“Carioca speaks bi[s]coito?”: an evaluation study on the alveolar and post-alveolar variants in the speech community of Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

Production studies show that, regardless of age, sex, education and social class, the coda(s) is mostly performed in the Carioca variety as a post-alveolar fricative, and the other variants (alveolar fricative, velar/ glottal fricative and absence of the coda) are produced at very low percentages. This paper addresses the social evaluation of the alveolar and post-alveolar variants of coda(s) in the speech community of Rio de Janeiro, taking the hypothesis that the alveolar variant of coda(s) could be evaluated by speakers from Rio de Janeiro as prestigious, while the realization of the post-alveolar fricative does not receive any stigma or prestige. To do this, an evaluation experiment, using the matched guise technique, was applied to 43 young university students from the speech community of Rio de Janeiro. Regarding the post-alveolar variant, the results followed the trend already pointed out by Melo (2022), that is, that neither prestige nor stigma is attributed to this variant. Regarding the alveolar variant, participants attributed a certain degree of prestige to this variant, with the number of items – two per sentence – being decisive for the attribution of this prestige. It is argued that the prestige attributed to the alveolar variant may be related to the evaluation of Carioca speech both by speakers of other varieties and by Cariocas themselves, which is why it would be better evaluated in a context of greater monitoring. We hope that future studies with other social groups can advance the analysis of the social meanings of the coda(s) variants, especially with regard to the frequency of the variants.