As it was stated earlier, the questions included in the survey followed an open-ended format. Participants were not provided with a preestablished set of possible answers; instead, they responded freely, including anything they considered relevant. Once all the responses to the question were gathered, the analysis proceeded, looking for concepts that could group the responses into different categories. This process was relatively easy to conduct, as the answers repeated common patterns of linguistic perception and evaluation.
The study is divided into three parts. The first one elicits the participants’ beliefs and affective responses towards the local variety as it compares with Spanish spoken in the homeland, which in this community refers mainly to Mexican Spanish and Puerto Rican Spanish. The second part concentrates on speakers’ attitudes towards the local Spanish, this time considered without a term of comparison. The last part is devoted to the linguistic ideology underlying the attitudes of these speakers and includes some questions that target the behavioral or instrumental components of attitudes.
3.1. Local Spanish vs. Homeland Spanish
Two questions asked participants to compare the local variety of Spanish to the Spanish spoken in Mexico and Puerto Rico
(Is the Spanish spoken by Mexican Americans or Puerto Ricans in your community different from the Spanish spoken in Mexico or Puerto Rico?) and then to express their affective response to that difference.
3All the responses were organized into the three categories presented in
Table 2. As would be expected, the great majority of participants (163: 84%) do find noticeable differences between the Spanish spoken in Mexico or Puerto Rico and the Spanish spoken in the Indiana communities where they live. Only 18 participants (9%) state that they do not perceive significant differences (
Table 2). In some of these cases, the similarity is explained because people speak the kind of Spanish they learned from relatives who were born in Mexico or Puerto Rico.
Of the 163 people who respond that the local Spanish is different, 149 (91%) provide some kind of explanation that substantiates their response. The reasons given by the participants were organized around five major ideas (
Table 3).
Most of the explanations given are descriptive in nature and only incorporate an evaluative attitude or value judgment in the 26 (18%) responses that characterized the local variety as Improper (Group 3). The groups with the largest number of responses characterize the local variety either as a New Spanish Dialect (53: 36%) or as Influenced by English (52: 35%). Together, those two categories make up almost two-thirds (71%) of the explanations given for the difference with homeland Spanish.
When describing the local Spanish as a New Spanish dialect, participants point to the existence of different words and accents, of the same words with different meanings, and to a wider use of slang, or “street” in the Spanish spoken in Indiana. Some comments refer to variations in Spanish as it is spoken in particular geographical areas, not unlike the differences in the English spoken in different areas of the United States: “Creo que sí porque es un diferente lugar y en lugares diferentes hay diferentes acentos o palabras o cosas así. Como una persona de Chicago y una persona de Alabama tenían aspectos diferentes en su inglés creo que es la misma situación”.
Local Spanish is repeatedly characterized as “informal”, with frequent use of slang and idiomatic expressions, while Mexican Spanish is more formal and uses a more complex vocabulary. The term “slang” seems to lump together the informality of the variety, but also the use of idiomatic expressions and “sayings” that were coined in US communities. It is safe to assume that many of these new “sayings” have their origin in English expressions, but speakers do not make mention of the influence of English in the shaping of this New Spanish Dialect. One way to interpret this fact is to consider that for some second and third generation speakers who were born and raised in the United States, this new “slang” or dialect is, in fact, their native Spanish variety, which they do not contrast with an “ideal” or “pure” Spanish, devoid of English influences. Just as loanwords adapt and no longer feel foreign, the new “slang or sayings” may evolve into Spanish in the US “dialectalisms”, “It is regional slang that becomes regular vocabulary. Yes. They do not use idiomatic expressions in the same way”.
A second group of responses (52: 35%) characterizes the differences as Influenced by English. It is most often called “Spanglish” and is described as a “mix” of Spanish and English. In an illustrative rendition of the process described, one person explains that Spanish is “mixteado” with English: “Sí, porque utilisan [sic] español moderno mixtiado con inglés. Spanglish”.
Some speakers mention that they incorporate English words when they do not remember the Spanish counterpart: “I mostly speak Spanglish because sometimes I forget certain words, and of course in Mexico they are fluent”. For others, it is a natural linguistic development when speakers are bilingual and live in constant contact with English: “Yes, because we are bilingual, therefore speak Spanglish which is a mix of both”.
The responses included in this group do not incorporate an evaluative component, which was elicited in the question that followed. One Puerto Rican participant describes “Spanglish” as the US dialect spoken by both Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans who otherwise “speak Spanish very well”. These dialectal differences are obviously more salient when communicating with speakers from other Spanish-speaking countries.
I feel like Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in my community speak Spanish very well, but at times it differs from Spanish in their perspective countries. A lot of the time, “Spanglish” is used in the States rather than authentic, straight-up Spanish. I just got back from Mexico and struggled a bit with the Spanish spoken out there. And to top it all off, Spanish in the States is different from Spanish in Spanish-speaking countries.
Group 3 (
It is improper Spanish) comprises 26 responses (18%) that characterize the differences in terms of correctness and evaluate the variety negatively (
Table 3). The Spanish spoken in the local communities is “broken”, less correct, fluent, and proper than the Spanish spoken in Mexico or Puerto Rico. Some problems mentioned are a limited lexical inventory, which leads to making up “Spanglish” words, as well as errors in pronunciation. There are also remarks on the abundance of “slang”, but unlike in the responses collected in Groups 1 and 2, for these speakers, the use of slang is stigmatized as “not proper” Spanish: “The Spanish I hear here includes more slang and is improper”.
For a few participants (14: 9%), the differences are the result of contact between people from Mexico and Puerto Rico (Group 4: It is a mix of Mexican and Puerto Rican dialects) or from the coexistence of different Mexican regional dialects: “Mexico has many regions with different dialects, accents, and regionalisms”; “Yes. Not every word means the same to a Mexican as to a Puerto Rican”. If before speakers expressed their linguistic awareness about the influence of English in the local Spanish, now they turn to their awareness of the presence of different Spanish dialects and how that contact may impact the Spanish spoken locally. “Yes, we tend to adapt each other’s lingo”.
In their responses to the previous question, most of the participants simply described the nature of the differences without conveying how they valued them. A second question was included in the survey to elicit an evaluative or affective response: If you think that there is a difference, how do you feel or what do you think about that difference?
The answers obtained were organized into the five points of a continuum (
Table 4) that moves from a clearly negative evaluation (37: 31%) (Group 1:
I do not like it/I feel bad/It is incorrect) to the positive appreciation of the local Spanish variety (14: 12%) (Group 5:
I like it/I feel comfortable/It is cool). Between those two poles, 13 (11%) participants report a neutral or indifferent attitude (Group 2:
I am indifferent/Neutral/No feelings). The most common response (56: 46%) is that speakers “do not mind”, stating that the differences from Mexican/Puerto Rican Spanish are “ok”, “normal”, “to be expected” under such sociolinguistic conditions (Group 3:
I do not mind/It is normal). Finally, a minority of speakers (14: 12%) provide a clearly positive evaluation (
I like it/I feel comfortable/It is cool).
In this continuum, a clear break can be established between “negative” (37: 31%) and “not negative” attitudes (83: 69%). The results presented in
Table 4 and
Figure 5 leave little doubt about the prevalence of attitudes that range from neutrality (13: 11%) and acceptance (46: 56%) to positive appreciation (14: 12%). It is also true that clearly negative attitudes are far more common (31%) than clearly positive ones (12%).
While only a minority of Latinas/os in these communities endorse the local dialect unequivocally, most of the evaluations (69%) point to the unavoidable acceptance of a US Spanish variety that is different from Mexican, and Puerto Rican Spanish and whose natural development is beyond their control. Faced with that realization, attitudes can range from neutral to positive, but the majority of people do not reject or stigmatize the local variety. The differences are considered “normal”, “expected”, “inevitable”, “understandable”, and are sometimes explained in purely dialectological terms as “due to geography”, similar to the difference between British and American English: “I think the difference is normal and to be expected. People speak English in England, but it is obviously different from the English we speak”. In other cases, people go a step further from “not minding” to harboring a positive evaluation and to express a sense of pride or attachment to the local variety: “I think it makes us unique in a sense. The fact that we have to navigate between two languages is pretty impressive. It definitely shows our culture”.
