252 Gitte Kristiansen
the results worsened for the two oldest age groups. We suspect that lack of
a clear reference point may well have contributed to hindering identifica-
tion in age groups where lectal schemas in general have become more de-
veloped.
4.3. Frequency of distinctive features as an objective distance
If neither linguistic contractiveness nor exclusiveness can explain the dif-
ferences in the results, would frequency of occurrence of distinctive fea-
tures then play a role? Hearing a socially distinctive feature just a few times
in a short fragment might yield vaguer results than if a feature is repeated
many times. To account for this possibility we counted the distinctive lin-
guistic features that occurred more than twice in the fragments. As can be
seen in Table 24, however, the number of high frequency distinctive fea-
tures is not a very helpful dimension. It is far from the case that the accents
with the most high frequency features are identified first. If the knowledge
is there, hearing just a few features a few times seems to be enough for the
match between linguistic stereotype and social category to take place.
Table 24. Number of high frequency features
Distinctive
featuresExclusive
featuresFrequent
featuresLinguistic
awarenessSocial
awareness
Andalucía 4 1 2
Galicia 3 1 2
Canarias 4 1 2
Argentina 3 1 1
Mexico 2 1 1
France 4 1 3
Germany 3 0 3
Br. Eng. 4 1 3
Am. Eng. 3 1 3