Journal of Sociolinguistics 7/1, 2003: 38±49

RESEARCH NOTES

Perceptions of dialect in a changing

society: Folk linguistics along the
Texas-Mexico border

Glenn A. MartõÂnez
The University of Arizona

INTRODUCTION
Borderland speech communities present a number of relevant theoretical issues
for sociolinguistics. The most salient among them, in my opinion, is the relative
porousness of the nation-state boundary. While studies of language use
demonstrate that isoglosses bundle freely on either side of the dividing line,
studies of language perception suggest that a conceptual wedge converges on
the national border. Nowhere is this paradoxical state of a€airs more evident
than along the Texas-Mexico border. Researchers in the ®eld of quantitative
sociolinguistics have found many similarities between the Spanish dialects
spoken on the Mexican and the American sides of the national boundary.
GarcõÂa (1980), for instance, notes that the locative use of the preposition para,
as in Me voy para San Antonio `I'm going to San Antonio', is just as frequent in
Ciudad JuaÂrez, Mexico as it is in El Paso, Texas. Similarly, MartõÂnez (1996,
1997) signals a weakening in the use of subjunctive morphology in the border
city of Reynosa, Mexico that parallels the patterns observed in Mexican
American communities north of the border. The sharing of dialect features on
both sides of the dividing line, therefore, suggests that the border region is one
relatively homogeneous dialect area. Yet, even so, sociologists insist that the
perception of dialect is the single most important aspect of di€erentiation and
contention among mexicanos and Mexican Americans in Southern Texas and
Northern Mexico. Richardson (1999: 168), for instance, argues that `often the
reputation of being ``stuck up'' is occasioned by Mexicans who claim superiority
to Mexican Americans because of errors they perceive in local Spanish.'
Perceptions of `correct' and `incorrect' Spanish, moreover, are embedded
within the social construct of the nation-state border. One of Richardson's
interviewees clearly underscored this fact stating: `I can't understand why they
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PERCEPTIONS OF DIALECT IN A CHANGING SOCIETY 39

[Mexican Americans] want to speak this way. It makes them think they're
gringos. It also shows they've rejected their culture and language. I still live
here in the United States [in Las Milpas about a mile and a half north of the
border], but when I'm ready to raise a family, I'm going back to Mexico. I want
my kids raised in a Mexican environment and to feel proud of it' (1999: 168). In
this way, then, the borderland environment gives rise to a paradoxical state of
a€airs in which what seems to be a basically homogeneous dialect area is
interrupted by heterogeneous perceptions of dialect.
Perceptual dialectology (Niedzielski and Preston 2000; Preston 1989; Preston
and Long 1999; Williams, Garrett and Coupland 1996) seems to me to be a
viable model for the investigation of this intriguing aspect of border socio-
linguistics. An investigation of non-linguists' views of areal linguistics in the
borderlands can, in my opinion, shed light on: (1) the way in which border
residents construct dialect perceptions; and (2) the social values that underpin
these constructions. My investigation of perceptual dialectology along the
Texas-Mexico border assumes the axiomatic position that perceptions of dialect
are not inherent in the language itself but rather are mechanisms that converge
on the construction of social identity. In fact, I would argue that perceptions of
dialect are, in essence, nothing more than perceptions of people. Because of this,
speakers tend to build up their dialect identity in the same way that they
construct their social identity. Stuart Hall argues that `social identities are
constructed through, not outside of, di€erence. This entails the . . . recognition
that it is only through the relation to the ``other'', the relation to what it is not,
to precisely what it lacks, to what has been called its ``constitutive outside'' that
the ``positive'' meaning of any term ± and thus its identity ± can be constructed'
(cited in Vila 2000: 229). I would argue that dialect perceptions and social
perceptions are cut from the same mold. Speakers view their dialects as unique,
not based on the distinctive features perceived in their own speech, but rather in
terms of the di€erences perceived in neighboring dialects and peoples. What this
means is that dialect perceptions are, at their very core, socially motivated and
socially molded constructs. In the present paper, I will attempt to tease out the
social motivation of dialect perceptions and to show how changes in the social
structure mold these same perceptions.

