SPANISH-SPEAKING IMMIGRANTS IN A U.S. MIDWESTERN COMMUNITY: AN EXPLORATION OF ATTITUDES TOWARDS SPANISH, SPANISH IN THE U.S., LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE, AND BILINGUALISM

This study investigated Spanish-speaking immigrants’ attitudes towards Spanish, which includes the evaluative reactions that people have towards the language. One hundred participants living in three different cities in Indiana completed a background questionnaire, a language attitudes questionnaire, and a one-on-one interview about their attitudes towards Spanish. It is imperative to know about Spanish-speaking populations’ attitudes in states with lower numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrants like Indiana, because this knowledge helps to influence and make predictions about that language’s maintenance and shift in the community (Luo & Wiseman, 2000; Rivera-Mills, 2000); it guides language policy and planning and promotes language awareness (Pennycook, 2001) by demystifying the idea that some languages are superior to others (Bugel, 2009). In addition to quantitative analysis of the language attitudes questionnaire, leading to results related to four attitudes components (attitudes towards Spanish in general, Spanish in the U.S., Spanish language maintenance, and Spanish/English bilingualism), ten of the interviews were analyzed using Discourse Analysis (DA) (Martin, 2002; Gee, 2014) and

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Languages and Cultures

Year

2015

Author dc:creator

• Barbosa, Mara Raquel

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lori A Czerwionka
• Colleen Neary-Sundquist
• Daniel Olson
• Margie Berns
• Mariko Wei

• language attitudes
• Spanish in the U.S.
• Spanish speakers

Repository record dc:identifier

https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_dissertations/1164

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:docs.lib.purdue.edu:open_access_dissertations-2380