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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT. This investigation of native speakers' attitudes toward the use of Spanish by non-native speakers considers the following questions: Do native speakers consider the public use of Spanish by non-native speakers to be inappropriate? Do Latino non-native speakers provoke a more favorable response? Do native speakers believe Latinos have an obligation to know Spanish? What factors correlate with native and heritage speakers' attitudes toward ethnicity and language choice? Data were collected via a questionnaire distributed to students at post-secondary institutions in ten states. The findings provide insights into the attitudes of native and heritage speakers, a rapidly growing population in the language classroom. The data also contribute to discussion of a larger issue: heritage-speaker criticism of the public use of Spanish by non-native speakers as a form of cultural appropriation.*
INTRODUCTION. (1) In recent years there have been multiple opportunities to observe reactions to the use of Spanish in the public domain, not only during the last presidential campaign but also in the world of popular music. When considering non-native speakers of Spanish, different standards are often applied to Latinos and non-Latinos. One often hears that Latinos should learn and use the language, and non-Latinos should stick to English. Thus, Christina Aguilera is criticized for not being able to speak Spanish (2), while George W. Bush and others are admonished to 'Stop speaking so much Spanish and give me more substance' (Ostrom & Thomma 2000). Even though politics and entertainment are two different spheres of activity, the fact remains that non-native speakers provoke different reactions depending on their ethnicity.
A word in regard to the labels NATIVE SPEAKER and NON-NATIVE SPEAKER is in order. In the case of the foregoing statement that non-native speakers provoke different reactions according to their ethnicity, the terms are based on traditional standards of language competence and order of acquisition, however problematic those criteria may be. In other parts of this paper, however, while not totally discarding the competence-based definitions, the terms NATIVE SPEAKER and NONNATIVE SPEAKER are intended to be more or less synonymous with IN-GROUP and OUT-GROUP MEMBER. An in-group member for the present purposes is a person who acquires the native-speaker label by way of inheritance in the sense employed by Rampton (1995:342): 'Inheritance occurs within social boundaries, while affiliation takes place across them'. Non-Latinos who learn Spanish have a connection to the language by affiliation, whereas Latinos with various degrees of proficiency in Spanish have a connection by inheritance.
(1.) LANGUAGE ATTITUDES. A comprehensive review of language attitude research is outside the scope of this paper. (3) Previous research on native-speaker reactions to non-native speakers, which is the topic of this study, has focused on what types of errors in non-native speech are acceptable of unacceptable to native speakers and what factors in the listeners' backgrounds may influence their response to non-native speech (Galloway 1980, Ludwig 1982, Gynan 1985a,b, Schairer 1992, Llurda 1995). Research on language attitudes in relation to Spanish in the United States has focused on Latinos' and Anglos' attitudes toward non-standard varieties of Spanish in comparison to standard Spanish, Chicano English, and standard English (Carranza & Ryan 1975, Zerda Flores & Hopper 1975, Ryan & Carranza 1977, Ramirez, Milk & Sapiens 1983). Such information has great relevance for the field of language pedagogy, and the current project also has implications for language teaching in that it provides insights into the attitudes of a rapidly growing population in the language classroom: native and heritage Spanish speakers. Of central concern to this study are the latter group's attitudes toward the use of Spanish--the very act of speaking Spanish--by non-native speakers and what influence the ethnicity of the non-native speaker may have on the listener's attitude.
Language attitude research with a pedagogical focus has grouped learners' motivations into instrumental and integrative (Gardner & Lambert 1959, 1972). Some researchers have shown integrative motivation to correlate with more successful outcomes in second language acquisition while others have pointed out the limitations of this dichotomy (Ely 1986, Baker 1992:35, Bialystok & Hakuta 1994:139). We can acknowledge that motivations assigned to these two categories have some overlap, and we treat them more as a continuum. Of interest to the present study is whether the acquisition of Spanish for an instrumental motive, such as a politician who uses it to address a Hispanic constituency or a musician who records an album in Spanish to profit from the popularity of Latin music, will be viewed more or less favorably by respondents who rate their own reasons for maintaining their Spanish more toward the integrative or instrumental end of the scale. Of interest also is the role that ethnicity plays in this matter. There are Latino as well as non-Latino public figures who learn Spanish for instrumental reasons. For example, when the actor Erik Estrada crossed over from English-language media into Spanish-language television, starring in the Mexican telenovela Dos mujeres, un camino, he took an intensive course in Spanish at Berlitz (Prodigy 1997). Bill Simon, Anglo candidate for governor of California in 2002, ran commercials on Spanish-language television and radio, taking private lessons in Spanish to prepare (Kurtzman 2002). In the present study, we are concerned to discover whether a respondent who strongly agrees with the statement that 'Knowing Spanish is important to me because it will increase my earning power and help me achieve a higher professional status' will be more sympathetic to such uses by public figures, even those who are not Hispanic.
