On Catalan as a minority language: The case of Catalan laterals in Barcelonan Spanish

This investigation examines the variable production of alveolar laterals in Barcelonan Spanish as a case study evidencing the effects of language contact between a majority language, Spanish, and a minority language, Catalan. The Catalan-Spanish speech community constitutes a rather unique case of majority-minority language contact, particularly within the Spanish-speaking world, as Catalan, though a minority language in Spain, is characterized by such a high degree of linguistic vitality, linguistic capital, and social prestige in the autonomous region of Catalonia that its status as a minority language is to a degree, questionable. I account for sociophonetic variability in the production of Barcelonan Spanish /l/ by a set of linguistic (phonological context, cognate status) and social factors (gender, age, style, language dominance) that support an analysis of lateral velarization as contact-induced and situate this case of language contact as a natural or otherwise predictable outcome of this community's sociolinguistic and sociodemographic history, notably concerning changes in immigration patterns, language ideologies, and language use in the last century. Additionally, I highlight how the gradient nature of select sociophonetic variables uniquely conditions nuanced social indexation in the speech community, specifically in the absence of any one singular or discrete, community-wide acoustic variant.