The corpus of the dissertation focuses on the border speech of the Artigas Department (Uruguay), considering both an urban setting (the city of Artigas itself) and a rural one (La Guayubira/La Estiba). The fieldwork was conducted solely by Bárbara Garrido Sánchez-Andrade. The corpus consists of audio material along with the corresponding transcriptions, totaling more than 230,000 words and approximately 24 hours of audio. All material has been anonymized. A specific methodology was applied: semi-structured interviews as well as free conversations. This means that each interviewed speaker also participated in a free conversation with another interviewee.
The final sample is distributed as follows: for the urban setting, the third generation includes individuals aged sixty and above, while the second generation comprises those aged thirty-four to fifty-nine. The total number of speakers in the urban sample is thirteen, consisting of five women and eight men. For the rural setting, the total is seventeen speakers, with nine women and eight men.
In the rural context, a later adjustment was necessary due to the lower number of younger individuals. As a result, the third generation includes speakers aged fifty-five and above, and the second generation includes those aged thirty-four to fifty-four.
The age distribution is not uniform across both settings because, in the urban area, the population density of speakers who use the Artigas variety and reside in the city of Artigas is lower than in the rural setting. Therefore, although the initial plan was to apply the same age distribution for both the urban and rural areas (i.e., using the urban criteria for both), this adjustment proved necessary. This modification also allowed for a more balanced distribution of speakers from the third and second generations in the rural sample. Had the same age ranges from the urban context been maintained for the rural setting, the result would have been six speakers (instead of nine) for the third generation and eleven speakers (instead of eight) for the second generation in the rural area. Given the difficulty in finding suitable speakers for the purposes of this research, this adjustment was considered important.
Regarding the urban speakers, it is worth noting that not all of them come from the city center of Artigas. In fact, six are from the suburban area. The decision to group both the urban and suburban areas together under the label “urban” was based on the following reasons: first, the number of speakers exhibiting the border variety within the city is relatively low; second, the geographic distance between the urban and suburban areas is minimal (in the case of the Ayuí and Cerro Ejido neighborhoods, the distance does not exceed four kilometers), and residents frequently travel between these areas and the city.
