Chapter 10: The Perception-Production Connection /tʃ/ Deaffrication and Rhotic Assibilation in Chihuahua Spanish. 1 * Natalia Mazzaro & Raquel González de Anda University of Texas at El Paso Abstract This study investigates the perception and production of two sociophonetic variables of Chihuahua Spanish: rhotic assibilation ([r]), a change from above associated with women and higher classes, and deaffrication of the voiceless post-alveolar affricate ([ʃ]), a change from below associated with men and lower social classes. Thirty-three native Spanish speakers from Chihuahua completed a production task to establish whether they produced [r] or [ʃ] and a discrimination task to determine if they were able to perceive these variants. Results show that while production rates were similar for [r] and [ʃ], listeners had greater metalinguistic awareness of [ʃ], resulting in a closer production- perception relationship for this variant. We conclude that the perception and production of phonetic variants are correlated in variable-specific ways that depend crucially on a combination of linguistic and social factors, including phonological context, frequency, and social salience to the speech community. 1. Introduction Studies of sociolinguistic perception suggest that speakers assign different social attributes to standard and non-standard speech sounds (Campbell-Kibler, 2009; Casillas, 2013; Chappell, 2016; Jewell, 1993; Labov, 1972; Niedzielski, 1999; Plichta & Preston, 2005). However, for a variant to reflect such distinctions, the variant needs to be produced and it also needs to be recognized (Fridland & Kendall, 2012). Such a connection between speaker production and speaker linguistic perception has not been well established. Studies that look at the connection between production and perception, generally focus on sociolinguistic perception, 1 The authors wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor of the volume for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. We are also thankful to Martin Lazzari and Dr. Whitney Chappell for their help with the statistical analysis of the data. Errors and omissions are entirely our responsibility. * The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Recent Advances in the Study of Spanish Sociophonetic Perception Edited by Whitney Chappell [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 21] 2019: pp. 288–311, published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. Definitive version accessible at https://benjamins.com/catalog/ihll.21 . The current version is identical to the definitive version save for pagination.