Conference Presentations

Abstract:

El enfoque de esta presentación son las actitudes dialectales de los hablantes de herencia del español. Durante el otoño de 2024, entrevistamos a estudiantes de cuatro niveles de clases para hablantes de herencia en nuestra universidad. En esta presentación, reportamos los temas principales que surgieron como resultado de preguntarles a los estudiantes sus opiniones sobre otros dialectos y variedades del español. 

Los informantes expresaron opiniones mixtas sobre los dialectos. Un tema principal fue la preferencia hacia el dialecto con el que tenían una conexión personal más fuerte. De los dialectos menos preferidos, los informantes indicaron que los dialectos fueron “muy rápidos” o “extraños.” Como se esperaba, encontramos actitudes positivas hacia dialectos que se perciben como más prestigiosos (Potowski & Torres, 2023), como el español peninsular (Alfaraz, 2014, 2018; Carter and Callesano, 2018), aunque también surgieron críticas hacia esa variedad por ser el dialecto de los “colonizadores.”

A diferencia de otros estudios (del Ángel Guevara, 2023; Wilson & Martínez, 2011; Henderson, Wilson, & Woods, 2020), no observamos actitudes negativas hacia el español mexicano que se esperaba, debido al contexto  sociohistórico de Nuevo México y la división entre mexicanos y “Spanish Americans.” Además, siguiendo a Tseng (2019), les pedimos a los informantes describir el español local, de Albuquerque. La mayoría tuvo actitudes positivas hacia el dialecto de la ciudad, pero lo calificaron como “mezclado,” lo que podría reflejar percepciones de menor legitimidad del dialecto.

Estos hallazgos nos muestran la importancia de tener conversaciones explícitas sobre la variación dialectal en el aula de español para hablantes de herencia. 

References: 

Beaudrie, S., & Ducar, C. (2005). Beginning level university heritage programs: Creating a space for       all heritage language learners. Heritage Language Journal, 3(1), 1–26.

Beaudrie, S. M., & Wilson, D. V. (2021). Reimagining the goals of HL pedagogy through Critical Language Awareness. In S. Loza & S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.), Heritage Language Teaching: Critical Language Awareness Perspectives for Research and Pedagogy (pp. 63–79). Taylor and Francis.

Carter, P. M., & Callesano, S. (2018). The social meaning of Spanish in Miami: Dialect perceptions and implications for socioeconomic class, income, and employment. Latino Studies, 16, 65–90.

Henderson, M. H., Wilson, D. V., & Woods, M. R. (2020). How course level, gender, and ethnic identity labels interact with language attitudes towards Spanish as a heritage language. Hispania, 103(1), 27–42.

Koshiba, K. (2022). Between Inheritance and Commodity: The Discourse of Japanese Ethnolinguistic Identity among Youths in a Heritage Language Class in Australia. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 21(5), 316–329. 

Leeman, J. (2012). Investigating language ideologies in Spanish as a heritage language. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 43–59). Georgetown University Press.

Martínez, G. A. (2003). Classroom based dialect awareness in heritage language instruction: A critical applied linguistic approach. Heritage Language Journal, 1(1), 44–57.

Park, M. Y. (2022). Language ideologies, heritage language use, and identity construction among 1.5-generation Korean immigrants in New Zealand. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 25(7), 2469–2481. 

Valdés, G. (2000). The teaching of heritage languages: An introduction for Slavic-teaching professionals. The Learning and Teaching of Slavic Languages and Cultures, 375–403.

Vana, R. F. (2020). Learning with an Attitude⁈: Heritage and L2 Students’ Language Attitudes toward Spanish Language Varieties in the Advanced Mixed Class [Doctoral Dissertation]. Arizona State University.

Wilson, D. V., & Ibarra, C. E. (2015). Understanding the inheritors: The perception of beginning level students toward their Spanish as a Heritage Language program. EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, 2(2), 85–101.

Wilson, D. V., & Martínez, R. (2011). Diversity in definition: Integrating history and student attitudes in understanding heritage learners of Spanish in New Mexico. Heritage Language Journal, 8(2), 270–288.

Abstract: 

According to Chambers’ (1992) principles of dialect acquisition, lexical replacements are the most rapidly acquired by out-group dialect speakers. Even so, the lexicons of Spanish dialect groups in the United States (U.S.) remain understudied with only a small number of studies examining the sociolinguistic implications of lexical contact between U.S. Spanish dialects (Barreiro, 2022; Guevara, 2023; Potowski & Torres, 2023; Villarreal, 2014; Zentella, 1990). The dialects and their speakers are also limited in their representation in the literature as the only groups included in those studies contain speakers from Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, Guatemalan, Mexican, New Mexican, Salvadoran, and Puerto Rican backgrounds. Beyond the limited number of studies and dialects represented, the breadth of methodologies employed in previous studies has also been limited mostly to picture-naming tasks or forced-choice tasks that allow the words given to be classified as “belonging” to certain dialect groups and not to others, with the exception of Guevara (2023) whose participants were asked to give multiple words for objects and rate their familiarity of each word.  

