Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides insight to the interplay between socioeconomic groups, educational and linguistic norms, and the perception of non-standardized forms of Spanish. It presents a valuable resource for researchers and doctoral students in Hispanic sociolinguistics and other subfields such as phonetics, phonology, and morphosyntax as it may contribute to new ideas for future research. The book examines the social evaluations of two traditional Andalusian features and compares them to two supra-local Castilian features while evaluating the social motivation for ongoing dialect leveling in syllable-onset position in Andalusian Spanish. It also presents articles that focus on topics of regional language variation and change. The book also examines another sociolinguistic situation on the island of Hispaniola: the connection between linguistic perceptions and language ideologies in the case of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic.