Awareness and salience in language contact The case of Asturian Spanish

Awareness of a sociolinguistic variable and linguistic behavior are intricately connected, such that the former can influence speakers’ use particular variants. As result, exploring awareness salience as part variation is crucial to fully understanding choices speakers make in interaction social meaning variants they employ. In this article, I investigate how patterns production perception Asturian features might be explained by examining their cognitive salience, different levels observed communities which Spanish contact. After an analysis metalinguistic discourse on public media, article explores effect explicit perceptions gender morphemes /-u/ /-es/, well availability “ye” index interactional stances relates variant, its symbolism, control over use. show dimensions affect indexical fields these contact variants, allowing some become markers identity status, adopt styles, employed stance-marking units based needs.