While previous studies have examined lexical knowledge between various groups, there are still not a wide variety of dialect groups represented in these studies. Previous studies have also looked at attitudes or social networks to better determine the reasons for which some speakers know or do not know out-group lexical items. There has not been, however, one study that has combined these background measures and lexical identification tasks to gain a more robust understanding of lexical contact between dialect groups. There have also not been studies that look at media consumption as a possible explanation for out-group lexical knowledge through limited exposure, though Schmidt (2015) did look at media consumption in relation to phonological contact between dialect groups. Thus, in this position paper, I argue that future studies of lexical contact between Spanish dialects in the U.S. should implement various tasks and background measures in order to more fully account for why some speakers have out-group extensive lexical knowledge while others do not. Future studies should also expand upon the previous literature by including more dialect groups in more geographical locations in the U.S. in order to complete more robust comparative analyses.  

References: 

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Alfaraz, G. G. (2014). Dialect perceptions in real time: A restudy of Miami-Cuban perceptions. Journal of Linguistic Geography, 2(2), 74–86.

Alfaraz, G. G. (2018). Framing the diaspora and the homeland: Language ideologies in the Cuban diaspora. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2018(254), 49–69. 

Aparicio, F. R. (2019). Negotiating Latinidad: Intralatina/o Lives in Chicago (Vol. 1). University of Illinois Press.

Barreiro, S. (2022). A sociolinguistic analysis of Salvadoran Lexical Accommodation towards Mexican Spanish [Master’s Thesis]. The Ohio State University.

Barrera-Tobón, C. (2013). Contact-induced changes in word order and intonation in the Spanish of New York City bilinguals [Doctoral Dissertation]. City University of New York.

Barrera-Tobón, C., & Raña Risso, R. (2019). Explaining pronominal subject placement variation across two generations of Caribbean Spanish speakers in New York City. In W. Valentín-Márquez & M. Gonzalez-Rivera (Eds.), Dialects from Tropical Islands: Caribbean Spanish in the United States (p. 113). Routledge.

Barrera-Tobón, C., & Risso, R. R. (2020). Pro-drop to non-pro-drop: Question word order in New York City Caribbean Spanish bilinguals. In S. Alvord & G. Thompson (Eds.), Spanish in the United States (pp. 77–94). Routledge.

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Callesano, S., & Carter, P. M. (2018). Latinx perceptions of Spanish in Miami: Dialect variation, personality attributes and language use. Language & Communication, 67, 84–98.

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del Ángel Guevara, M. E. (2023). Returning to Northern New Mexico. A Study of the Nuevomexicano Lexicon [Doctoral Dissertation]. The University of New Mexico.

Erker, D., & Reffel, M. (2021). Describing and analyzing variability in Spanish/s/: A case study of Caribbeans in Boston and New York City. In E. Nuñez-Méndez (Ed.), Sociolinguistic Approaches to Sibilant Variation in Spanish (pp. 131–163). Routledge.

Hernández, J. E. (2002). Accommodation in a dialect contact situation. Revista de Filología y Lingüística de La Universidad de Costa Rica, 93–110.

Hernández, J. E. (2009). Measuring rates of word‐final nasal velarization: The effect of dialect contact on in‐group and out‐group exchanges. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13(5), 583–612. 

Hernández, J. E. (2020). Language, contact, and the negotiation of Salvadoran identities in a mixed-Latino community. In S. Alvord & G. Thompson (Eds.), Spanish in the United States: Attitudes and Variation (pp. 11–30). Routledge.

O’Rourke, E., & Potowski, K. (2016). Phonetic accommodation in a situation of Spanish dialect contact: Coda /s/ and /r̄/ in Chicago. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 9(2), 355–399. 

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Potowski, K. (2016). IntraLatino Language and Identity. John Benjamins.

Potowski, K., & Torres, L. (2023). Spanish in Chicago. Oxford University Press.

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Raña Risso, R. (2013). A corpus-based sociolinguistic study of subject pronoun placement in Spanish in New York. City University of New York.

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Rosa, J. (2019). Looking like a language, sounding like a race: Raciolinguistic ideologies and the learning of Latinidad. Oxford University Press.

Sánchez-Muñoz, A. (2017). Tempted by the Words of Another: Linguistic Choices of Chicanas/os and Other Latina/os in Los Angeles. In J. Rosales & V. Fonesca (Eds.), Spanish Perspectives on Chicano Literature: Literary and Cultural Essays (pp. 71–81). The Ohio State University.

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Sorenson, T. D. (2010). Voseo to tuteo accommodation among two Salvadoran communities in the United States [Doctoral Dissertation]. Texas A&M University.

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Tseng, A. (2019). The Ordinariness of Dialect Translinguistics in an Internally Diverse Global-City Diasporic Community. In J. Lee & S. Dovchin (Eds.), Translinguistics: Negotiating Innovation and Ordinariness (pp. 146–159). Routledge.

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Villarreal, B. M. (2014). Dialect contact among Spanish-speaking children in Los Angeles [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of California, Los Angeles.

Viner, K. M. (2016). Second-generation NYC bilinguals’ use of the Spanish subjunctive in obligatory contexts. Spanish in Context, 13(3), 343–370.

Viner, K. M. (2017). Subjunctive use in the speech of New York City Spanish heritage language bilinguals: A variationist analysis. Heritage Language Journal, 14(3), 307–333.

Viner, K. M. (2018). The optional Spanish subjunctive mood grammar of New York City heritage bilinguals. Lingua, 210, 79–94.

Viner, K. M. (2020). Comment Clauses and mood choice in New York City Spanish: Generational constraints and innovations. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 10(5), 728–744. 

Waltermire, M. (2017). At the dialectal crossroads: The Spanish of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dialectologia: Revista Electrònica, 177–197.

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