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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT. Over 800 Latino high school and college students in Chicago, Illinois, reported via a written questionnaire that they used Spanish 75% or more of the time with their parents and other adults in the family. However, Spanish use with siblings, friends, cousins, and their own children averaged just 45% and was negatively correlated with length of residence in the U.S. This combined with overall low levels of daily Spanish use point to a language shift to English. The factors that appear to hold back a complete shift to English include positive attitudes toward Spanish, allegiance to Spanish-language music artists, reported high levels of Spanish proficiency, and the recontact opportunities offered by the influx of young Spanish-speaking immigrants to Chicago.*
INTRODUCTION. The Hispanic population in the U.S. grew 58% between 1990 and 2000, climbing from 22.4 million to 35.3 million (U.S. Census Bureau 2000). Since approximately 40% of this population was born in Latin America, the nation's increasing number of Latinos is due in part to new immigration from Spanish-speaking countries. However, members of the second and third generations constitute the other 60% of U.S. Latinos, and most of these individuals have learned English: Overall 51% of U.S. Hispanics claimed to speak English 'very well.' Given that high proficiency in English has been found to correlate to less extensive use of Spanish (Bills, Hudson & Hernandez-Chavez 2000) and the general tendency for heritage languages in the U.S. to cease being spoken by the third generation, continued examination of Spanish language maintenance is useful.
The majority of Spanish maintenance research in the United States has taken place in the Southwest, New York, and Miami. Floyd's (1985) review of eight Southwest language use surveys published between 1970 and 1984 found evidence of language shift from Spanish to English, particularly among younger speakers. More recent studies in the Southwest have also found evidence of Spanish loss and shift to English (Bills, Hernandez-Chavez & Hudson 1995, Bernal Enriquez 2000, Bills, Hudson & Hernandez-Chavez 2000, Rivera-Mills 2001). Silva-Corvalan's (1996) data indicate that third generation Spanish speakers in Los Angeles have considerably reduced Spanish verbal systems, which undoubtedly has important effects on language transmission and change. Although Hidalgo (1993) concluded that among students in a Mexican border high school, 'the values and functions of Spanish have not been dislocated but have only been minimized' (65-6), the majority of evidence from the Southwest points to language shift to English.
New York and Miami have also seen a good deal of Spanish maintenance research. Among Puerto Ricans in New York City, Zentella (1997) and Pedraza (1985) found a definite shift to English, but one that was accompanied by domains in which Spanish was preferred (such as child-rearing), a high degree of loyalty to Spanish, and a concept of Latino identity that did not require Spanish proficiency. Garcia, Evangelista, Martinez, Disla, and Paulino (1988) found that Dominicans in two New York neighborhoods reported using significant amounts of Spanish (between 84-98%) with siblings and parents, and only slightly less (between 66-72%) with children and friends. The middle-class group used more English in public than the working-class group, which the authors attributed to the need for linguistic minorities to 'respond to the language surround in which they are immersed' (Garcia et al. 1988:508), including the fact that that speakers of stigmatized varieties of Spanish may prefer to abandon Spanish in favor of English. Another sign of shift in that study was that Puerto Ricans and Cubans used considerably less Spanish with children and friends than with parents. However, publications about Spanish maintenance in New York appear slightly more optimistic than those in the Southwest, probably due to the recency of Hispanic immigration on the East Coast.
In Miami, Lynch's (2000) observations that Spanish use is robust among Cuban-Americans are countered by evidence that English is replacing Spanish to a significant degree (Garcia & Diaz 1992, Zurer Pearson & McGee 1993, Portes & Schauffler 1996). Contrary to the correlation between higher social class and English use found by Garcia et al. (1988) in New York, Lambert and Taylor (1996) found that middle-class Cubans maintain Spanish to a greater degree than working-class Cubans, who were shifting to English in an attempt to gain economic stability. Portes and Schauffler (1996) found that higher socioeconomic levels in Miami correlated in some ways with Spanish retention and in other ways with a shift to English. They also found that 'even among youths educated in bilingual schools at the core of an ethnic enclave, linguistic assimilation is proceeding with remarkable speed' (21-2) and that
[e]ven highly educated immigrant parents do not stand much of a chance of transmitting their language to their children. Their hopes of communicating with their children and grandchildren in their native language likely will be disappointed ... Only where immigrant groups concentrate physically, thus sustaining an economic and cultural presence ... will their languages survive past the first generation. In the absence of policies promoting bilingualism, even these enclaves will be engulfed ... in the course of 2-3 generations (28).
Similarly, Garcia and Otheguy (1988) claim that in Cuban-American communities, only demographic growth appears favorable to Spanish maintenance, while socio-cultural, economic, ideological, and political factors are leading to a shift to English.
Discrepancies in language-use findings point to the impossibility of assigning dichotomous values to a phenomenon as complex as language shift. They may also reflect methodological differences. For example, studies that interpret census data may be problematic because when respondents claim to speak Spanish in the home, there are no details on the quantity of Spanish they use. Self-reports specifically designed for language research may be reliable indicators of bilingual usage (Fishman, Cooper & Ma 1971) and may lead to more accurate interpretations than census data, but they will not produce infallible results in a given community or across communities. Interviews and long-term ethnographic observation (e.g. Zentella 1997) are likely to provide more reliable measures of language shift, although they are more time-consuming, tend to use smaller sample sizes, and are not free from some degree of researcher bias.