Another idea that appears repeatedly when participants explain their feelings about the novelty of the local variety is that any kind of Spanish that allows speakers to communicate effectively is good Spanish. If Spanish can function as an effective means of communication, other considerations (such as correctness or prestige) do not come into play: “As long as they understand me, I don’t have a problem”. The validation of the local dialect seems to rest on a linguistic ideology that values communication over prestige.
A negative attitude towards the type of Spanish that is spoken in the region is found in 31% of the responses. This negative evaluation is anchored on many of the same parameters that appeared in the responses to the previous question. The local Spanish is “incorrect”, “not proper”, and “inauthentic”. It is a variety that “takes away” from the true language and is altogether worse than Mexican Spanish.
The affective component of language attitudes appears very clearly in some of these responses. Speakers report feeling “sad”, “disheartened” and “frustrated” in the face of the Spanish commonly used around them. The affective and behavioral dimensions of speakers’ attitudes appear in the responses of participants who reject and dislike the dialect and also encourage people to be proactive in trying to improve it: “Siento que debemos de mejorar nuestro español y practicar más”.
This part of the study includes a final question that asks people about their feelings if they were to be identified as a Mexican or a Puerto Rican speaker
(If someone told you that you speak Spanish like a Mexican–or like a Puerto Rican if you are Puerto Rican, etc.–, would you take it as a compliment? Why?). The responses to this question can attest to the level of prestige these dialects may hold for the speakers and how much they identify with that dialect (
Table 5).
Table 5 and
Figure 6 show that a little over half of the participants (80: 52%) would consider it a compliment to be told that they speak “like a Mexican” or “like a Puerto Rican”. Some participants explain their response by referring to feelings of Mexican pride, evidencing the clear connection between ethnic pride and linguistic identity.
Zentella (
2007) finds similar results in New York City, where most of the speakers interviewed “were pleased to be identified as speakers of their country’s dialect” (p. 27).
In other cases, the reasons are linguistic in nature. Some people praise the Mexican Spanish variety itself, while others say they would be flattered because being identified as a Mexican implies superior Spanish language skills and fluency.
The percentage of people who responded that they would not take it as a compliment is small (33: 22%). In a few cases, it seems that participants want to distance themselves from a linguistic variety that they consider incorrect: “I would probably feel like I wasn’t speaking it right”. Others explain that they would not take the comment as a compliment because they are in fact Mexican/Puerto Rican, so to be recognized as such when they speak would just be something normal and expected, not particularly deserving of a compliment: “No, I am Mexican, I’m supposed to”. Such responses imply a positive affirmation of their linguistic and dialectal background.
A completely different explanation is offered by those who would not interpret such a comment (“You speak like a Mexican/Puerto Rican”) as a compliment, but as an offensive and racist remark: “I am sure that they say it condescendingly”, “No. I wouldn’t take that as a compliment. I think that would be a bit racist”, “Probably not, because they are stereotyping me”. In doing so, they are assuming for this question a social context that discredits and stigmatizes Mexican/Puerto Rican Spanish speakers.
The presumed social context of the interaction is also behind the responses of 12 (8%) individuals who did not give a Yes, I would take it as a compliment, or No, I would not take it as a compliment response because, for them, the choice hinges on who would be making the comment. If the comment was made by in-group members of the “same race”, they would take it as a compliment, but if the person is perceived as an outsider, “a person from Spain or from a school” or “a bigot”, it would not be taken as a compliment.
All these responses are based on the presupposition for this interaction of a social context that is hostile to Latinas/os. It is interesting to notice that such misgivings originate on different grounds. One would be the racist stigmatization of Latinas/os, and another would be the stigmatization of Latino speech by a person perceived as upholding an ideal of correctness (“a person from Spain”), or by a person associated with a setting where their speech would be stigmatized (from a school’”). These comments evidence social tensions in the incorporation of Latinas/os in the region, particularly in areas where they represent small minority populations.
