Coherence in a levelled variety: the case of Andalusian.

Abstract

This paper addresses three different but related issues regarding linguistic coherence within urban levelled varieties (Cerruti and Tsiplakou 2020). First, whether the status of all the linguistic features of a variety is the same or should we accept the idea of a single salient feature functioning as a nuclear variable with the rest of the variables pivoting around it. Second, to what extent ongoing changes in the social meaning of a single variable affect coherence of the whole variety. Third, how macrosocial, meso-social and small-scale variables jointly work in developing a coherent variety made up of features from different dialects. Based on a series of results from previous studies on Andalusian, we show that the speakers’ activity of combining linguistic resources for indexical purposes, does not always result in the unstructured mixtures of features characterising ‘bricolage’ practices. The same activity may lead instead to the development of coherent language varieties.