Spanish Heritage Speakers' Spanish and English Writings: Contrastive Rhetorical and Linguistic Analyses

The present study examines both the rhetorical patterns and the linguistic features that SHS in corporate in their Spanish and English writing discourse. For the purpose of this research, university students wrote two argumentative-persuasive essays from four to ten pages in length. The Spanish texts of SHS were compared to the Spanish writing of both Spanish Second Language Learners (SSLL) who are English Native Speakers, and Spanish Native Speakers from Mexico (SNS). The English texts were compared only to the English production of SSLL. A total of 216 pages (yielding a final corpus of 49,428 words) were analyzed. The rhetorical and the linguistic analyses show that there are very important and interesting differences in the way in which the three groups of writers incorporate the diverse linguistic variables examined in this study when composing in either Spanish or English. Moreover, this study suggests that both the Spanish and the English writing of SHS has unique characteristics that demonstrate both a cultural and linguistic transculturation: they do not thoroughly follow the beaten paths of SSLL nor SNS, but find their own pathway to expression.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Spanish

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Spicer-Escalante, Maria L.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Escobar, Anna Maria

• Education, Bilingual and Multicultural

Language dc:language

spa

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3070444

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86120