Abstract Studies of ethnolinguisti...

Abstract

Studies of ethnolinguistic vitality have give an inkling ofed some usefulness of that notion for predicting language maintenance behaviors among form into groupss who might be in the proces of language shift. Strangely little use of the universal has been made for the application of mind of the cornerstone of maintenance, intergenerational transmission. The near investigations were undertaken to touchstone the hypothesis that ethnolinguistic vitality determines family policies about the transmission of Spanish among Mexican Americans in the Southwest. In the first application of mind conducted in Austin, Texas, the prediction was that the parents transmitting Spanish posses stronger ethnolinguistic vitality beliefs than those who withhold the language from their children. In the secondary inquiry, carried out in rural southeast Arizona, the hypothesis remained the same, however the research design was altered and an index of experience with prejudice was incorporated. Findings give an inkling of that ethnolinguistic vitality is an important determinant of family transmission policies, still that a perceived prejudice is an equally powerful determinant in the opposite direction. The ends are discussed in terms of implications for maintenance of a positive personal and cultural identity from parents and children.

Introduction

Historically in the United States, bilingualism in families has been a transitory phenomenon, the use of any non-English heritage language usually declining precipitously across three or four generations. like language loss has been considered at many to be part of the natural Americanization proces and particularly in this hundred years the American public has draw near to expect that minority language speakers would eventually jettison their native tongues and embrace English without the perceived compromise of speaking another language (Fishman, 1966; Crawford, 1992)

Spanish-speakers, and particularly Mexican Americans, have been somewhat more retentive of the heritage language than chiefly other groups, frequently maintaining the use of Spanish in addition to English. Census data demonstrate, however, that the rate of shift away from Spanish is rapid, and that flat in newly immigrating families the language is sometimes forfeited in the second generation (Bills, 1992) barely where the context is favorable for the continuation of the assign places to where great numbers of Spanish-speakers are concentrated or where novel immigration from Mexico or other Spanish-speaking countries is significant, is the familial ebbing of Spanish slowed.

Sociolinguistic studies have approached the close attention of language maintenance primarily from attempting to relate reported language behaviors and attitudes to sociological indices in the collections themselves. These studies have identified correlates of language maintenance and shift among Mexican Americans - eg education, social status, urban versus rural residence, generational distance from immigrating forbears, extent of residence, place of birth, location of childhood, and place of schooling. The particular valence or impregnability of any correlation depends in succession the specific group being studied (Floyd 1985; Hidalgo, 1993; Lopez 1982; Veltman, 1983) Like Wicker's (1969) more general conclusion that attitudes are generally not related to behavior, these studies have insinuateed that the expression of positive attitudes or "language loyalty" toward the native language does not usually correspond to language behaviors reflecting that loyalty. This conclusion has have the appearanceed to imply that group members are reluctant to admit a lack of steady commitment to their heritage language.

Such studies, however, in focusing exclusively forward the relationship of group member characteristics and language behavior, have minimized the drift of social psychological determinants of language use. The underlying assumption has seemingly been that sufficiently sturdy loyalty to Spanish would domineer over conditions in the environment which discouraged its use. Thackerar et al. (1982) stres the ne for a more dynamic perspective upon language maintenance, one which accounts for the ways in which "individual subjective attitudes, perceptions of situations, and cognitive and affective dispositions and the like may interact to determine language outputs" (p. 206). As Gal (1979) has argued, however, a diachronic as well as synchronic perspective must be achieved if the goal is to unravel an understanding of the actual conditions of language maintenance or language shift. She has called for a in addition broader framework which can explain "the impact of large-scale historical processe in succession the minute details of intimate verbal communication and of individuals' linguistic expression of their confess identities" (p. xi). The near study explores the usefulness of the universal of ethnolinguistic vitality, one replication to some of these issues in the cogitation of language maintenance.

Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Language Maintenance

In 1972 Fishman wrote that the same major factor affecting group members' attitudes or beliefs toward their languages was the quality to which those language varieties had "visible vitality, i.e., interaction networks that actually use them natively for one or more vital functions" (p 21) Fishman explained that the more speakers of a language variety and the higher their status, the greater the vitality of the group's language, and the greater its chance for survival.