Creaky Voice in Chilean Spanish: A Tool for Organizing Discourse and Invoking Alignment

This study relies on an interactional, conversational–analytic approach to elucidate what meanings Chilean Spanish speakers convey via creaky voice quality in informal conversations. Highly utterances produced by 18 were derived from a larger corpus of sociolinguistic interview speech Santiago, Chile, and examined interactional that accounted for how figured the process meaning-making meaning negotiations throughout conversation. Results indicate approximately 40% highly used organize speaker’s discourse, signaling end turns, hedges or uncertainty, change communicative purpose, while majority invoke alignment with listener ensuring their messages stances understood potentially endorsed. offers evidence non-English language as tool both discursive organization alignment.