(Torrez, 2013: 282)
In her explanation, she underscores the importance of Spanish for group identity and familial communication and describes terrible emotional consequences of not learning Spanish (‘Son perdidos,’ ‘They are lost’). Her commentary in support of Spanish is not a rejection of English, which she clearly wants her children to know. Instead, she advocates Spanish–English bilingual education, because she has no doubt that her children will learn English.
A similar desire to transmit Spanish to the next generation, a sense of its importance for parent–child relationships and a recognition of the universality of English acquisition are apparent in the case of Nilda, a participant in Schecter and Bayley’s (2002) study of language socialization practices among Mexican migrants and their US-born offspring in Texas and California. Nilda was born in the US to Mexican parents. At age 15 she married a Mexican man with whom she had a child. Nilda explains her decision to speak Spanish to her son as follows:
And I got pregnant, and it seemed inconceivable to me that I would teach my son anything else but Spanish. Because I knew that if he went into the school system, he’d learn English. And I spoke English so I could always help him out in that way. But to think that my son would lose out on all that I had learned and that was me. There was too much of me to say ‘Well now you learn English so you can get ahead.’ (Schecter & Bayley, 2002: 167, emphasis in the original)
Nonetheless, despite the widely expressed desire among Latinxs for subsequent generations to maintain Spanish (Taylor et al., 2012), the unfortunate reality is that many children of immigrants are not fluent in the language of their parents, and the majority of the grandchildren of immigrants are monolingual English-speakers (we present detailed statistics on generational patterns of Spanish knowledge later in this chapter). Sometimes this is because parents and other caregivers decide to focus on English acquisition; in other cases children turn away from Spanish. Of course, adults and children alike are exposed to explicit and implicit societal messages that English is the key to fitting in and achieving success and that other languages are un-American and dangerous, and these messages play a role in shaping household language practices and individual choices (King & Fogle, 2006; Velázquez, 2018). The impact of these ideologies can be seen in the words of one participant in Zentella’s ethnographic study of Puerto Ricans in New York, who reported that, ‘I gotta let some of it go. If I start hanging on to my culture, speaking Spanish, it’s gonna hold me back’ (Zentella, 1997a: 142). In some cases, in addition to symbolic violence, Spanish-speakers have also been subjected to physical violence, and the memories and trauma of having been punished for speaking Spanish can lead them to prioritize English. For example, one woman in García-Bedolla’s (2003: 269) research explained that in her grandmother’s youth, ‘they would hit them and stuff when they spoke Spanish in schools, so she didn’t teach her kids how to speak Spanish.’
Spanish-speaking parents whose children don’t speak Spanish sometimes express regret about not having managed to pass on Spanish. However, as Velázquez (2018: 77) astutely puts it, ‘the transmission of Spanish [is] one of the many tasks in the constellation of child-rearing duties.’ In a context in which there is little educational support for Spanish or other minority languages, the burden falls largely on the parents and other caregivers. For those who need to work outside of the home, this can be a challenge, as the following mother explained:
I think a lot of parents are working and I don’t think they have the time to get their kids. … It’s a lot of work. And I have to say that first hand that I wish I could sit and spend a couple of hours a day because I’m sure I could teach them as well as the school could and you know that’s so expensive. We don’t have the time. You know we are living at such a fast paced life. Everything is so expensive, two working parents, you are constantly going, so you basically just let it go, and they start to lose it. (Pease-Alvarez, 2003: 18)
It’s not just parents who lament their children’s lack of Spanish ability, but also the adolescents and adults that they become (García Bedolla, 2003; Goble, 2016; Villa & Rivera-Mills, 2009). For many Latinxs who don’t speak Spanish, this comes with a sense of shame that has some similarity to the shame their parents or grandparents experienced if they did not speak English (García Bedolla, 2003). However, it is often accompanied by a sense of loss, as well as feelings of cultural insecurity or inauthenticity. Indeed, the ideology that sees speaking Spanish is a requirement of ‘authentic’ Latinx identity is widespread among Latinxs as well as non-Latinxs (see Chapter 6). These feelings are evident in the following quote from a Mexican American teacher interviewed by Goble:
a huge barrier for me learning Spanish was also fear of shaming myself because, because Spanish is something that I am supposed to know, because I’m Mexican … If I say it, and I mispronounce something, that would be really embarrassing to me. I was always afraid of sounding like a White girl, trying to speak Spanish. That was – that was a huge fear of mine, and so it was better to just not try at all. (adapted from Goble, 2016: 43–44)
In this excerpt we see how linguistic insecurity can lead to avoidance, which in turn can contribute to language loss. Further, some Latinxs who don’t speak Spanish feel that it has impacted their relationships with those that do. For example, a participant in García Bedolla’s (2003: 270) research reported that, ‘some people think I’m snobby because I don’t speak Spanish’.
In the next section we will examine in more detail, and in a more systematic way, the societal and individual factors that that shape language maintenance and shift.
Factors Impacting Language Maintenance and Shift
Having looked at the patterns of language knowledge and use among US Latinxs and Spanish-speakers, we now consider some group and individual factors that play a role. In this section we focus on social structures and societal values, and the practices that result from them, which can foster or inhibit the use of minority languages such as Spanish.
Ethnolinguistic vitality
One of the most well-known frameworks for the analysis of a minority language’s chances of survival is Giles et al.’s (1977) model of ethnolinguistic vitality, which presupposes that the maintenance of minority languages and ethnic group identities go hand in hand. Although the ethnolinguistic vitality model has received a fair amount of criticism, it is still widely used to analyze language maintenance and/or shift in contact settings around the world (Velázquez, 2018; Yagmur & Ehala, 2011). Further, despite its limitations, one valuable aspect of the ethnolinguistic vitality model is that it takes three different kinds of factors into account, together with group members’ subjective perception of those factors. The three types of factors that shape patterns of language maintenance are demographic factors, status factors and institutional support factors (Giles et al., 1977; Harwood et al., 1994).
Demographic factors include the overall number of speakers, their geographic distribution and density, and the degree to which they are isolated from each other as well as from the rest of society. Large, dense concentrations of ethnolinguistic group members isolated from other groups are thought to promote maintenance. A low rate of exogamy (i.e. marriage outside the group) compared to endogamy (i.e. marriage within the group) is also seen as contributing to maintenance. The potential impact of exogamy and endogamy rates is highlighted by a recent survey showing that 92% of Latinx parents with a Latinx spouse or partner say they speak Spanish to their children but only 55% of Latinx parents with a non-Latinx partner do so (Lopez et al., 2018). This is particularly noteworthy given the rising rates of exogamy among Latinxs and especially US-born Latinxs; in 2015, approximately 39% of US-born Latinx newlyweds were married to non-Latinxs