Explore the vast range of titles available.

Linguistic Landscape in the Spanish-speaking World is the first book dedicated to languages in the urban space of the Spanish-speaking world filling a gap in the extensive research that highlights the richness and complexity of Spanish Linguistic Landscapes.

The current study investigates Spanish children's variation between the standard and non-standard forms for second person singular preterit –s (caiste ~ caístes). All second person singular preterit forms were extracted from the spontaneous speech of 78 children in Spain and analyzed for the effects of age, language contact setting, and lexical frequency. Results show that children in contact with Galician and Catalan produce more non-standard than children in non-contact areas like Madrid. Meanwhile, low-frequency verbs (e.g., pillaste) are more likely to occur with the non-standard –s than high-frequency verbs (e.g., fuiste). However, age is not a significant predictor of children's 2sg preterit production. These preliminary findings demonstrate that Spanish children do have the non-standard -s in their speech, and that their 2sg preterit forms are significantly conditioned by language contact and lexical frequency.

Constraints on linguistic variation are consistent across adult speakers, yielding probabilistic and systematic patterns. Yet, little is known about the development of such patterns during childhood. This study investigates Spanish subject pronoun expression in naturalistic data from 154 monolingual children in Mexico, divided into four age groups: 6–7, 8–9, 10–11, 12+. Results from logistic regressions examining five predictors of pronoun expression in 6,481 verbs show that children's usage is structured and patterned. The study also suggests a developmental progression: as children get older, they become sensitive to more constraints. I conclude by suggesting that children learn patterns of variation by attuning to distributional tendencies in the input, and that the more frequent the patterns are, the easier they are to detect and learn.

This article explores how class might be brought to the fore as an identity inscription in studies of second language learning, alongside other identity inscriptions such as gender, ethnicity and national identity, which have been the focus of rather more research. It begins by clarifying what is meant by class through a brief discussion of the work of Karl Marx, Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu as contributors to thinking about class among social scientists. It then examines how the construct of class has been neglected in research on second language learning as well as in the related area of research on bilingualism. The article goes on to suggest how class might be central to understandings of second language identities in migrant contexts. The starting point is a conversation involving an adult migrant in London, which is then linked with the individual’s life trajectory and the micro-level intricacies of accent and discourse patterns. These and other factors contribute to an analysis of the individual’s lack of development in English in terms of his and others’ class positioning.

This article is about how immigrant bilingual students use their languages in the learning of mathematics. The authors' research has been with immigrant bilinguals in Catalonia, Spain, who arrived at a young age from South-American countries. They use a critical sociolinguistic approach, which draws on social theory in the analysis of how language is involved in the construction of teaching and learning opportunities. The main data come from regular lessons in a Catalan-Spanish bilingual group of a secondary school in Barcelona, Spain, with 24 students about 12 years old and a bilingual Catalan native speaker teacher. Their data point to the differences in the ways that the Spanish dominant bilingual students use their two languages during their engagement in mathematical activity. The shifts from Catalan to Spanish, and from Spanish to Catalan, coincide with shifts in the complexity of the students' mathematical practices. The students tend to use the two languages for different purposes, depending on the complexity of the mathematical practices, and in relation to different social settings that coexist within the classroom. [Author abstract, ed]