Social change along the Texas-Mexico border

The Texas-Mexico borderland region is ripe with social change. Following
Richardson (1999), I conceive of the border as a unique environment that is
at the forefront of social transformation and renewal. Cultural historian Nestor
GarcõÂa Canclini (1989) described the border as a laboratory of postmodernism
where a constant stream of con¯ict and resolution gives rise to cultural
interaction and accommodation. My investigation of borderland folk linguistics
takes this cultural interaction and accommodation to be a central force in the
mental mapping of dialects.
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Figure 1: Map of the South Texas±Northeastern Mexico border region

Courtesy of the General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin. Available on-line at
The University of Texas at Austin Perry-CastanÄeda Map Collection
(http://www.utexas.edu/cia01.mexico_sm01.jpg)

While social change may very well be a de®ning characteristic of the border
region, the intensity and abruptness of it over the past decade outstrips
anything seen in the last one hundred years. The signing of NAFTA (The
North American Free Trade Agreement) in 1993 and its subsequent imple-
mentation between 1994 and 2000 have occasioned a series of social
transformations in cities all along the 2000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. These
transformations are clearly evident in the sister cities of McAllen, Texas and
Reynosa, Mexico. The McAllen-Reynosa borderplex lies on the Rio Grande River
some 80 miles west of the Gulf of Mexico and approximately 120 miles
northeast of Monterrey, Mexico. The major impact of NAFTA on theses cities
was the rapid proliferation of maquiladora plants during the 1990s. Maquiladoras
are factories that take full advantage of lower wages in developing nations.
Multinational corporations generally set up these factories along the U.S.-
Mexico border, send in raw materials for assembly, and then bring the ®nished
product back to the U.S. for distribution and marketing. Maquiladoras were ®rst
introduced in Mexican border towns in 1965 on the heels of the unilateral
dismantling of the Bracero Program. Most of the initial maquiladora ventures
were located in cities with appropriate infrastructures such as JuaÂrez and
Tijuana. In fact, by 1982 JuaÂrez and Tijuana combined boasted over 250
maquiladora plants employing approximately 50,000 workers. In that same year
Reynosa, the city under investigation in the present study, had only 17 plants

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PERCEPTIONS OF DIALECT IN A CHANGING SOCIETY 41

employing some 9,000 workers (Margulis and TuiraÂn 1986). By the year 2000,
however, this number had increased exponentially. Today Reynosa boasts over
170 plants, which employ well over 100,000 workers (McAllen Economic
Development Corporation 2001). The growth of the maquiladora industry in
Reynosa was made possible largely through the de-regulations caused by
NAFTA. Massive industrial growth has a€ected the city in numerous ways.
Demographically, the city has more than doubled in size swelling from 315,764
inhabitants in 1982 to nearly 750,000 in the year 2000 (MartõÂnez 1994: 43;
McAllen Economic Development Corporation 2001). The bulk of this increase is
due to in-migration from Southern States of Mexico such as Veracruz and San
Luis PotosõÂ.
Such explosive demographic growth has had both positive and negative
e€ects. On the positive side, it has resulted in a thriving economy in the region.
In McAllen, Reynosa's sister city in Texas, for instance, the gross retail sales for
1987 were 1.7 billion dollars. By the year 2000, however, gross retail sales had
quadrupled reaching a high of 4.9 billion dollars (Texas Comptroller of Public
Accounts 2001). On the negative side, explosive demographic growth, espe-
cially in the Mexican City of Reynosa, has led to a series of common problems
such as overcrowded neighborhoods, inadequate housing and congested road-
ways. Such symptomatic e€ects of demographic growth together with asym-
metric infrastructure growth, furthermore, have given rise to heated
contentions between established residents and newcomers in the city of
Reynosa. Many long time Reynosa residents express feelings of discontent
about the continual arrival of southerners. The friction generated by the
encounters between newcomers and old-timers seems to have resulted in a
growing antipathy and an exaggeration of stereotypes between nortenÄos `north-
erners' and surenÄos `southerners'. Such feelings have been reported in
ethnographic studies of similar communities along the Texas-Mexico border
(Vila 2000). In this way, economic and demographic change are having an
impact on certain cultural values that are embedded within the social identity of
borderland residents. These cultural values, I would argue, interface with
dialect perceptions. In short, my contention is that before the advent of social
change driven by NAFTA and the maquiladora industry, perceptions of dialect
were grounded in a set of cultural values that emphasized national identity.
After several years of intense industrialization and abrupt urbanization,
however, dialect perception has become more associated with a set of cultural
values that are anchored in a regionally-based identi®cation construct.

