Papers by Víctor Fernández-Mallat
Open Linguistics
In this article, we provide further evidence that Bogotá Spanish is transitioning from being an e... more In this article, we provide further evidence that Bogotá Spanish is transitioning from being an extensively usted-using variety into one in which tú is preferred in informal interaction by analyzing survey data through a quantitative approach, and metalinguistic commentary through a qualitative approach. Our data show that tú is mainly thought of as a productive way to convey proximity. At the same time, our data show that, despite this change in second person preference, usted and sumercé persist in familiar address, albeit at rates considerably lower than tú. Usted is particularly frequent among males in same-gender dyads because it allows them to avoid the possible connotations of effeminacy that tú may have in that specific context. Sumercé is frequently selected in addressing older relatives and individuals from the countryside because it is seen as being capable of conveying respect and affection simultaneously. Moreover, sumercé is seen as a sign of local identity capable of ...
Languages, 2025
In this article, I underscore the value of nuanced, speaker-focused approaches to dialect contact... more In this article, I underscore the value of nuanced, speaker-focused approaches to dialect contact, which both complement and extend community-based perspectives. I pursue this goal through two main strategies. First, I use a mixed-methods approach that integrates diverse sources of contextualized conversational data alongside spontaneous metalinguistic commentary. This broadens the traditional reliance on one-on-one sociolinguistic interviews, in which the regional backgrounds of both interviewees and interviewers are often left uncontrolled. Second, I use an interpretative framework that accounts for individuals’ metalinguistic awareness and examines how this awareness influences their positioning within distinct membership categories. Such positioning is evident in language practices, ranging from accommodation to interlocutors’ speech patterns to the retention of regional variation patterns. The analysis centers on the speech of five individuals in a Spanish dialect contact setting in Anglo-America, using their linguistic behavior as a lens to address broader theoretical and methodological questions in the field.
Lengua y Sociedad, 2025
Tanto en el español de Medellín como en el de Santiago, las formas de tratamiento voseantes y tut... more Tanto en el español de Medellín como en el de Santiago, las formas de tratamiento voseantes y tuteantes reflejan una estratificación sociolingüística influenciada por factores como el estatus social y el género. Para investigar qué rasgos sociales están asociados con estas variantes y determinar si estas asociaciones son consistentes en términos de procesamiento y relevancia en ambas ciudades, se llevó a cabo un experimento con 100 participantes de Medellín y 131 de Santiago, utilizando la técnica imitativa. Tras escuchar cuatro grabaciones, cada una con tres instancias de voseo o tuteo, los participantes evaluaron a los hablantes en diversas escalas de características sociales. El análisis estadístico de 5544 evaluaciones mostró que el tuteo obtiene puntuaciones más altas en recursos, educación, agradabilidad y simpatía, además de ser percibido como menos heteronormativo que el voseo. Sin embargo, se observaron diferencias significativas entre Medellín y Santiago en el procesamiento y la relevancia de estas características. Estos resultados sugieren que, al atribuir significado social a las variantes del habla, las personas consideran tanto el contexto general como el particular.
Spanish in Context, 2024
This study uses an innovative contextualized translation task method and a quantitative variation... more This study uses an innovative contextualized translation task method and a quantitative variationist approach to offer an integrated look at second person singular address forms in Chilean Spanish, a Latin American variety with a tripartite address system that includes tuteo, ustedeo, and voseo forms. Results reveal that ustedeo has remained largely unaffected by recent changes in Chile's address system and that this system's main alternation is between tuteo and voseo, which function as competing variants. Results also provide further evidence that the documented shift towards a preference for voseo forms over tuteo forms in familiar address is led by members of the younger generation, especially men, and has the Central Region of the country as its epicenter. Finally, results suggest that, notwithstanding the shift from tuteo to voseo, the latter is unlikely to completely oust the former from Chile's address system due to both linguistic and social reasons.
Open Linguistics, 2023
In this article, we provide further evidence that Bogotá Spanish is transitioning from being an e... more In this article, we provide further evidence that Bogotá Spanish is transitioning from being an extensively usted-using variety into one in which tú is preferred in informal interaction by analyzing survey data through a quantitative approach, and metalinguistic commentary through a qualitative approach. Our data show that tú is mainly thought of as a productive way to convey proximity. At the same time, our data show that, despite this change in second person preference, usted and sumercé persist in familiar address, albeit at rates considerably lower than tú. Usted is particularly frequent among males in same-gender dyads because it allows them to avoid the possible connotations of effeminacy that tú may have in that specific context. Sumercé is frequently selected in addressing older relatives and individuals from the countryside because it is seen as being capable of conveying respect and affection simultaneously. Moreover, sumercé is seen as a sign of local identity capable of distinguishing Bogotá Spanish from other national varieties with vos, which is marginal in our data. Our findings are best seen through the proposal that address forms may gain specific meanings within their particular context of use, despite having more conventional meanings attached to them.