(2.) LANGUAGE AND ETHNICITY. Ethnicity is difficult to define and in fact has no absolute measurement. Ethnic membership can depend on a combination of ascribed and achieved characteristics. What constitutes these characteristics is subjective and may be non-consensual (Fishman 1997:329). It can be based solely or collectively on race, language, national origin, or religious or cultural affiliation. In the case of Latinos, one or various of these criteria may contribute to an individual's self-classification.
In the present study, ethnic identity turned out to be an important independent variable. On the questionnaire it was left open-ended, so that respondents could acknowledge all groups of which they considered themselves to be members as well as to elicit their own labels for those groups. On the role of language in ethnic membership, Giles and Johnson (1981:236) say:
... members of an ethnic group will alter their linguistic and non-linguistic boundaries ... so as to maintain or to assume a high level of overall perceived boundary hardness. For example, if an ethnic group softens its linguistic boundaries because the group for economic reasons needs to communicate with another ethnic group, the members may harden their non-linguistic boundaries ... Alternatively, if an ethnic group senses that its non-linguistic boundaries are softening, and for example, members are being lost through intermarriage, then the group may attempt to harden its linguistic boundaries in an effort to counteract this trend.
(3.) ETHNIC DISTINCTIVENESS. Hispanic ethnicity bestows the non-native speaker with a right to participate in spheres of Latino influence. A customer reviewing Christina Aguilera's Spanish language album, Mi Reflejo, remarks 'Since Aguilera had Venezuelan [sic; other sources cite Ecuadorian] heritage, recording a Latin pop album was appropriate, even if she didn't know how to speak the language'. (4) However, others criticize the singer for her lack of proficiency in Spanish and her ethnic inauthenticity and accuse her of trying to take advantage of the popularity of Latin music. (5) Compare this to Brazilian actress Sonia Braga's remarks that 'she was bothered by the fact that [Jennifer] Lopez is labeled a Latino'. According to Braga, 'she [Lopez] is not Latino, because she was born in New York, grew up in the Bronx, and was educated in the United States, speaking English' (Rodas 2002:26).
Reactions are mixed when those speaking Spanish are neither native speakers nor Latino. There seems to be more acceptance of non-Latino, non-native speakers in popular music than in politics. The band 'N Sync's singing in Spanish on the 2001 Latin Grammy awards program was praised by one commentator: 'With NSYNC's popularity this had to raise the status of Spanish in the eyes [of] both Hispanic's and non-Hispanic youth. The positive message sent by NSYNC's performance will do much to raise the self-esteem and create positive perceptions of Hispanic youth among themselves and their peers' (Aragon Ulibarr- 2000). However, others criticized the group's appearance on a program intended to celebrate Latinos' achievements: 'Tambien participar el grupo 'N Sync, quienes, al no ser Latinos, no tienen otra razon aparte de su relacion con los Estefan para estar presentes' (Colon 2000). (6)
(4.) LANGUAGE AND OWNERSHIP: MINORITY LANGUAGE ASA WE-CODE. On the first episode of the science fiction television show Enterprise (rebroadcast January 13, 2002, UPN), the character of the ship's translator, a young woman named Hoshi Sato, expresses gratitude to another young woman, ship science officer T'Pol, in Vulcan, T'Pol's native language. Officer T'Pol answers curtly, 'I was instructed to speak English on this mission, and I'd appreciate it if you would respect that'. Toward the end of the two-hour episode, after the two women have gone through a team-building experience, T'Pol signals solidarity with Hoshi by addressing her in Vulcan. I cite a television show not to trivialize this issue but to demonstrate how it forms part of popular culture and, thus, is a part of a collective social frame of reference.
The use of code switching into a minority language as a technique to signal ethnic identity has been well documented (Gumperz & Hernandez-Chavez 1975:154, Gumperz 1982:72, Sanchez 1983, Blommaert 1992:67). The native speaker has a stake in controlling availability of the minority language because of what it can symbolize: admission to an in-group, or at least acceptance of a nonnative speaker's use of the code that represents such admission. Examples of this have been reported across various language pairs in which one of the pair is identified with speakers of a certain ethnicity. Woolard (1989) comments at length on Catalan-speakers' unwillingness to use Catalan with non-native speakers, and Weyers (1999) reports on Spanish as an ethnic marker in El Paso, Texas. Hewitt (1982), Rampton (1995, 1998), and Sebba and Wootton (1998) examine the interaction between adolescent speakers of British Black English...
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