METHODOLOGY
In order to study dialect perceptions in Reynosa, I developed a Dialect
Perception Survey soliciting verbal scale responses from 73 individuals residing
in the city. To ensure that the sample was suciently representative of the city, I
approached four research assistants who lived in di€erent parts of the city and
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who did not know each other. I asked each research assistant to distribute the
survey to ®ve relatives, ®ve neighbors and ®ve workmates, and I queried the
same number of respondents myself. In this way, I was able to ensure that the
sample spread out evenly over multiple social networks within the city.
Dialect perceptions were gauged using two verbal scales: a likeness scale and
a pleasantness scale. The likeness scale was achieved by asking respondents to
identify those neighboring dialects that were judged to sound like their own. In
my instrument, I asked respondents to react to statements such as:
El acento del espanÄol hablado en Reynosa se parece al de McAllen.
The variety of Spanish spoken in Reynosa sounds like the one spoken in McAllen.
I asked the question using ®ve di€erent locales: one U.S. region (McAllen,
Texas), two Northern Mexican regions (Matamoros and Monterrey), and two
Southern Mexican regions (Mexico City and Veracruz). Respondents selected
the most appropriate answer from the following list:
Es cierto Tal vez No es cierto No seÂ
Yes Somewhat No Uncertain
If a respondent answered es cierto, I considered that he/she had established strong
likeness between the two dialects. A tal vez answer represented a weak likeness,
and a no es cierto answer indicated no likeness at all. No se answers were routinely
excluded from the analysis. The pleasantness scale, on the other hand, consisted
of asking respondents to judge a dialect based on its relative pleasantness or
unpleasantness. I presented respondents with a statement such as:
El espanÄol hablado en McAllen suena . . .
The Spanish spoken in McAllen sounds . . .
and they were then asked to choose one of four possible answers:
Bonito Regular Feo No seÂ
Pleasant Normal Ugly Uncertain
I used all of the locales previously mentioned, and I included Reynosa.
My survey also controlled for three social factors which are directly tied to
social change in the region: age, migration status and border crossing habits. I
identi®ed three age cohorts. The youngest group consisted of individuals from 15
to 25 years of age, the middle group of individuals from 26 to 40 years of age, and
the oldest group of respondents older than 41 years of age. The migration status
variable was based on the respondents' relative length of residence in the city.
Respondents who reported to have lived in the city for less than ten years were
considered `recent migrants.' Those who reported to have lived in the city for
more than ten years, were considered `established residents.' Border-crossing
habits were gauged on the basis of the relative frequency with which the
individual crosses the national border into the United States. It is commonplace
in the borderlands for individuals to reside in Mexico and work in the United
States and vice versa. Thus, some respondents crossed the border on a daily basis.
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PERCEPTIONS OF DIALECT IN A CHANGING SOCIETY 43

Others crossed less frequently to shop, visit relatives or purchase gasoline. Still
others crossed only occasionally on business or pleasure, and another group did
not cross at all, usually because they did not have the required immigration
papers to do so. I considered those crossing on a daily or weekly basis as `frequent
crossers' and those crossing less often as `infrequent crossers.'
The relationship between the three social factors analyzed and the social
changes taking place in the region follow from what I perceive to be a
fundamental re-alignment of identity construction along the Texas-Mexico
border. NAFTA and the demographic changes that it spawned over the past
decade have resulted in a shift from a nationally-anchored identity construct to
a more regionally-anchored one. This shift is borne out in the responses tallied
from the identity preference item on my questionnaire. I asked respondents
which term they preferred using to describe their origin: nortenÄo `Northerner',
fronterizo `Borderlander', reynosense `Reynosan', or mexicano `Mexican'. The
selection of a regional (reynosense, nortenÄo, fronterizo) or national (mexicano)
term, moreover, patterned along the three social variables analyzed. In general,
I noted that respondents who were younger, who had lived in the city over a
substantial number of years, and who crossed the national border on a regular
basis were more likely to take up a regional identi®cation frame as opposed to a
national one. My analysis of dialect perceptions will show how these three social
factors together with the regionally-oriented cultural values that they re¯ect
interfaced with changing perceptions of the borderland dialect area.
The composition of the sample patterned evenly. Women comprised 49.3
percent of the total sample and men made up 50.7 percent. The youngest group
accounted for 30.1 percent of the total sample, the middle group accounted for
45.2 percent, and the oldest group accounted for 24.6 percent. The majority of
respondents reported having lived in Reynosa for over ten years, however.
Indeed, 73.9 percent of respondents were established residents and only
26.1 percent were recent migrants. Border crossing habits, on the other hand,
were fairly well distributed across the sample: 43.8 percent of the sample were
considered to be frequent crossers and 56.2 percent were considered to be
infrequent crossers. Identi®cation preferences patterned in favor of a national
label given that those claiming a regional identi®cation term (fronterizo, nortenÄo,
reynosense) accounted for only 39.7 percent of the sample and those claiming a
national identi®cation term (mexicano) made up 60.3 percent.

