Your search found 7712 results.

Descriptors:
Immigrants; Foreign Countries; Language Proficiency; Preschool Children; Student Adjustment; Cultural Background; Behavior Problems; Child Rearing; Academic Ability; Spanish; Student Attitudes; Second Language Learning; Cultural Differences

Abstract:
The continuing incorporation of immigrant populations into the Spanish educational system poses an important challenge in that all participants must cooperate toward creating the best possible adaptation process at the academic level as well as on the personal and social levels. A number of different factors appear to influence children's adjustment during the preschool stage, and these factors are especially relevant since many studies have shown that this is a key period for the prevention of future difficulties. The present study examines the variables involved in the adaptation of a group of preschool-aged children from different cultural backgrounds in Spain. The results indicate that preschoolers, regardless of their background, have similar performance and learning potential, with language proficiency being the factor that most clearly affects the other variables investigated. It was also found that children's attitudes toward learning were related to the presence of behavioral difficulties and with the quality and type of parental child-rearing practices. These practices appear to be related to a number of difficulties immigrant children may experience on personal and social levels. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

Related Items: Show Related Items

Full-Text Availability Options:

More Info:
Help | Tutorial Help Finding Full Text |  More Info:
Help Find in a Library |  Publisher's website

Descriptors:
Immigrants; Latin Americans; Foreign Countries; Multilingualism; Language Variation; English (Second Language); Spanish; Romance Languages; Language Usage; Self Concept; Metropolitan Areas; Secondary School Students; Socialization

Abstract:
Since the end of the last century, more than 10% of students in Catalonia's schools are immigrants, mostly concentrated in areas of Catalonia where the population speaks Castilian in everyday life. Although these newcomers are educated in Catalan, the majority use diverse varieties of Spanish as their language of everyday communication. In the case of students from Latin America, it is possible to observe the emergence of a new repertoire that shares traits of different varieties of Spanish spoken in South America. This article focuses on the hybrid features of this repertoire, its transmission among peers, and also on the way teachers categorize and value it. The research results reveal that students develop multilingual abilities to fulfill practical goals. The data also show that varieties of vernacular Catalan and Spanish are articulated with a new Latino language repertoire in a complex set of resources in which linguistic forms of various origins are mixed. The uses of this hybrid repertoire can be related to key issues such as the speaker's stance regarding school, but also to symbolic aspects of broader processes, such as the re-territorialization of languages and people and the emergence of new processes of identity construction in a multilingual and cosmopolitan city. (Contains 4 notes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

Related Items: Show Related Items

Full-Text Availability Options:

More Info:
Help | Tutorial Help Finding Full Text |  More Info:
Help Find in a Library |  Publisher's website

Descriptors:
Linguistics; Ideology; Language Minorities; Global Approach; Romance Languages; Finno Ugric Languages; Political Influences; Language Attitudes; Ethnography; Self Concept; Second Language Learning; Foreign Countries; Russian; Spanish

Abstract:
Catalan and Estonian can be considered "medium-sized" languages with some key common features that allow us to analyze the evolution of the two cases comparatively. Firstly, other formerly hegemonic languages (Spanish and Russian, respectively) have historically minoritized them. Secondly, the political equilibrium has now changed in such a way that the "medium-sized" languages have been resituated in the public sphere, regaining some institutional recognition. In turn, this has caused the formerly dominating languages to be resituated too, where a high degree of contact between the two linguistic communities exists. Finally, in the globalization era, ideologies about (minoritized) languages may shift from identity-based values toward more pragmatic and instrumental ones. This article presents ethnographically collected data from both Tallinn and Barcelona (2008-2009), providing a reading of the Catalan case and evolution as seen through the Estonian experience. The study examines language-ideological constructs underlying the discourses of the linguistic groups in contact, how they affect and are affected by the context, how they interact with and co-modify each other and ultimately, how can they affect the process by which a "medium-sized" language may be adopted by "new speakers" and acquires a stable position at the level of its public functions. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

Related Items: Show Related Items

Full-Text Availability Options:

More Info:
Help | Tutorial Help Finding Full Text |  More Info:
Help Find in a Library |  Publisher's website

Descriptors:
Language Usage; Language Variation; Foreign Countries; Ideology; Multilingualism; Official Languages; Monolingualism; Friendship; Urban Schools; Neighborhoods; Bilingualism; Self Concept; Language Planning; Language Attitudes; Comparative Analysis; Sociolinguistics; Educational Environment; Spanish; Romance Languages

