Levelling mechanisms in a university environment: the Gorgia Toscana in Florentine subjects studying in Bologna

Abstract

The study observes the spirantization of intervocalic stops in Florentine subjects who have studied in Bologna compared to their Florentine colleagues who have studied in their hometown. The aim is to observe if moving for studying reasons made Florentine speakers' level their most known trait: the Gorgia Toscana (GT). The research investigates which linguistic and sociolinguistic factors influence levelling in a university context, considering gender, social networks, phoneme involved, lexical stress and prosodic accent. To understand if levelling in a university environment is the same as in a work migration context, we compared the results with a previous study on Florentine workers living in Bologna. The results show that living in a different town made our Florentine subjects produce lower percentages of spirantized allophones, thus it seems that they leveled GT. Levelling seems to be an unconscious process as salience and other linguistic factors don't show any effect. Sociolinguistic factors, in contrast, seem to strongly affect levelling which can be different in a university or a working migration environment.