RESULTS
The results of the likeness scale technique indicated that, in general, respon-
dents perceived the dialects of Reynosa and Matamoros as sounding alike.
Respondents tended to view the dialects of Monterrey and McAllen, on the other
hand, as sounding less like the dialect of Reynosa. In fact, half of the
respondents said that Reynosa Spanish did not sound like either of the two
dialects. The perceptual disparity of dialects from Southern Mexico was even
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greater. Over 90 percent of the respondents categorically rejected the statement

that the Reynosa dialect sounds like the dialects of Veracruz and Mexico City.
The results of the pleasantness scales, on the other hand, revealed that
53.4 percent of the respondents viewed the Reynosa dialect as pleasant
sounding. The dialects spoken in the Northern Mexican cities of Matamoros
and Monterrey were also largely perceived as either pleasant or normal
sounding. The McAllen dialect, however, seemed to have been perceived as
less pleasant; 21.9 percent of the respondents reported that the dialect sounded
ugly. The Southern Mexican dialects of Mexico City and Veracruz, furthermore,
were perceived as altogether unpleasant where over 50 percent of respondents
reported that the dialects sounded ugly.
Together, the results of the likeness and pleasantness scales suggest that
Reynosa residents perceived dialects in patterned fashion where the following
tendencies emerged:

1. The dialects that were judged to sound most like the Reynosa dialect and to
be most pleasant were those that were geographically closer to Reynosa and
that were on the Mexican side of the border.
2. The dialects that were judged to sound least like the Reynosa and to be ugly-
sounding were those that were furthest away from Reynosa but that were
still within the national boundaries.
3. The dialects spoken in a geographically proximate region but on the opposite
side of the national boundary were viewed as mildly pleasant and as
sounding somewhat like the Reynosa dialect.

Table 1: Likeness and pleasantness scales for ®ve regions (%)

Likeness Yes Somewhat No

Reynosa Spanish sounds like . . . % % %

Matamoros 49.3 32.9 5.5

Monterrey 17.8 17.8 54.8
McAllen 13.7 23.3 53.4
Mexico City 0.0 1.4 90.4
Veracruz 0.0 0.0 93.2

Pleasantness Pleasant Normal Ugly

The Spanish there sounds . . . % % %

Reynosa 53.4 35.6 4.1

Matamoros 24.7 61.6 5.5
Monterrey 21.9 61.6 8.2
McAllen 13.7 52.1 21.9
Mexico City 9.6 35.6 50.7
Veracruz 8.2 27.4 50.7

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PERCEPTIONS OF DIALECT IN A CHANGING SOCIETY 45

These three tendencies ¯esh out two guiding assumptions in the mental
mapping of dialects among border residents: physical distance and national
boundaries. I will demonstrate in the ensuing discussion that there is a
perceptual change underway in Reynosa. I will argue, however, that the
change does not consist of any drastic alteration to these two basic assumptions
but rather appears to involve more of a re-con®guration of the two. In other
words, while a nationally-based identity construct tends to privilege the
assumption of national boundaries as the strongest parameter of a dialect
area, a regionally-based identity construct subordinates the assumption of
national boundaries and privileges the assumption of physical distance.

The social distribution of dialect perceptions

The re-con®guration of grounding assumptions in the perception of dialects
along the Texas-Mexico border can be gauged from the distribution of the
responses to the likeness and pleasantness items in this survey. As demonstrated
in Tables 2 and 3, the data indicate that the respondents who were most
entrenched in social change and therefore most likely to take up a regionally-
anchored identity construct over a nationally-anchored one were: (1) less likely
to deny that McAllen Spanish sounds like Reynosa Spanish; and (2) more likely
to judge the McAllen dialect as sounding `ugly.' On the surface, then, it would
appear that Reynosa residents are increasingly taking up a novel view of
dialectal unity between the Spanish of Reynosa and McAllen, yet even while
espousing this unifying view, they still view some aspects of the dialect as `ugly'
sounding. Further investigation of the data at hand, however, will reveal that
these apparently opposing views are actually bound together in a uniform
change towards a more homogeneous and ameliorated perception of the
borderlands dialect area.
As seen in Table 2, respondents who reported crossing the border more

