Chapter 5. New parameters for the sociophonetic indexes 141
a. the perception of the sociophonetic features by the speakers can vary: for
some features, there can be no perception at all, whereas for others the percep-
tion can be very fine-grained. In other words, the degree of awareness is vari-
able, and can even be completely absent; in Silvestein’s terms, Second Order
Indexicality is not always present in sociophonetic indexes;
b. sociophonetic features can be more or less central in the phonological sys-
tem of a language. A marginal or central position occupied by the variation
connected with a specific feature has different effects on usage as well as on
language structure.
With regards to the last point, we believe that sociophonetic analysis cannot
entirely dispense with phonology, inasmuch phonetic variation occurring in a
community of speakers can adequately be described and interpreted only with
crucial reference to a shared phonological system. To stress the relation between
phonetic variation and the abstract level of phonological representation is unusual
within the framework of sociophonetics, which is normally focused on the behav-
ior of single speakers. On reverse, we would like to assume a system- more than a
speaker-oriented theoretical and methodological point of view.
Our proposal of new parameters in the analysis of sociophonetic indexes is
grounded on the acknowledgment that the variable forms in speech do not have:
(i) the same socio-cultural status; (ii) the same degree of speakers’ awareness;
(iii) the same domain, or scope.
Not always these three aspects are dealt with in sociophonetic analyses.
Sometimes the speakers’ awareness is missing, some others the scope is ignored;
very rarely, the phonological structure on the background of the phonetic varia-
tion is considered.
Our focus here is on sociophonetic variation occurring in the Tuscan region.
The typical phonological processes occurring in Tuscan Italian have already been
described in the literature produced within the traditional stream of dialectol-
ogy, which has a long-standing and distinguished tradition of studies in Italy (for
instance, see Giannelli 1976). Here, the main Tuscan processes will be discussed with
reference to a new model of sociophonetic variation which should allow us to better
enlighten their properties as well as their position within the phonological structure.
In particular, we would like to propose that phonetic cues expressing allo-
phonic variation can be described and classified according to a model referring
to the properties of the solids, such as shape, size, thickness and weight. These
properties can be very useful in the interpretation of the empirical phenomena
as well as in the recognition of their constraints, both distributional and socio-
cultural. Hopefully, they could also give relevant cues for a better explanation of
linguistic change.