Language as a social problem: The repression of Spanish in south Texas

• Autores: Aida Hurtado, Raúl Rodríguez
• Localización: Journal of multilingual and multicultural development, ISSN 0143-4632, Vol. 10, Nº. 5, 1989, págs. 401-419
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this paper we examine schools’ ‘claims‐making activities’ of defining Spanish use by students as a social problem. Spector and Kitsuse's (1977) social problems framework is used to analyse data from the 1983 Language Opinion Survey conducted at Pan American University with a sample of college students. We focus on a qualitative analysis of the students’ open‐ended responses to the question of how the schools they attended prior to college reacted to their use of Spanish. The results indicate two major justifications for suppressing Spanish. One, the schools make a direct link between the students’ English assimilation and their economic as well as social mobility. Two, the schools assert that English is the public medium of discourse and Spanish should only be used in the private domain. We conclude that language is selected because it is a mutable characteristic, unlike skin colour, gender, religion or culture. Of all the distinctive attributes possessed by Mexican descendants, Spanish is not only salient but ‘easily’ modified.