Table 2: Likeness scales between Reynosa and McAllen by border crossing,

migration status and age (%)

Reynosa Spanish sounds Yes Somewhat No

like McAllen Spanish % % %

Border crossing Frequent 20 30 50

Infrequent 0 9 79
Migration status Est. resident 12 26 50
Recent migrant 18 12 62
Age Younger 4 31 45
Middle 21 12 60
Older 0 30 70

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Table 3: Pleasantness scales for McAllen Spanish by border crossing,

migration status and age (%)

Pleasant Normal Ugly

McAllen Spanish sounds . . . % % %

Border crossing Frequent 15 58 27

Infrequent 18 62 18
Migration status Est. resident 12 58 30
Recent migrant 28 65 7
Age Younger 21 63 16
Middle 18 66 22
Older 16 44 39

frequently were more likely to perceive greater similarities between the dialects
of Reynosa and McAllen. This is surely to be expected given the fact that
individuals who cross the border regularly have greater opportunities to
interact with McAllen Spanish speakers. Surprisingly, even though infrequent
crossers have less opportunity to interact with speakers of the McAllen dialect,
they were not at all likely to suspend judgment on this particular question. In
fact, only 12 percent of infrequent crossers responded No se `I don't know' to
this question. The majority (79%) categorically rejected the claim that McAllen
Spanish sounds like Reynosa Spanish. Thus, it is entirely possible to infer from
these data that those speakers for whom the national border is part of a daily
routine are increasingly diminishing its importance in their perceptions of
dialect. The pleasantness data, however, militate against this interpretation.
The data in Table 3 show that even though frequent crossers were less likely to
deny similarities between the dialects, they were more likely than infrequent
crossers to judge the dialect as ugly sounding. So, even though the immediacy of
the national border in the day to day lives of frequent crossers seemed to
attenuate the degree of di€erence perceived between the two dialects, it did not
seem to a€ect the aesthetic evaluation of the slight di€erences that were
perceived.
Recent migrants displayed a very di€erent pattern of perceptions from
established residents. Table 2 shows that recent migrants, like infrequent
border crossers, were more likely to respond that McAllen Spanish does not
sound like Reynosa Spanish. These data suggest that the fact of living along the
border for a sustained period of time may a€ect the perception of McAllen
Spanish independently of border crossing habits. Much like that which was
reported among frequent border crossers, however, established residents also
displayed a divergent pattern with respect to their responses on the pleasantness
scales. As shown in Table 3, established residents were more likely than recent
migrants to judge the McAllen dialect as ugly sounding. Thus, I would argue
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PERCEPTIONS OF DIALECT IN A CHANGING SOCIETY 47

that while established residents were beginning to perceive lesser degrees of

dialect di€erence, they were still separating the minute di€erences along well-
de®ned aesthetic lines.
The distribution by age, however, turned up a uniform distribution of
perceptual variation displaying at once: (1) a recognition of the similarities
between Reynosa and McAllen Spanish; and (2) an amelioration of the aesthetic
qualities associated with the McAllen dialect. In Table 2 we observe a stepwise
increase in the frequencies of respondents claiming that Reynosa Spanish does
not sound like McAllen Spanish. The younger speakers were least likely to deny
the similarity and the older speakers were most likely to deny it. The same
stepwise increase is found in Table 3 where younger speakers were least likely to
judge the McAllen dialect as ugly sounding and older speakers were most likely
to judge it as ugly sounding. So, the age variable shows that the younger
generation was not only viewing greater degrees of similarity between the
McAllen and Reynosa dialects, it was also blurring the negative linguistic
stereotypes associated with the dialect spoken on the U.S. side of the border. This
perceptual change has, in e€ect, led to a re-con®guration of some of the
grounding assumptions in the formation of dialect perceptions. While the
older generation viewed the McAllen dialect as a peripheral variety akin to
other remote dialects such as those spoken in Mexico City and Veracruz, the
younger generation appeared to have incorporated the McAllen dialect into a
more uni®ed borderlands dialect area. In this way, the younger generation has
begun to privilege the assumption of physical distance over and above the
assumption of national boundaries.