The number of participants that provided a Neutral/Indifferent response (23: 15%) seemed somewhat surprising. These speakers interpret the question from a remarkably different perspective. Some feel an unquestionable legitimacy to the way they speak Spanish, making the importance of outside endorsements of the way they speak a moot point or irrelevant: “Neither as a compliment nor insult, aside from region and accent, Spanish is the same language”, “I wouldn’t take it as a compliment, but I wouldn’t get offended if they told me I sound like a Puerto Rican”. In feeling this way, they demonstrate a level of linguistic security and confidence in the way they speak.
3.2. Attitudes and Beliefs about the Local Variety of Spanish
The second concentration of the study involves the speakers’ beliefs and attitudes about their local variety, but this time considered on its own, without another dialect as a point of reference or comparison (How would you describe the Spanish spoken in your community?).
Table 6 and
Figure 7 show that the largest number of responses (62: 30%) make reference to the low level of Spanish language use in the places where they live. Perhaps the question was interpreted by participants as assuming that Spanish was regularly spoken in their communities, which, as they make clear, in many cases is not the case. As one person puts it, “it is hard to describe because very few people speak Spanish”. The low frequency of use is associated with living in mostly “rural” or “Caucasian” areas: “I moved to a rural white community, so it isn’t”.
Some people who moved to Northwest Indiana from Chicago comment on how much more widely Spanish is spoken in the city. One person points to the fact that in suburban towns where Latinas/os are small minorities, people may shy away from speaking Spanish in public: “Ahora vivo en Munster y hay pocas familias que hablan español y si lo hablan no hablan en público. Antes cuando you viví en Chicago fue muy diferente. Muchas personas de todas las edades hablan español todavía”.
In another 24 cases (12%), participants mention the dialectal affiliation of the local Spanish to the Spanish spoken in Mexico and Puerto Rico. It is “Mexican Spanish” or “Puerto Rican Spanish”, depending on who the majority population is.
Responses also point to a blend of Mexican and Puerto Rican features in the Spanish spoken locally: “All over it is mixed between Mexican and Puerto Rican”. The perception of a blend of dialects as a defining feature of the Spanish spoken in the community suggests a metalinguistic awareness that can be attributed to the fact that in Northwest Indiana, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans have a long history of living side by side. It also shows a positive attitude towards the accommodation of features of the other dialect.
This linguistic situation, which allows for the incorporation of lexical items from the other dialect, is very different from the one described by
Ramos Pellicia (
2014, p. 39) for the midwestern town of Lorain, OH. In Lorain, Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans had also coexisted for over six decades, but these groups “have separate and different language ideologies and have decided against converging their linguistic varieties. There is no evidence of superficial borrowing, or influence of lexical items”. The linguistic divergence in this case is linked to a history of tensions and segregation of Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans.
The Mix of English and Spanish appears, once again, as a salient characteristic of the local Spanish (20: 10%), as does the description of the variety as Slang/Informal (16: 8%) “learned at home, not school”. It is also called Normal (15: 8%), implying that this variety of Spanish is what they consider habitual, natural, or ordinary Spanish and does not need further specifications; it is just “Spanish”.
Finally, in 31% (60) of the cases, the responses provide a clearly positive or negative evaluation. In 39 (20%) responses the Spanish variety is considered “proper”, “good” or “very Good” Spanish. Negative evaluations (21) make up 11% and seem to be largely based on the influence of English.
As it was done earlier when speakers compared local and homeland Spanish, the survey included a follow-up question destined to elicit the affective connection participants may feel towards the Spanish spoken in the region (
How do you feel or what do you think about the Spanish spoken in your community?) (
Table 7).
The subgroup of evaluative responses (97: 54%) conveys feelings that range from “very good” to “bad” (
Figure 8). Feelings about the local Spanish are overwhelmingly positive (58%), “I feel like it’s great”, “I think it’s good, should be spoken more”. In the middle of this continuum, other responses express more neutral feelings, but still with a clear acceptance of the variety (“I’m ok with it”, “Language is used to communicate thoughts and ideas, so as long as people understand one another, I don’t mind”). From there, the scale moves to a small number of responses that convey negative feelings and judgments (17: 17%): “It is not very proper because of the lack of education in the language” and “It is poor”.
Despite the phrasing of the question, which clearly asked speakers to express “how they felt”, close to half of the responses (83: 46%) did not provide an affective or evaluative response. This is an issue that clearly should be addressed in further studies.