The Midwest is home to only 9% of U.S. Latinos. However, the 81% growth of the Latino population in the Midwest between 1990 and 2000 (Center for Family and Demographic Research 2002) was the largest reported for all geographic areas in the U. S. There had been several studies of Spanish use in the Midwest previous to this growth period. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, second generation respondents reported much less Spanish use than first generation respondents, although second and third generation Mexicans' Spanish language and cultural values were being revitalized by the influx of recent arrivals (Leone & Cisneros 1983). Gonzalez and Wherritt (1990) examined Spanish use in a small Iowa town, where respondents reported 90% Spanish use with their parents, under 80% with siblings, and 60% with their children.
Closer to Chicago, the largest urban center of the Midwest, Attinasi (1985) compared self-reports of language use and attitudes of Latinos in Northwest Indiana (immediately outside of the metropolitan Chicago area) and in New York. He found evidence of 'a stage of bilingualism with greater fluency in English' (1985:54) that included very positive attitudes toward bilingual education and cultural allegiance to the Spanish language. However, shift to English was further along in Northwest Indiana than in New York, and the low Spanish use and proficiency reported in Northwest Indiana led the author to conclude that it was unlikely that Spanish would be transmitted to future generations.
The present study seeks to fill a gap in sociolinguistic research by examining Spanish use in Chicago, Illinois, where the census-reported Latino population grew 38.1% between 1990 and 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau 2000).
(1.) SPANISH-SPEAKING CHICAGO. Chicago's 753,644 Hispanics constitute just 26% of city's population, but make it the third largest Hispanic city in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau 2000). The two largest Latino groups are Mexican (70%) and Puerto Rican (15%), forming the second largest U.S. Mexican population after Los Angeles and the second largest Puerto Rican population after New York City (U.S. Census Bureau 2000). (1) Mexican immigrants began arriving in Chicago in the early 20th century to work in the steel, meatpacking, and railroad industries, and World War I saw the influx of large numbers of Mexican workers under the bracero program (Ano Nuevo Kerr 1995). Puerto Rican immigration to Chicago, as to many other U.S. locations, began in the late 1940s. It was also linked to the steel industry and other blue-collar work and was heavily encouraged by the Migration Division Office (Perez 2001). According to Perez (2001), Chicago is the only place where large numbers of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans of several generations live together, work together, and marry each other. (2) Approximately 52% of the 1990 Census-reported Mexican population in Chicago was born abroad, and 43% of Chicago's Puerto Ricans were born in Puerto Rico (U.S. Census Bureau 1990).
Chicago's 77 residential communities are notoriously segregated (22 of them are over 90% African-American), yet no Chicago neighborhood reports a Hispanic population of over 90%. Chicago's five most concentrated Latino neighborhoods are displayed in Table 1.
However, there is likely considerable undercounting of undocumented individuals in official Census reports--Lowell and Suro (2002) reported that there are 4.5 million undocumented Mexicans in the U.S.--particularly in the Lower West Side and South Lawndale, which are two long-standing Mexican ports of entry to Chicago. These areas probably have higher percentages of Hispanic residents than those reported in Table 1. For example, one high school in this study has a Hispanic student population of 97.5%, most of whom are Mexican. The communities of Humboldt Park, Hermosa, and Logan Square, whose Latino populations used to be at least 50% Puerto Rican, have seen an influx of Mexicans in the past decade. In total, almost 15% of Chicago's 77 residential communities have Latino populations of 50% or greater. Several suburban areas outlying Chicago also have considerable Hispanic populations: Cicero (77%), Carpentersville (41%), Berwyn (38%), and Elgin (34%).
By several accounts, Chicago's Latino population is unlike the predominantly middle-class and professional Cuban population described by Zurer Pearson and McGee (1993) and Lynch (2000). Of census-counted Chicago Hispanics, 25% live in poverty (although this is below the national Hispanic average of 31%), 36% hold laborer and factory jobs, almost one third do not have health insurance, and just 7% hold a bachelor's degree (U.S. Census Bureau, 1990). Mexican males are highly visible in the city's restaurant industry as kitchen help and busboys. On the other hand, Chicago has a number of Latino professional organizations, and in 2003 there were many Hispanic elected and appointed officials including one U.S. Congressman, several state officials, eight city aldermen, and a Board of Education member. It is worth noting that businesses along 26th Street in La Villita (South Lawndale) produced more tax revenue than any other retail strip in Chicago except the upscale Michigan Avenue Mile (Robinson 1998).
Spanish does have considerable visibility and commercial support in Chicago. One can be attended to in Spanish over the telephone and in person for many basic services including the Department of Motor Vehicles, police, hospitals, utility companies, banks, fast-food restaurants, supermarkets, many libraries, and both airports, either because Spanish service is officially offered by the organization or because it employs individuals who are Spanish-speakers. Spanish is also widely present in advertising, entertainment, and the arts. There are three widely circulated Spanish-medium weekly newspapers in Chicago: Exito, a free publication by the Chicago Tribune has a circulation of over 87,500, La Raza has a circulation of 150,000, and Hoy had a circulation of 17,000 during its first four months after being launched in September 2003. Inserted into these newspapers are Spanish-language ads for large department stores and supermarkets, and many billboards along the city's streets are in Spanish. There are also numerous smaller newspapers written totally in Spanish or bilingually, and several Chicago communities produce telephone directories in Spanish. National bookstore chains carry Spanish-language books, and many large supermarket chains carry tabloids, People magazine, and greeting cards in Spanish. There are three free-access Spanish-language television channels and nine radio stations in Spanish. The...
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