El español de los Andes: estrategias cognitivas en interacciones situadas
Lincom eBooks, 2012
A new look at language choice and accommodation in U.S. Spanish-English bilingual service encounters
Intercultural Pragmatics
The study of service encounters in bilingual communities offers opportunities to gain insight int... more The study of service encounters in bilingual communities offers opportunities to gain insight into the factors that influence language choice and accommodation in these interactions and the ways that language may be used to build community. Previous work on bilingual service encounters has found that age, gender, speech turn, and customer ethnicity may all contribute to service providers’ choice of one language over another. This study reexamines language choice and accommodation in Spanish-English service encounters by observing the language use of 96 service providers in 35 Latino-owned restaurants of the Washington metropolitan area. Using data from service encounters between bilingual service providers and Latino and white customers, we explore the extent to which the factors identified in previous studies are relevant in this region. Additionally, we explore whether the increasingly polarized political climate in the United States has impacted language use. We argue that while ...
Intercultural Pragmatics, 2023
The study of service encounters in bilingual communities offers opportunities to gain insight int... more The study of service encounters in bilingual communities offers opportunities to gain insight into the factors that influence language choice and accommodation in these interactions and the ways that language may be used to build community. Previous work on bilingual service encounters has found that age, gender, speech turn, and customer ethnicity may all contribute to service providers’ choice of one language over another. This study reexamines language choice and accommodation in Spanish-English service encounters by observing the language use of 96 service providers in 35 Latino-owned restaurants of the Washington metropolitan area. Using data from service encounters between bilingual service providers and Latino and white customers, we explore the extent to which the factors identified in previous studies are relevant in this region. Additionally, we explore whether the increasingly polarized political climate in the U.S. has impacted language use. We argue that while customer ethnicity is the main deciding factor to start an interaction, service providers always accommodate to customer language subsequently. This demonstrates the importance of both language as a community builder – even in the face of social pressures which sanction the use of Spanish in public spaces – and the power differential that exists between workers and customers in determining language use.
Journal of Language Contact, 2022
This study uses an innovative translation task method to explore second person singular (2PS) add... more This study uses an innovative translation task method to explore second person singular (2PS) address patterns in New York City Spanish (NYCS), a new dialect that formed in contact with English and among multiple dialects of Spanish. Results reveal more continuity than disruption in address choice with source varieties of Spanish, unlike some other diasporic language communities that show radical simplification in address systems. However, there was acceleration of trends found in most Spanishspeaking regions with greater use of the familiar tuteo variant over the formal ustedeo in apparent time. Our findings also point to spending adolescence in NYC as a key predictor of conformity to NYCS patterns. This finding contrasts with studies of formal features in new dialect formation that have found middle childhood to be when conformity to local patterns mostly occurs.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language
Two concurrent discourses on the presence of non-national languages such as Spanish and its speak... more Two concurrent discourses on the presence of non-national languages such as Spanish and its speakers circulate in Switzerland’s public sphere: one that conceives this presence positively and another that considers it negatively. Following a multimodal discursive-interactive approach, in this study I seek to determine which of these discourses is reproduced in the individual, private accounts of five Swiss nationals. My results show that these individuals echo both of the readily available dominant discourses, meaning that they construct contrasting attitudes related to said presence, regardless of whether these attitudes are deployed as part of their own set of beliefs or that of other Swiss nationals like them. These results build on prior research that shows that the private attitudes of individuals are often strongly affected by various elements of the situational context (e.g., dominant discourses, the immediate surroundings, etc.) and, as a consequence of this, variable by natu...