A large group of participants (51: 61%) responds to the question, (
How do you feel or what do you think about the Spanish spoken in your community?) again with remarks about the low level of Spanish language use in their communities, or by making non-affective and non-evaluative linguistic comments (20: 24%). In 8 cases (10%), people respond that they do not have any emotional response and are “indifferent” (
Table 7).
One factor that can play a role in Spanish language use is the attitude of non-Latinas/os towards the use of Spanish in public settings. Language is a salient marker of ethnic affiliation, and how people outside the ethnic group may respond to or feel about that symbol can be an indication of how the manifestation of an ethnic Latino identity is judged in different settings. These issues are addressed in one question of the study that questioned participants about their experience in Northwest Indiana: In your opinion, what is the attitude of non-Latinas/os towards the use of Spanish in Northwest Indiana?
The responses obtained often equated different experiences with different areas, contrasting the Northwest Indiana Rust Belt with the rest of the region and the state. Outside of the East Chicago and Hammond Metropolitan area, where Latinas/os are present in significant numbers, perceptions change; “Some people feel it is a positive thing worth promoting, and some think it should not happen publicly. The former tends to be from northern Lake County and the latter from the rest of the region”, “Most do not like it, in the majority of Caucasian towns”, “Depends on the area. Racism is alive and well in NWI”.
Answers were classified into five groups in a scale from negative to positive attitudes as follows: “Negative”/“Somewhat negative”/“Mixed”/“Neutral”/“Positive” (
Table 8 and
Figure 9).
Results in
Figure 9 show half of the responses (50%) report negative or somewhat negative attitudes toward the public use of Spanish. Sixty-three (35%) of the participants feel non-Latinos have a
Negative response towards the use of Spanish in public settings: “Negative. I live near a lot of conservatives”, “I feel now with politics, a lot of people are being so racist and prejudiced against Spanish speakers. As soon as they hear someone speaking Spanish, they immediately think that they are illegal. It makes my blood boil”, “People get very mad due to the fact this is an English-speaking country”.
Another 15% gave a response that was classified as Somewhat negative because the negativity appears qualified, as in “They don’t appreciate it because they might feel awkward”.
The other half of the participants (50%) perceive Mixed (22%), Neutral (10%), or Positive attitudes (18%): “Aquí en Indiana, hay gente que se molesta cuando hablas español y gente que le gusta para aprender o practicar a la vez”, “Indiferente. For the most part, I don’t think non-Latinos care about the use of Spanish”, “Most of them are fine with it. No problem”, “Muy buena”.
These subjective appreciations provide a glimpse into how the performance of a Latino ethnic identity is perceived to be valued by “out-group” people in real-life contexts. Overall, the perception that seems to prevail is the acceptance of bilingualism as a reality in the region, with a stronghold of the population that does not appreciate this situation.
The location where participants live appears to be a significant factor, whether they live inside (
Figure 10 and
Figure 11) or outside an ethnic enclave. The responses obtained from people who live inside a Latino enclave show a lower percentage of genuinely
Negative attitudes, fewer
Neutral attitudes, and a higher percentage of
Positive attitudes. These results point to “place of residence” and the demographics associated with it as a factor affecting how the performance of a Latino identity is judged and valued in the region.
As Latinas/os increasingly live in suburban settings, where they are a small minority, their exposure to a negative evaluation of their use of Spanish in public increases. At the same time, as non-Latino residents have a wider exposure to the public use of Spanish, their attitudes may also change. What seems to be clear is that Indiana Latinas/os have left the old residential patterns for good, and this will have consequences for their incorporation experiences in the region.
3.3. Ideologies of Prestige and Linguistic Correctness
The last part of the study delved into the ideologies of prestige and linguistic correctness of the speakers, as they can have a significant impact on the present and future Spanish language use in the region. Ideologies shape people’s identities and bring with them certain forms of behavior, including linguistic habits. They are essential knowledge for an approach to linguistics through the lens of societal and interactional contexts (
Preston 1989;
Moreno Fernández 2016).
