Who says ejque?

Abstract This paper examines language attitudes of 386 participants from all regions of Spain toward a phonetic variant used in the Madrid area, velarized coda /s/. Results show that velarized /s/ aids in the identification of a Madrid origin and, moreover, that velarized /s/ speakers are considered lower status, less pleasant, less confident, more of a tough-guy, less desirable as friends, less compatible with the listener and worse storytellers. Nearly all of these traits interact with listener gender in which women show the strongest variable effect. In addition, ethnocentrism is found to play a role in listener judgments, irrespective of the coda /s/ variant used.