Chapter 6. Sound archives and linguistic variation 175
variation, and can be summarized in the following question: if factors like age, edu-
cation, occupation, family culture, and group culture coincide, then why is it the case
that speakers can, and do, exhibit a wide range of linguistic behaviors?
Different answers have been put forward – including the impact of such fac-
tors as social ambition or local culture loyalty. The social network model and the
level of interaction between the speakers within the network have recently been
brought in. Nevertheless, these answers cannot satisfy the wide range of varia-
tion inside a peer group. A sound archive centered on spontaneous speech and
including adequately long texts allows the study of the levels of heterogeneity and
oscillation in relation to the differences in the speaker’s level of linguistic automa-
tism and consciousness. Heterogeneity and textual oscillations are expressions of
the high polymorphism characterizing many phenomena of the area, especially
diphthongization, as will be shown in §3 and §4.
- Phlegraean diphthongs
Sound materials are collected in the Phlegrean area, along the Neapolitan Coast
(the area of Naples and the Gulf of Pozzuoli, together with the islands of Capri,
Procida, Ischia): from a linguistic point of view, this area is intriguing for sev-
eral reasons. First of all, it appears to be a single physical reality, characterized
by territorial homogeneity. But the geographic criterion clearly does not suffice
to determine the linguistic interest of a territory. Also history contributes to the
uniqueness of this area, which is culturally less connected to Naples than to the
areas of Vesuvius and Sorrento. Actually, the Phlegrean territories seem to have
somewhat resisted the dynamics of ‘neapolitization’ affecting the whole Campania
region and vast areas of Southern Italy. Speakers from the islands and Pozzuoli
alternate complete adherence to ‘Neapolitan’ norms and features and absolute loy-
alty to local characteristics/traits. It should also be remembered that understand-
ing the periphery helps understand the center; therefore, a better understanding
of the Phlegrean area will help to understand the complex dialectal variability of
Naples, a city extremely rich in linguistic variation, which has not been explored
from the sociophonetic point of view.
The dialect of the Gulf of Pozzuoli, and those of the islands of Procida and
Ischia, are characterized by a context-dependent alternation between monoph-
thongs and diphthongs. This phenomenon is very pervasive, because it involves
four vocalic variables – (i), (e), (o), (u) – and is not limited by syllable structure.^3
- The properties of the syllabic environment of the diphthongs of Pozzuoli have been recently
studied by Abete (2011).