Ideology is also crucial for following norms of correctness and appropriateness in language use. Variants may be labeled as incorrect due to their divergence from prescribed norms or their association with speech from less prestigious regions, countries, or social groups. The use of “correct” or “incorrect” in this context stems from subjective attitudes rooted in social norms rather than from objective linguistic evaluation (
Silva-Corvalán and Enrique-Arias 2017, p. 38).
The study included a question that asked about what country or countries speakers identified as prototypes of “correct” Spanish: In what country or countries do you think people speak “correct” Spanish? Why? The main prototypes within an “international language” category usually have varieties directly associated with countries (“Spanish from Spain,” “British English”). The notion of choosing an ideal linguistic variety that differs from one’s own is not an uncommon phenomenon. The classification of language varieties is influenced by cultural, political, and economic prestige, resulting in certain languages being deemed more prestigious than others.
Table 9 shows that the countries mentioned more often are Spain (68: 31%) and Mexico (51: 23%), followed closely by “Every Country” (44: 20%). Often, speakers believe that the best variety of a language is tied to a particular territory, which features prominently in history: “Spain is the birthplace of Spanish, and that is said to be correct Spanish”, “Spain, the Spanish language originates there”.
In her work in New York City,
Zentella (
2007) explains that many immigrants come to the United States with Latin American ideas of good and bad language, including the belief in “the superiority of the Spanish of Spain and the local ‘norma culta’, particularly of highland Sound American dialects” (p. 28). The strength of this linguistic alignment seems to be in part affected by the level of linguistic security. In her New York City study, she found that the more linguistically secure Latino groups agreed more strongly with the notion that “we should not learn to speak like Spaniards”. Peninsular Spanish was also selected as the most correct variety in a study that targeted the perceptions of Cubans in Miami (
Alfaraz 2002).
After Spain, Mexico is, by a very long margin, the country identified as the model for correct Spanish. This is not surprising, as most of the participants are of Mexican ancestry.
In 20% of the responses (44), speakers challenge the notion of correctness that underlies the question itself, stating that “good Spanish” is not confined to a specific place but is spoken across all Spanish-speaking countries (Every Country). They reject the notion that correctness is associated with any country, stating that there is no such thing as one “correct” way to speak Spanish: “Every Hispanic race has different ways of speaking Spanish. There is no correct or perfect way”, “This is an irrelevant question. There is no such thing as “correct” Spanish when comparing the way different Spanish-speaking countries use the language differently. Each is valid”.
Others (7: 3%) convey a similar idea by saying that “correct” Spanish is not spoken anywhere, as every dialect develops its own “slang” and “street talk”: “None. Does anyone truly speak any language “correctly” across the board? I feel it is human nature to develop short cuts and slang”.
Sometimes linguistic prestige is not associated with a place but with a context. Among those who think that correct Spanish can be found irrespective of geographical location, there are people (13: 6%) who base their notions of correctness on educational attainment and social status: “Throughout Spain and Latin America, where there is a higher social-economic status”,” In my opinion, higher education level Spanish from any Spanish speaking country is correct Spanish”.
Rivera-Mills (
2000, p. 27) study of Latinas/os living in Fortuna, California, records similar results. She finds that speakers felt that their variety was not the best but rather perceived as better the Spanish spoken by persons with more education, no matter their country of origin.
A significant finding in the results of this study is the low prestige of the Puerto Rican variety, named only four times, although there were at least 20 Puerto Rican participants in the sample. The stigmatization of Puerto Rican Spanish in the United States has been amply documented and is also illustrated in some of the comments made by participants in this survey. Similar results are reported by
Medina-Rivera (
2014) in his study of language attitudes in Cleveland, OH. He finds that, although Puerto Ricans are the largest group of Latinas/os in the city and the largest group in his sample, Puerto Rican Spanish was the variety less favorably evaluated. Puerto Rican Spanish was also considered to be the least appropriate variety to be taught at schools. Spanish from Spain was the most common choice as the best Spanish variety to be taught in an educational setting (33.3%), followed by Mexican Spanish (15.3%), with only 6.3% choosing Puerto Rican Spanish.
