Language selection by Hispanics in a small upstate New York community

Authors

  • Juan A Thomas Utica College Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v6i3.571

Keywords:

LANGUAGE SHIFT, BILINGUALISM, LANGUAGE CONTACT, SPANISH, LANGUAGE SELECTION, LANGUAGE USE PATTERNS, MINORITY LANGUAGE

Abstract

Fifty-four Hispanics from Utica, NY completed questionnaires about the languages that they spoke in three domains (family, friends, and formal) during their childhood and adulthood. The social variables considered were age, level of education, time in the USA and Utica, gender and generation. The latter two most influenced reported language selection. The participants overwhelmingly answered that they used Spanish during their childhood with parents and grandparents. However, comparing the participants' reported language use between childhood and adulthood, the parent-child and grandparent-grandchild relationships showed the largest decreases in reported use of Spanish among all the family relationships. This result is consistent with language shift to English in the family. The informants also report less exclusive use of Spanish with friends in adulthood than in childhood. However, 78 % of them said that they use both English and Spanish with friends in adulthood. In the formal domains of religion, stores, workplace, and restaurant, more responses of only English are registered in adulthood than in childhood. Nevertheless, adults report using Spanish or both English and Spanish in Utica in all the formal domains. The reported use of Spanish is especially high in the religious domain.

Author Biography

  • Juan A Thomas, Utica College
    Juan A. Thomas (PhD University at Albany; PhD M.I.T.)is Associate Professor of Spanish at Utica College, Utica, NY, USA. His research interest is in language contact. He has published studies of the adaptation of Hispanisms in Neapolitan (Forum Italicum 2009; Tradición y progreso en la lingüística general 2012). His study of Arabic Romance code switching in the Kharjas appeared in The Journal of Language Contact (2012) and his work on the Galician gheada and the Castilianism bueno in Galician was published in the Proceedings of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Workshops on Spanish Sociolinguistics (2005, 2007, 2008).

Published

2013-08-03

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Thomas, J. A. (2013). Language selection by Hispanics in a small upstate New York community. Sociolinguistic Studies, 6(3), 571-593. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v6i3.571