The characterisation of characters through phonetics in two Cuban television series
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/loquens.2026.e130Keywords:
phonetics, sociolinguistics, indexicality, television, Cuban SpanishAbstract
We explore phonetics as a characterising element in fictional audiovisual narrative, specifically in the Cuban television series Blanco y negro ¡no! (1994) and Calendario (2022-2024). Both series, almost thirty years apart, focus on the school and family life of teenagers and young people, and feature characters belonging to different social categories. Quantitative analysis of colloquial and prestigious phonetic features used to characterise the characters according to sociolinguistic variables allows us to identify which features are more strongly associated to certain social categories in Cuban Spanish. The diachronic perspective shows how or whether the sociolinguistic indexicality of these features has varied over these past three decades.
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