Abstract:
Monolingual speakers of a national language continue to be the ideal figures on which national identities and senses of community are built. Yet this longstanding equation between nation and language is being contested by other ideologies. Alternatives are emerging from such disparate social locations as the European Union, now advocating for trilingualism as the mark of the "truly" European (Gal 2012), and urban schools and neighborhoods like those described in this issue. Significantly, Barcelona lies at the intersection of several scales of political organization, each with language policies that arise from and impact ideologies and practices. As an economically dynamic urban center with a flow of increasingly diverse immigration, it is located within an autonomous (and linguistically distinct) community, in a large state that has a linguistic project of its own, and is itself a member of the European Union, with its own language policies. The articles in this special issue show that friendship networks, neighborhoods and schools can be differently located within this matrix. Comparisons across such institutional contexts can be further aligned with comparisons over time (enabled by the high quality of earlier fieldwork), thereby illuminating how various factors contribute to change. But scale is not only a matter of political organization and policy but also of perspectives in interaction: How speakers locate themselves vis-a-vis their interlocutors, as they inhabit person-types that are imagined within envelopes of space-time (chronotopes). Of the many interrelated phenomena described in these articles, the author focuses on three: (1) the creation of new registers in schools; (2) the limitations of schools as sites for sociolinguistic research; and (3) a matter of perspective: how informants seem to have their eyes on varying scales of comparison and judgment when they evaluate the social significance of their own and others' linguistic practices. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

Related Items: Show Related Items

Full-Text Availability Options:

More Info:
Help | Tutorial Help Finding Full Text |  More Info:
Help Find in a Library |  Publisher's website

Descriptors:
Language Attitudes; Foreign Countries; Romance Languages; Immigrants; Working Class; Longitudinal Studies; High School Students; Spanish; Self Concept; Language Usage; Maturity (Individuals); Experience; Political Attitudes; Political Influences; Peer Relationship; Young Adults

Abstract:
During the early catalanization of schooling in the Barcelona area in the 1980s, Castilian-speaking teenagers of working-class immigrant descent often struggled against Catalan language and identity. This longitudinal study followed a group of high-school classmates and found that as young adults, some but not all of the resistant working-class Castilian speakers have incorporated Catalan into their lives and identity. This article draws on Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the "chronotope" or time-space frame to analyze the accounts of language and identity given by informants who adapted positively to Catalan and that of a peer whose hostility to Catalan increased over the years. Drawing on three contrasting chronotopes, informants give different meanings to personal experiences and linguistic practices. Those who adapted positively to Catalan present their linguistic development within biographical and cosmopolitan chronotopes that emphasize individual maturation and experience. They reject the politicization of language and an ideology of authenticity that links language choice to origins. The more anti-Catalan peer presents a socio-historical chronotope that frames his own experience as political and related to national and state debates, and he draws on an ideology of ethnolinguistic solidarity and linguistic authenticity. (Contains 9 notes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

Related Items: Show Related Items

Full-Text Availability Options:

More Info:
Help | Tutorial Help Finding Full Text |  More Info:
Help Find in a Library |  Publisher's website

Descriptors:
Adult Students; Native Speakers; Social Class; Romance Languages; Spanish; Cultural Differences; Language Usage; Stereotypes; Sociolinguistics; Native Language; Language Minorities; Language Attitudes; Second Language Learning; Foreign Countries

Abstract:
Adult students of Catalan are worthy of study because they reveal complexities underlying taken-for-granted assumptions about Catalan speakers and Castilian speakers. Far from fitting into neat bundles aligning language of origin, social class, and national orientation, the students in this study exemplify the breakdown of boundaries traditionally assumed to exist between Catalan speakers and Castilian speakers. These findings point to a disjuncture between public discourse and the lived experience of language users. Close examination of actual speakers' motivations, classroom performance, and national orientations reveals much more nuance; in this classroom, the fault lines run along social class divisions, which are themselves contrary to stereotypes. This finding advances studies of linguistic authority, suggesting that native speakers may be positioned differently in different sociolinguistic contexts, depending on their social class and whether the language in question is an institutionalized code or a minoritized one. (Contains 1 table and 7 notes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

Related Items: Show Related Items

Full-Text Availability Options:

More Info:
Help | Tutorial Help Finding Full Text |  More Info:
Help Find in a Library |  Publisher's website