Boletín de Filología, 2018
It is widely accepted that in oral exchanges with, for example, family members, friends, and co-w... more It is widely accepted that in oral exchanges with, for example, family members, friends, and co-workers, speakers of Chilean Spanish alternate between verbal tuteo and verbal voseo. In this paper, drawing on a corpus of conversational interactions between relatives and friends from Santiago, I examine the relative frequency with which these speakers use verbal voseo in relation to verbal tuteo, and I explore the social and linguistic factors that determine the variation, paying particular attention to the parameters that affect the use of verbal voseo. In addition, I compare the distributions observed here with those observed in previous studies that base their analyses on corpora that contain less natural communicative contexts. The results indicate that, in spontaneous conversational interactions, the speakers use verbal voseo with a frequency much greater than the frequency with which they use verbal tuteo as well as the frequencies observed in previous studies. This, and the fact that verbal voseo is conditioned by an interaction between the gender and the age of the speakers, as well as by the specificity of their interlocutors, shows that speakers of Chilean Spanish born in Santiago assign covert prestige to verbal voseo.
Representaciones sociomentales de hablantes del español chileno en la ciudad de Concepción: un estudio de caso usando la técnica imitativa
En este artículo, analizo el devenir de rasgos lingüísticos no indexados socialmente en el habla ... more En este artículo, analizo el devenir de rasgos lingüísticos no indexados socialmente en el habla de migrantes de los Andes bolivianos que han elegido domicilio en el norte de Chile. Con base en estudios previos, pongo a prueba la hipótesis según la cual este tipo de rasgos no se desplaza tan fácilmente como pueden serlo aquellos rasgos que sí son salientes y marcados socialmente en la percepción de los hablantes. Utilizando datos lingüísticos obtenidos en entrevistas sociolingüísticas, muestro que, en función de su naturaleza lingüística, el uso de rasgos lingüísticos no indexados socialmente puede ya sea mantenerse de manera prácticamente intacta, o desplazarse abruptamente. Estos resultados son relevantes para los estudios de corte sociolingüístico que examinan los resultados del contacto dialectal, dado que refinan sus supuestos teóricos. Palabras claves: migración, contacto dialectal, percepción sociolingüística de los hablantes, mantenimiento y desplazamiento de rasgos, español andino boliviano, español chileno. The maintenance and shift of socially unindexed linguistic features: the case of Bolivian migrants from the Andes in northern Chile. In this study, I examine the progression of socially unindexed linguistic features in the speech of migrants from the Bolivian Andes who have chosen to live in northern Chile. Based on previous studies, I test the hypothesis that unindexed features are not as easily given up as features that are salient and socially indexed in speakers' perception. Using linguistic data obtained through sociolinguistic interviews, I show that, depending on their linguistic nature, socially unindexed linguistic features can either be maintained practically intact or abruptly given up. These results are relevant for sociolinguistic stu-33
Due to rapid development in mobile communication technology in recent years, the demand for high ... more Due to rapid development in mobile communication technology in recent years, the demand for high quality and high capacity networks with thorough coverage has become a major necessity. Several models have been developed for predicting wireless signal coverage in urban areas, but these models suffer from inadequately calculating certain conditions, such as weather and building materials, especially window size. In this paper, we propose a new path loss prediction model based on the measurement of new indicators, such as window size, temperature, and humidity conditions, after which an extensive statistical analysis using a linear regression technique was implemented in order to validate the new indicators. As the new indicators were incorporated into the Okumura model to derive a new path loss model, the results showed that the proposed model provides an accurate prediction of the received signal strength in a given propagation environment. Our model enhanced the prediction of path loss by 10% when compared to the Okumura and by 15% when compared to the COST-Hata.
Una propuesta analítico-conversacional para el estudio de las actitudes hacia las señales del paisaje lingüístico
Resumen Basándome en datos naturales, en este estudio contribuyo al ámbito metodológico de los es... more Resumen Basándome en datos naturales, en este estudio contribuyo al ámbito metodológico de los estudios que se interesan por la manera en que las personas interactúan con las señales del paisaje lingüístico que las rodea. Mientras que en estudios previos se han desarrollado e implementado métodos para suscitar que las personas expresen sus actitudes, en el presente desarrollo e implemento una propuesta para analizarlas. Para efectos de ilustrar su implementación, tomo como estudio de caso las actitudes que migrantes de habla hispana radicados en Basilea – una ciudad de tradición germánica – expresan ante la presencia del español en el paisaje lingüístico de su lugar de acogida.
Linguistic Landscapes and Educational Spaces
The educational turn in linguistic and semiotic landscapes studies is advanced through this volum... more The educational turn in linguistic and semiotic landscapes studies is advanced through this volume’s broad and detailed analyses. Empirical examinations of interconnections among language, signs, space and practices combine with action research on mobilising linguistic landscapes as pedagogical resources to address scholars and practitioners alike.