Language regard is defined as the opinions and norms that speakers have about language. In this dissertation, a theory of language regard is applied to variation in second-person singular address forms in Cali Colombian Spanish ([tuteo, voseo, and ustedeo ]). This theory claims that language production and regard are systematically related. Participants (n = 21, ages 19-35) were native residents of Cali. Data were (a) responses to an oral discourse completion task, (b) interviews to collect participants’ opinions of the forms, and (c) a map of Colombia on which participants evaluated the dialects. The oral discourse completion task responses were analyzed quantitatively and coded for participant variables (social network and gender), context interlocutor variables (gender, age, and relationship), and linguistic variables (subject pronoun expression, syntactic argument, speech act type, and verbal frequency). Interview responses were analyzed qualitatively and compared to the production data and the dialect map responses. For the second-person singular forms in Cali, speakers easily recognize the forms as they are frequent in discourse and an essential element of communication. Speakers assign different characteristics to the forms depending on the variables of the context (relationship with interlocutor, age, and gender) and they tend to produce the forms in agreement with the way they evaluate the forms. Speakers believe the tuteo is a somewhat neutral form, and it is actually the most frequent of the three forms; it was produced in nearly 50% of all productions. Age and relationship are important social factors in evaluation and production of the voseo and ustedeo. Specifically, the voseo is favored for same-age interlocutors twice as often as for older interlocutors. The opposite pattern is present for the ustedeo. Speakers believe the tuteo and voseo are best for known interlocutors and that the ustedeo is best for unknown interlocutors. The ustedeo is the most commonly produced form when addressing strangers and the least commonly produced form when addressing familiar interlocutors. Evaluation and production of ustedeo may also be affected by Bogotá patterns of ustedeo production, in which it appears in more contexts. There is evidence of the effects of speech act type and verbal frequency with the tuteo, and subject pronoun expression differs in production of each of the three forms – perhaps most notably with the voseo. There are some differences between evaluation and production – specifically with the use of tuteo by men and the use of voseo by women. When all evaluations and production are compared, there are notable similarities between evaluation and production. Speakers’ evaluations may be affected by social variables (age, relationship, and possibly gender) and their production is affected by the same social variables as well as by linguistic variables (speech act type, verbal frequency). In sum, there appears to be a systematic relationship between regard and production of the second-person singular forms in the speech of Cali. The principal contribution of this investigation is the description of the systematic relationship between production and regard of second-person singular forms in Cali Spanish. Other contributions include the analysis of the effects of variables that are not traditionally included in examinations of this phenomenon and presentation of the benefits of examining both production and regard.

This study examined the +/- presence of Spanish subject personal pronouns (yo, él/ella, nosotros/nosotras, and ellos/ellas ) in sociolinguistic interviews of 36 Mexican-Americans from Houston, Texas (16 of 2nd generation and 20 of 3rd generation), and 20 Mexicans (control group) from Heroica Matamoros, Tamaulipas (Mexico-USA border city), and Los Reyes de Salgado, Michoacán (non-border city). Pronouns were codified based on external as well as internal factors; Crosstabs (SPSS) was used for analysis. In general, Houstonians produced slightly more pronouns than Mexicans. In the control group, gender was statistically significant only when cross tabulated with city of residence. Education in the control group did not appear relevant. In the Mexican-American group, generation showed a major difference: gender and education seemed significant in 2nd generation participants, but not within the 3rd generation. Coreferentiality index, grammatical person, clause type, referent denotation and morphological ambiguity of the verbal form showed statistically valid correlations with Spanish subject personal pronoun expression in all four groups: non-border, border, 2nd generation and 3rd generation. Turn of speech appeared relevant for three groups: border, 2 nd generation and 3rd generation (although result for border Mexicans may be due to a low number of quantified items). Reflexive verbs and coreferentiality with unconjugated verbs accompanied by explicit subjects (or with gapped verb phrases) yielded relevancy only for Houstonians (2nd and 3rd generations). Spanish subject personal pronoun expression by Mexican-Americans in Houston, Texas, was highly similar to the control group, with few exceptions. Houstonians appeared to have done semantic-pragmatic modifications in grammatical person and referent denotation. In addition, they seemed to have created three new internal variables, turn of speech, reflexive verbs and coreferentiality with unconjugated verbs accompanied by explicit subjects (or with gapped verb phrases). Discussion and interpretations of results were included as well as pedagogical recommendations for heritage speakers' Spanish classes. Results were also related to pronoun expression in other Spanish dialects.

