Chapter 5. New parameters for the sociophonetic indexes 161
descriptive parameters; they belong to the linguistic system more than to the
speaker-listener of a speech community. On the other hand, thickness refers to
the speaker’s behavior, whereas weight makes crucial reference to the listener
and to social evaluation.
Focusing on the perceptive corner of sociolinguistic variation, listeners may
give different evaluations of the same sociophonetic index. Differences are ulti-
mately based on diatopic variation: in order to assign a value for the parameter of
weight, the origin of the listener is crucial. With reference to the Tuscan socio-
phonetic processes we have discussed so far, there are at least two kinds of lis-
teners, i.e. Tuscan listeners and non-Tuscan listeners, with subsequent potential
differences in the evaluation of the same variable. Therefore, the perception as
well as the sociolinguistic evaluation of phonetic indexes may be different and
even opposite in the same country. For instance, gorgia toscana has a light value
of weight not only for Tuscan listeners, but also for people speaking a Central
or Southern variety of Italian. In parallel, the process is becoming heavier for
Northern listeners, who could even consider the gorgia as a Tuscan stereotype,
then negatively judged. A partly similar picture can be obtained for s-affrication:
many varieties of Centre-South of Italy share this process with Tuscany, whereas
Northern varieties lack it. Therefore, the perception and the consequent social
evaluation may be different: [+light] in the first case, [+heavy] in the second one.
A parameter seems still to be necessary in the model, which can describe the
effects of sociophonetic indexes on the phonological system. Some aspects of this
topic are captured by size, inasmuch as it makes reference to the number of seg-
ments enrolled by the process. However, as we already have underlined (see §6),
the impact of sociophonetic variation on the phonological structure has to be con-
sidered too. In this respect, s-affrication is particularly revealing. S-affrication has
a very small size facing with a strong structural relevance, because of its impact
on the phonological competence of the speakers. Among the processes we have
considered, s-affrication is actually the only one showing a remarkable phonologi-
cal relevance, thus enlightening possible scenarios for linguistic change.
As a final remark, we would like to observe the rather stable production of the
vocalic segments with respect to the high variability shown by the consonants in
Tuscan varieties. Of the seven phonological processes considered, only one strictly
involves vowels (i.e. apocope), another refers to a syllable unit (oxytone infini-
tives), whereas the remaining five have a consonant as target. All processes but RF
are weakening processes. Therefore, the phenomena investigated can ultimately
be interpreted in the light of a general articulatory strategy, a special ‘manner of
speaking’ typical of Tuscan speakers. This special speech quality appears to be
crucially marked by the feature of laxing (Marotta 2001/2004).