her hair, and talks about a girl she met who was (in english) "super cool", mentioning the use of "daddy's credit card"; the Manati accent is a story about a car getting stuck in the mud due to a huge pothole in the road; and the Condado "accent" is in "Valley Girl English", where she derides the use of Spanish in Puerto Rico. The phonological variation of the four accents is paired with the presentation of four stereotypes of the people who speak them: tough, streetwise, low-SES urban puerto ricans; valley girl/fresa puerto ricans; rural farming puerto ricans; and rich, americanized puerto ricans. In the complex and tense social landscape of Puerto Rico, mired in the stresses and stressors of being an active colony, social class can oscillate in many different directions along urban/rural, high-income/low-income, coastal/inland, mountain/valley, and african/indigenous/americanophile/hispanophile lines. Fun fact: my accent is closest to Manati Spanish, but doesn't quite align with any of them! [Published on 05-22-2021]