The previous question was paired with another that asked about what country or countries speakers associated with “incorrect” Spanish (
Table 10). The United States is the country that most people identify with “incorrect” Spanish, but the low percentage (44: 26%) confirms previous findings, in regard to the general acceptance and validation of the local Spanish variety. The second country most often identified with “incorrect Spanish” is Puerto Rico (20: 12%), which confirms the lack of prestige of this particular variety of Spanish. In contrast, Mexican Spanish is only mentioned five times as a prototype of “incorrect Spanish”.
Thirty people (17%) explain that no country speaks “incorrect” Spanish because there is not such a thing as “incorrect” Spanish: “None, all have a proper way of using it”, “I do not. Every Spanish speaking country has its own dialect. It is not necessarily ‘incorrect’”.
The opposite idea, that “incorrect” Spanish is found in “all or most of the countries” appears 17 (10%) times. Incorrectness is related in some examples to the use of slang, “All of them. They all use slang”.
Some speakers (17: 10%) link the notion of “incorrectness” to social factors such as low socio-economic status and poor educational achievement: “People speak incorrect Spanish in low education areas of every Spanish speaking country”, “Within Spain and Latin America, where there is a lower social-economic status”.
A third question asked participants about the importance of speaking Spanish correctly:
How important is it to speak Spanish “correctly”? Why? This is the only question included in the study that provided a set of preestablished options for the response. Participants had to choose between the four categories presented in
Figure 12 and were later asked to explain their answer in a free response format.
The overwhelming response (84%) is that speaking Spanish correctly is important or very important. They state that speaking correct Spanish is important to communicate effectively, to improve job opportunities, and because correct Spanish is part of the cultural heritage they would want to transmit to their children. It is also part of the image one portrays publicly and, as such, can be used to pass judgment on a person: “Do not want to seem uneducated”, “Again, in the Latina/o community, being able to speak Spanish fluently is important; otherwise, you are stigmatized as being ‘too American’ or ‘white’”.
This part of the study ends with a question that asks whether speakers consider the variety of Spanish spoken in Northwest Indiana to be a suitable variety of Spanish to be taught at schools: Should We Teach in the Schools the Kind of Spanish Spoken in Your Community? Why? The endorsement or not endorsement of this variety represents the choice of a course of action on the part of the speaker, so it provides an example of the behavioral component of attitudes.
Table 11 shows that more people are in favor (48%) than against (42%) of using the local variety of Spanish as the Spanish dialect to be taught at local schools.
Some of the responses that are in favor of teaching the local Spanish in schools offer linguistic reasons: this variety is as grammatically correct or viable as any other. Moreover, “if students learn at school about Spanish dialects from other regions of the Spanish speaking world, why not learn their own regional variety as well? It is also important to learn the Spanish they will hear most often at home and in the community so that they can communicate effectively”.
In her study of Latinas/os in New York City,
Zentella’s (
2007) finds that of all the Latino groups included, Colombians were the only ones who were mostly (56%) in favor of teaching their own dialect in US schools. In this and other measures, Colombians were the group which displayed the most linguistic security. In our data, if the 12
Do not know cases are not counted, the results of our survey show that 54% of the participants respond in favor of teaching the local Spanish variety in the schools. This finding can be interpreted as another measure of the relative linguistic security of these speakers.
Many times, the reasons adduced to favor the local variety are community oriented. Speaking the same Spanish will help people communicate better, build bridges, and tend to each other’s needs. This group of responses seems to value communication over correctness. The main thing is to know Spanish, and the local variety of Spanish will guarantee that individuals communicate effectively in their communities. Although for some people this may entail teaching a Spanish that is not formal, it is nevertheless considered preferable. “Yes, absolutely. It would benefit others so much more and even those that don’t understand much English”, “All kinds should be taught”, “Yes because in school we learn Spanish from South America, Europe, etc., which is not wrong, but focus on Spanish in our community”, “Si porque es el español que oyen en sus casas y su comunidad”. These speakers advocate for the teaching and preservation of local Spanish.
Another set of responses (42%) reject the notion of teaching in schools, a variety that they consider improper and incorrect. The school is seen as the context in which students should learn formal and standard Spanish, just as they learn standard English. The standard norm is also the “universal” form, which increases the capacity of communication. The local Spanish is considered “slang” that may hinder the chances to advance socially. Several participants believe that schools should teach the correct Spanish, and then students will “figure out little details”.