VISITAS al PATIO, 2018
En los discursos político y popular suizos, las poblaciones migrantes suelen ser concebidas como ... more En los discursos político y popular suizos, las poblaciones migrantes suelen ser concebidas como un sector demográfico que se integra difícilmente a la llamada sociedad local, tanto lingüística como culturalmente. En este estudio, con base en los autorretratos lingüístico-culturales de siete hablantes bilingües del español, muestro que tales discursos no reflejan las maneras en las que estas personas conciben sus prácticas idiomático-culturales cotidianas. Más bien, las prácticas que describen ponen de relieve que han desarrollado habilidades bilingües y biculturales sin par que les permiten, entre otras cosas, dar relevancia a ciertos aspectos de los repertorios lingüísticos e identidades culturales propios en función de elementos contextuales. Estas observaciones se alinean con estudios previos que, con base en datos censales y discursivos, muestran que el desarrollo de tales habilidades no se limita a la población migrante de la segunda generación; también se observan destrezas s...
Open Linguistics, 2021
Few studies to date have considered the agency of readers in reinterpreting the cultural, histori... more Few studies to date have considered the agency of readers in reinterpreting the cultural, historical, political, and social background of the linguistic landscape (LL; visible language in public space) and the ways in which individual and collective identities are discursively conceptualised through the LL. In this article, we present results from a study involving participants from three self-described sociolinguistic identities (Francophone, Anglophone, and Bilingual), reading signs found in the LL of Montreal. Using photographic prompts, we questioned participants about the probable location of signs, their languages, and the languages’ placement on monolingual (French or English) and bilingual (French–English) signs emanating from both governmental and private entities. Further discussions about their emotive responses to the signs presented and the possible responses of “others” reveal the relative degrees of importance attached to these linguistic elements in constructing, neg...
Spanish across Domains in the United States, 2020
Orogenic belts formed by collision are impressive manifestations of plate tectonics. Observations... more Orogenic belts formed by collision are impressive manifestations of plate tectonics. Observations from orogenic belts, like the Western Alps, indicate an important involvement of the mantle lithosphere, significant burial and exhumation of continental and oceanic crustal rocks and the importance of the plate interface strength that can be modified, for example, by the presence of serpentinites. A popular model for the formation of such belts is the so-called orogenic wedge model. However, most wedge models consider crustal deformation only and do, hence, not consider subduction, the impact of related buoyancy forces arising from density differences between subducted crust and surrounding mantle and the effects of different plate interface strength. Here, we quantify the relative importance of buoyancy and shear forces in building collisional orogenic wedges. We leverage two-dimensional (2D) petrological-thermomechanical numerical simulations of a long-term (ca. 170 Myr) lithosphere deformation cycle involving subsequent hyperextension, cooling, convergence, subduction and collision. We compare simulations employing density fields calculated with linearized equations of state with simulations employing density fields calculated by phase equilibria models including metamorphic reactions. Further, we consider serpentinisation of the mantle material, exhumed in the hyperextended basin. Our models show that differences in density structure and in shear strength of serpentinites or upper crust have a strong impact on the evolution of orogenic wedges. Higher serpentinite strength causes a dominance of shear over buoyancy forces, resulting in either thrust-sheet dominated orogenic wedges, involving some diapiric exhumation at their base, or relamination of crustal material below the overriding plate. Lower serpentinite strength (equal importance of shear and buoyancy forces) generates orogenic wedges that are dominated by diapiric or channel-flow exhumation. Deep subduction (>80 km) and subsequent surface exhumation of continental crust along the subduction interface occurs in these models. Employing phase equilibria density models decreases the average buoyancy contrasts, allows for deeper subduction of continental crust and reduces the average topography of the wedge by several kilometers. A decrease of upper crustal shear strength causes smaller maximal crustal burial depths. Progressive subduction of continental crust increases upward-directed buoyancy forces of the growing wedge and in turn increases horizontal driving forces. These driving forces eventually reach magnitudes (≈18 TN m −1) which were required to initiate subduction during convergence. We suggest that the evolving relation between shear and buoyancy forces and the increase of horizontal driving force related to the growing Alpine orogenic wedge has significantly slowed down (or "choked") subduction of the European plate below the Adriatic one between 35 and 25 Ma. This buoyancy-related "choking" could have caused the reorganization of plate motion and the 1
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Papers by Víctor Fernández-Mallat