Variacionismo y adquisición de una segunda lengua: estudio de una comunidad francófona

Abstract

Since Labov's pionner work in New York, sociolinguistic research has developed theoretical models and an extended methodology to study quantitatively language variation and change in monolingual and multilingual speech communities. It seems obvious that second language acquisition (SLA) contexts offer a specific source of variability which has been studying with different models. However, the last sociolinguistics and specially its variationist approach provides a valuable base for analyzing variation in SLA. By the other hand, it would be interesting to find out the role played by Universal Grammar in the SLA process. Our analysis of the phonological variable (s), through application of variable rule model, in a francophone speech community studying Spanish as a second language in the Lycée Français at Alicante, represents a variationist approach in the study of a SLA context. When analyzing quantitative data in the stylistic variation among adolescent speakers groups, the probabilistic rates indicated that older speakers, between 14 and 17 (.601) and a stay of more than five years in Spain (.752) were the independent factors which favored the rule application for interdental variant in the formal reading style of words list. A formal and educational context where attention is more often paid to prestige features in reading or writing tasks rather than on conversational ones accounts for the reading style score (.587) obtained in our analysis of SLA process of the Lycée Français francophone students.