Suprasegmental cues and intra-dialectal hierarchies: evidence from northeast mandarin

This research investigates intra-dialectal hierarchies within Northeastern Mandarin, focusing on the Shenyang and Jinzhou dialects, two closely related varieties in Liaoning province, China. The segmental features of these dialects are largely comparable; however, their suprasegmental characteristics, especially the intonation patterns in interrogatives, demonstrate considerable divergence. This enables us to examine how listeners utilize prosodic cues for both recognition and social assessment. The study, which involved recordings of speech, perception tests, and attitude surveys with ninety individuals from both local and non-local backgrounds, reveals a paradox: individuals struggle to accurately identify dialect origins through suprasegmental features, yet consistently evaluate Shenyang speech more favorably, indicating its status as the regional standard. This "misrecognition paradox" asserts that suprasegmental cues can sustain symbolic hierarchies even in the absence of accurate recognition, thus clarifying the implicit mechanisms that contribute to linguistic inequality. The results enhance sociophonetics and sociolinguistics by demonstrating how prosodic features facilitate intra-dialectal stratification and perpetuate social hierarchies beyond overt language classification.