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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT. This study looks at the lesser-known variables of acculturation and communicative need in an effort to better understand their influence in the process of language shift. Using a sociolinguistic approach, Spanish language use by Hispanics residing in this community is examined and compared to another community with a similar profile located in northern California. Specifically, three variables serve as the focus of this study: generation, communicative need, and acculturation, as they relate to Spanish language use in the home domain. Results show a strong correlation between generation and the participant's reported level of acculturation as well as communicative need, which in turn has a significant effect on the use of Spanish in the home.
INTRODUCTION. The various issues and factors involved in the maintenance or shift of Spanish among Hispanic populations in the United States continue to challenge sociolinguists, as we strive to better understand the many forces at work in this shift continuum. Thanks to the contributions of numerous studies that look at the area of Spanish maintenance and shift in the United States, researchers have been able to determine and agree on certain variables that have shown to be correlated directly to the retention or loss of the Spanish language within specific speech communities.
Variables such as age of arrival, generation, education, and immigration patterns are supported by solid evidence that demonstrates their relationship to a steady pattern of Spanish language shift in the United States. Despite the on-going debates regarding sociolinguistic methodology and how to best define certain terminologies (e.g. generation, speech community, use of educational indices), studies such as those of Gonzalez and Wherritt (1990), Bills, Hernandez Chavez, and Hudson (1995), Rivera-Mills (2000, 2001), and numerous others have shown that younger immigrants are less likely to retain Spanish, and that with each generation born in the United States there is a diminished transmission of the mother tongue, and thus, a language shift from Spanish to English.
Furthermore, Bills et al. (1995:10) have shown the influence of education and upward mobility on the processes of language shift, stating that ' ... educational and economic advance by members of the Spanish origin population are purchased at the cost of maintenance of the ancestral language'. In the same manner, with respect to immigration patterns, Veltman has also made it clear that ' ... Spanish cannot survive in any area of the United States in the absence of continued immigration' (1988:3).
Besides these concrete variables, many others have been observed as having varying levels of influence in the process of language shift. Both interethnic and intraethnic attitudes have been correlated to social divisions in speech communities which contribute to a loss of Spanish varieties (Mejias & Anderson 1988, Zentella 1990), or on the other extreme, those that promote solidarity within a homogeneous community resulting in an increased use of a specific Spanish variety (Galindo 1996). Besides attitudes, other variables such as ethnic identity, gender, social class, homogeneity of speech communities, and even internal racism have been attributed as influential factors in the process of language shift. Studies such as those by Chavez (1988), Garcia, Evangelista, Martinez, Disla and Paulino (1988), Hidalgo (1993), Velasquez (1995), and Bills (2005) have analyzed the influence of internal racism or in-group linguistic discrimination, gender relations, perceived ethnic identity, and the socioeconomic factors that contribute to the steady language shift pattern observed in the Spanish varieties of the United States.
Despite the large body of literature that is available regarding Spanish maintenance and shift and the forces affecting this result of language contact, sociolinguists continue to strive to better understand the profile that makes a speech community more or less susceptible to language shift. At the same time, we continue to expand the current body of knowledge by applying what is known to lesser-studied geographic areas and lesser-known variables. For example, with respect to the latter, it is only in recent years that variables such as acculturation (sometimes referred to as assimilation), communicative need, and geographic distance from the border have begun to receive the attention they deserve as additional factors that play an important role in the process of language shift.
The variable of acculturation, though extensively studied in the fields of psychology and sociology, has only recently been applied to the area of language shift in studies by Marin, Sabogal, Marin, Otero-Sabogal, and Perez-Stable (1987), Urciuoli (1996), Rivera-Mills (2000, 2001), and Holleran (2003). A similar situation occurs with communicative need (Rivera-Mills 2000) and geographic distance from the border (Bills et al. 1995, Jaramillo 1995). Sociolinguists must continue to expand this body of research by duplicating methodologies, expanding affecting variables, and studying communities that are lesser known but which hold similar profiles; all within a comparative framework. In doing this, we will move forward and better understand the forces at work in the language shift continuum, particularly as it applies to Spanish in the United States.
To this end, the present study looks at language maintenance and shift in the small northern Arizona community of Flagstaff. Sociolinguistic studies that look at the Spanish of Arizona are few (Galindo 1993, 1996, Bills et al. 1995, Jaramillo 1995) and those that study the Spanish of northern Arizona are non-existent. In addition, the present study looks at the lesser-known variables of acculturation and communicative need in an effort to better understand their influences in the process of language shift.
Using a sociolinguistic approach, Spanish language use by Hispanics residing in this community is examined and compared to another community with a similar profile located in northern California. Specifically, three variables serve as the focus of this study: generation, acculturation, and communicative need as they relate to Spanish language use in the home domain. Finally, the factor of geographical distance from the border is briefly discussed as part of the overall conclusions.
1. METHODOLOGY. The present study uses basic, widely accepted guidelines for the collection...
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