CONCLUSION
The data in this study are suggestive of the inextricable link between social
identities and dialect perceptions. As suggested at the beginning of these
remarks, I contend that dialect perceptions are couched in notions of ethnic,
political and territorial boundaries. Boundaries, however, are constantly
challenged and re-con®gured in the borderland environment. The situation of
`constant con¯ict and resolution,' that GarcõÂa Canclini so eloquently described,
introduces a great deal of variation within the social identities and the dialect
perceptions of borderlanders. The data in this study clearly ¯eshed out this
variation: while some Reynosa respondents viewed the national boundary as
the strongest parameter of dialect perception, others viewed physical distance as
a stronger parameter thus diminishing the e€ect of the national border. A closer
look at this variation, I argued above, was capable of uncovering patterns of
perceptual change in the borderland environment.
My data showed that the younger generation displayed markedly di€erent
perceptions of McAllen Spanish. They were not only more likely to view a
greater degree of likeness between McAllen Spanish and their own, they were
also less likely to report that the McAllen dialect sounded ugly. The combination
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48 MARTIÂNEZ

of these two factors suggests that the younger generation is at the forefront of a
perceptual change in Reynosa. I would argue that this same group is also at the
forefront of social change in the city. The younger generation has most
forcefully felt the e€ects of the explosive demographic growth in the city. It is
this group that was coming of age and entering the workforce in tandem with
intense industrialization and abrupt urbanization over the past decade. The
older group was basically well established at the onset of social change. Thus, it
makes sense that younger residents would be the most aggressive in seeking out
new ways of reinforcing their position within the city polity. One piece of
cultural capital that this group seized upon in the process of reinforcement was
language. By building up a more regionally based anchor of linguistic identity,
they were able to conceptually exclude surenÄo newcomers from participation in
city polity. Yet even while attempting to secure a strong ethnolinguistic identity
in the face of extensive social change, younger speakers have also become more
inclusive of their long standing constitutive outside, the Mexican American.
They are, thus, increasingly diminishing the importance of the national border
in the construction of dialect perceptions resulting in the formation of one,
basically homogenous, borderlands dialect area. In this way, the old paradox of
convergent dialects and divergent perceptions is slowly fading away along the
Texas±Mexico border.

REFERENCES
GarcõÂa, Maryellen. 1980. The Promotion of a Semantic Change in the Spanish of El Paso-
JuaÂrez. Los Alamitos, California: National Center for Bilingual Research.
GarcõÂa Canclini, Nestor. 1989. Culturas hõÂbridas: Estrategias para entrar y salir de la
modernidad. Mexico: Grijalbo.
McAllen Economic Development Corporation. 2001. http://www.medc.org
Margulis, Mario and Rodolfo TuiraÂn. 1986. Desarrollo y poblacioÂn en la frontera norte: El
caso de Reynosa. Mexico: El Colegio de MeÂxico.
MartõÂnez, Glenn. 1996. Sobre la variacioÂn linguÈÂõstica en la frontera norte de MeÂxico. Masters
thesis. Houston, Texas: The University of Houston.
MartõÂnez, Glenn. 1997. Language variation in a borderland environment. RõÂo Bravo: A
Journal of Borderlands 7: 1±16.
MartõÂnez, Oscar. 1994. Border People. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Niedzielski, Nancy and Dennis Preston. 2000. Folk Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Preston, Dennis. 1989. Perceptual Dialectology. Dordrecht: Foris.
Preston, Dennis and Daniel Long (eds.). 1999. Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology
(Volume 1). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Richardson, Chad. 1999. Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados: Class and Culture on the South
Texas Border. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. 2001. Quarterly Sales Tax Report: McAllen,
Edinburg, Mission MSA-Retail Trade. http://www.cpa.state.tx

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PERCEPTIONS OF DIALECT IN A CHANGING SOCIETY 49

Vila, Pablo. 2000. Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders: Social Categories, Metaphors, and
Narrative Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Williams, Angie, Peter Garrett and Nikolas Coupland. 1996. Perceptual dialectology,
folklinguistics, and regional stereotypes: Teachers' perceptions of variation in Welsh
English. Multilingua 15: 171±199.

Address correspondence to:

Glenn A. MartõÂnez
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
P.O. Box 210067
University of Arizona
Tucson
Arizona 85721
U.S.A.
glenmtz@email.arizona.edu

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