Sociopragmatic pronouns in Limburgian: inferring speakers’ agency from self-reported automaticity, attitudes, and metalinguistic awareness

How much of everyday language use takes place on autopilot, how much are speakers aware of, and how do their attitudes relate to this? In particular, how do these factors together account for variation between speakers? Limburgian, a regional language within the Netherlands, is under pressure from Dutch in an intensive language contact situation. The use of a non-feminine subject pronoun for women is a Limburgian feature which is not shared with Dutch. Limburgian speakers show a large range of variation regarding this feature, both when it comes to its use, and how it is perceived. By studying speakers' self-reports of three concepts - automaticity, attitudes, and metalinguistic awareness - as well as how these together relate to self-reported language use (<i>N</i> = 405), this paper investigates to what extent speakers have control over their own language use. Our findings suggest that self-reported automaticity is the driving force in the use of the non-feminine pronoun, but also that this autopilot may be curbed by metalinguistic awareness and attitudes. Importantly, speakers vary considerably on all three concepts, highlighting once more that language users are not a monolith, and that individual speakers may react differently in a language contact situation.