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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT. The impact of diatopia, geographic location, on the maintenance and loss of non-English languages in the U.S. represents one area that has received scant study in the literature. However, striking demographic changes in certain minority language groups raise questions on language loss and maintenance relating to geographic region. Hispanos represent significant segments of the populations in the states that form the southern border of the U.S. As this group continues to grow in both numbers and economic presence, the question arises as to what impact these factors have on language shift. Thus, a major goal of the present research is to examine current language use patterns across the nation and along the southern border, using an innovative analytical approach, the SYNTHETIC COHORT, with data from the 2000-2003 PUBLIC USE MICRODATA SAMPLES OF THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY (PUMS ACS). The authors focus on children in particular, given their central importance in language maintenance, to compare geographic variation in an attempt to better understand the impact of region on language shift. *
INTRODUCTION. The impact of diatopia, geographic location, on the maintenance and loss of non-English languages in the U.S. represents one area that has received scant study in the literature. Bills, Hernandez Chavez, and Hudson (1995) do discuss distance from the U.S.-Mexico border as a factor in language loss among Spanish speakers in the Southwest, but beyond that study the issue has largely been ignored. However, striking demographic changes in certain minority language groups raise questions of language loss and maintenance relating to geographic region. As has been widely reported, those of Spanish speaking origin, a group that defies any single label, now form the largest minority group in the U.S. (http://www.census.gov). Spanish is the most widely spoken non-English language in this nation; as noted in Villa (2000), the U.S. is one of the principal Spanish-speaking nations in the world with regard to both number of speakers and their economic presence. However, the distribution of Spanish speakers throughout the nation is not homogeneous. In 2000, for example, only 1.7 percent of Alabama's population self-reported as being of 'Hispanic or Latino' origin, with the national average at that time consisting of 12.5 percent (http://www.census.gov).
At the same time, Hispanos represent significant segments of the populations in the states that form the southern border of the U.S. For the purpose of this study the authors define as BORDER STATES Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. (1) For the year 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov) offers the percentage of the total border state populations that Hispanos represented:
(1) Texas: 32% (2) New Mexico: 42% (3) Arizona: 24% (4) California: 32%
As can be seen, these percentages well exceeded the 12.5 percent national average. Further, certain areas directly contacting or closely adjacent to the southern border demonstrated even higher percentages of Hispano residents. To offer but a few examples from the 2000 Census data, in Hidalgo County, Texas, Hispanos represented 88 percent of its residents; in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, that figure was 63 percent. In Yuma County, Arizona, 50 percent of the population was Hispano and in Imperial County, California, they represented 72 percent of the population. Regarding socioeconomic factors, while it remains the case that some recent immigrants from Spanish speaking nations occupy the lower economic ranks, Hispanos are moving up the metaphorical ladder. As a measure of this phenomenon, Humphreys (2004) reports that Hispano buying power experiences the highest rate of growth of any ethnic group in the nation. This is reflected in the fact that in Dona Ana County, for example, Hispanos are business owners, attorneys, doctors, politicians, professors, judges, accountants, school teachers, and administrators, in short, occupy all levels of the socioeconomic structure of the area, and are not restricted solely to the lowest tiers of the local economy.
As this group, both in border and non-border regions, continues to grow in demographic and economic presence, the question arises as to what impact region has on language shift. That Spanish is lost in Hispano populations here has been consistently documented over the last 30 years, and earlier (see, e.g. Lopez 1978, Veltman 1988, Bills 1989, Sole 1990, Pease-Alvarez 1993, Bills et al. 1995, and Rivera-Mills 2001, to name only a few). However, the RATE at which a non-English language is lost becomes of interest, as changes in that rate might indicate a shift in the general pattern of loss. The classic Fishman model of loss predicts a high level of shift in third generation members of a non-English language group. However, that model does not include explicit means for differentiating between different language populations. Anecdotally, the authors encounter a number of 3+ generation Spanish speakers in the border regions in which they work and live. Non-anecdotally, Mora, Villa, and Davila (2003) find that immigrant Spanish speakers are much more likely to pass the language on to their children than other non-English language groups. Such findings beg the following question: are certain social structures changing in a border region in a manner that encourages the maintenance of a language, in this case, Spanish?
Garcia (1993) documents the history of Spanish in U.S., at many periods a highly stigmatized language. She also notes changes in this country brought about by social developments and legislation such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act. A major goal of the present research, then, is to employ an innovative research model to track current language use patterns among children across the nation and along the southern border, in order to compare geographic variation in an attempt to better understand the impact of region on language shift. The authors assert that a better understanding of such dynamics, based on the use of new analytical tools, may serve to shed light on the broader issue of the status of Spanish in this country, as reflected in the maintenance/loss dichotomy in recent years.
1. THE STUDY. The present study examines the language use of children 1) whose parents have migrated to this country from non-English speaking communities, and 2) who were either born here or migrated at an early age. The motivation for this focus lies in the centrality of the role of children in preserving or losing a language, in this case in as recent a time period that existing data permit (in this study, from 2000-2003). Regarding the role of children in language maintenance and loss, in the study of indigenous languages in North America (and elsewhere as well), the vitality of a non-majority language is often measured in terms of how many children of the particular language group speak their parents' language, as opposed to adult members of the community. A DYING or ENDANGERED language is one spoken only by a few elderly community members, while a LIVING one, for which there is hope of survival, is widely spoken among the community's children (see, e.g. Krauss 1998).
In the study of the loss and maintenance of Spanish in the U.S., various scholars such as Veltman (1988) and Hudson, Hernandez Chavez, and Bills (1995) note that Spanish...
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