The contact between Dominicans and Puerto Ricans is targeted for study as much for its linguistic import as for its social context. Dominican and Puerto Rican Spanish are considered varieties of Caribbean Spanish that differ only by a few phonological and syntactic patterns and a small number of lexical items. Although both varieties are heavily stigmatized within the Spanish-speaking world, previous work in Puerto Rico has found a wide-spread discrimination of Dominican Spanish and it speakers. At the same time, Dominican immigrants often are phenotypically dark, possess limited formal education, and as immigrants are also socially and economically disadvantaged relative to their Puerto Rican San Juan cohabitants. These facts beg the question of whether and to what extent Puerto Ricans' attitudes towards Dominican Spanish truly are based on linguistic differences. Social and racial prejudices cannot always be expressed freely. The possibility exists that they could reemerge as negative evaluations of Dominican Spanish. The aim of the present research includes the following: (1) to uncover linguistic variables that are used in the identification of a speaker's origin (Puerto Rican vs. Dominican); (2) to examine whether Puerto Ricans' attitudes and perceptions of Dominican immigrants living in Puerto Rico are reflected in the evaluation of Dominican Spanish; (3) to determine the effects of these attitudes on the perceptions of Dominicans towards their own dialect. A sociolinguistic questionnaire and survey were administered to tap into the perceptions of linguistic differences among members of both groups and to uncover the possible emergence of linguistic insecurity among Dominican immigrants in Puerto Rico, and a verbal guise experiment examined the importance of perceived nationality and social class of a speaker in Puerto Ricans' evaluations of Dominican Spanish. The results of the present study reveal that Puerto Ricans frequently cite dialectal differences as their main means of identifying Dominicans. However, the results of the verbal guise experiment imply that although linguistic differences are decisive in the identification of national origin, ratings on social, educational, and personal attributes are influenced by prejudicial notions of socioeconomic and educational background. Similarly, ratings on perception of 'correctness' and 'pleasantness' of Dominican Spanish as compared to Puerto Rican Spanish indicate social profiling. Accordingly, this research provides insights into the consequences of social prejudice on the perception of and attitudes towards minority language variants and their speakers. The study also develops a deeper understanding of the social sources of the emergence of linguistic insecurity among minority immigrant groups as compared to those remaining in their native country. The results of the survey comparing Dominican linguistic insecurity reveal that linguistic insecurity among Dominicans in Puerto Rico decreases compared to that of the group examined in the Dominican Republic. Two possible reasons for the decrease of Dominican linguistic insecurity are put forth. It is probable that the Dominican speakers' recognition of a high degree of similarity between both varities leads to perceptions of equality between these two dialects, a situation that is also unlikely to trigger linguistic insecurity. There is supporting evidence in the data for the argument that the recognition of linguistic similarity leads to a sense of solidarity among some Dominicans. This is likely to be compounded by the low prestige given to Caribbean varieties cross-dialectally in comparison to more prestigious varieties in South America and Spain. Awareness of the stigmatization of both varieties on the part of the speakers is not thought to rouse linguistic insecurity among Dominicans. In sum, the present results reveal that contact between these two equally disparaged varieties does not incur the same degree of linguistic insecurity among Dominicans that can be observed in cases of contact where a minority variety is in contact with a cross-dialectally more prestigious variety. Moreover, the evidence suggests that in spite of the prejudicial environment in Puerto Rico, Dominicans embrace their cultural beliefs and national identity. Within the present data, Dominican émigrés in Puerto Rico hold fast to their identity. The outcome of the survey indicates that the native accent remains a highly salient component of Dominican identity. These results fall in line with previous work on Dominican immigrant communities in the U.S. In sum, Dominican linguistic insecurity does not appear to increase and simultaneously the link between identity and language is maintained in spite of contact with an environment of social and linguistic prejudice. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Illustrates how women from the frontier of Laredo, Texas, use, describe, and view the hybrid of Spanish and English spoken at the borderlands as a result of culture and language contact among Mexicans of various backgrounds and Anglos. Categorizes the attitudes toward language choice into intraethnic and interethnic classifications. (32 references) (CK)

The acquisition of sociolinguistic variation by second language learners has gained increased attention. Some research highlights the value of naturalistic exposure through study abroad while other studies point out that classroom input can facilitate the acquisition of particular features of variation. Nevertheless, said attention to the intersection of sociolinguistic variation and second language acquisition is not always reflected in curricular content and pedagogy. As one example, Spanish language classrooms often do not cover voseo, which is defined as the use of the pronoun vos or the corresponding verbal morphology, even though learners are typically presented with other types of variation in personal forms of address. This article discusses reasons why voseo is typically excluded in the language classroom, offers a rationale for its inclusion at the intermediate level that connects with the objectives of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in Communication, Cultures, Comparisons, and Communities, and articulates a series of activities designed to help language learners recognize and respond appropriately to conversational voseo usage. The suggested learning units are framed within the interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational modes of communication and thus promote general language learning while specifically enhancing intermediate learners' sociolinguistic awareness of this particular dialectal feature.