Descriptors:
Association Measures; Correlation; Mexican Americans; Racial Bias; Spanish; English; Family Relationship; Scores; Acculturation; Physical Characteristics; Validity; Social Bias

Abstract:
Implicit race/ethnic prejudice was assessed using Spanish- and English-language versions of an Implicit Association Test that used Hispanic/Anglo first names and pleasant/unpleasant words as stimuli. This test was administered to a consecutive sample of Mexican American adults residing in the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas of whom about two-thirds chose to be tested in English and one-third preferred Spanish. Participants were mostly female (73%) with a mean age of 32 years and mean education of 13 years. Among 83 participants, 43% demonstrated in-group implicit prejudice while 26% showed out-group implicit prejudice toward Anglos. There was a significant negative correlation between family values (familism and filial piety) and implicit race/ethnic prejudice scores but no significant association was found between implicit race/ethnic prejudice scores and acculturation or skin tone. Results contribute to the ongoing controversy regarding the validity of implicit race/ethnic prejudice, supporting the concept that societal not individual prejudices are being measured. (Contains 1 table.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

Related Items: Show Related Items

Full-Text Availability Options:

More Info:
Help | Tutorial Help Finding Full Text |  More Info:
Help Find in a Library |  Publisher's website

Descriptors:
Native Speakers; Learning Experience; Nouns; Spanish; Second Language Learning; Morphology (Languages); Heritage Education; Form Classes (Languages); Language Proficiency; Task Analysis; Pictorial Stimuli; Language Research; Oral Language; Error Patterns; Graduate Students; Advanced Courses

Abstract:
This study examined whether type of early language experience provides advantages to heritage speakers over second language (L2) learners with morphology, and investigated knowledge of gender agreement and its interaction with diminutive formation. Diminutives are a hallmark of Child Directed Speech in early language development and a highly productive morphological mechanism that facilitates the acquisition of declensional noun endings in many languages (Savickiene and Dressler, 2007). In Spanish, diminutives regularize gender marking in nouns with a non-canonical ending. Twenty-four Spanish native speakers, 29 heritage speakers and 37 L2 learners with intermediate to advanced proficiency completed two picture-naming tasks and an elicited production task. Results showed that the heritage speakers were more accurate than the L2 learners with gender agreement in general, and with non-canonical ending nouns in particular. This study confirms that early language experience and the type of input received confer some advantages to heritage speakers over L2 learners with early-acquired aspects of language, especially in oral production. (Contains 8 tables, 5 figures and 7 notes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

Related Items: Show Related Items

Full-Text Availability Options:

More Info:
Help | Tutorial Help Finding Full Text |  More Info:
Help Find in a Library |  Publisher's website

Descriptors:
Parent Child Relationship; Foreign Countries; Language Acquisition; Ideology; Multilingualism; Language Planning; Participant Observation; Mexican Americans; American Indians; American Indian Languages; Immigration; Parent Attitudes; Language Attitudes; Language Maintenance; English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; Intervention; Spanish

Abstract:
San Lucas Quiavini is a community of Zapotec (Otomanguean) speakers in Oaxaca, Mexico. Since the 1970s, the community has seen large-scale migration to Los Angeles, California, where about half the community now resides. Participant observation and interviews conducted over nine years in both locales, with a focus on interactional patterns in the home domain, indicate that parental language ideologies concerning the relationship between language and place of birth, the nature of multilingual acquisition and impact belief--the belief that parents have as to the level of control they can exercise over their children's language choices (De Houwer in "Studies on language acquisition." Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 1999), taken together, disfavor the maintenance of the heritage language. In particular, a weak impact belief undermines parents' ability to engage in language interventions in support of San Lucas Quiavini Zapotec. As a result, family-external language intervention factors that promote language shift, such as the school and peer groups, exert great influence. With a substantial number of San Lucas families living in California and their impact on language choices in the home community (Perez Baez in press), family language policy is of great relevance to the survival prospects of San Lucas Quiavini Zapotec not only in diaspora but also in the home community. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

Related Items: Show Related Items

Full-Text Availability Options:

More Info:
Help | Tutorial Help Finding Full Text |  More Info:
Help Find in a Library |  Publisher's website

Descriptors:
Parent Child Relationship; Foreign Countries; Language Acquisition; Ideology; Multilingualism; Language Planning; Participant Observation; Jews; Judaism; Language Attitudes; Language Usage; Spanish; Language Variation; Biographies; Oral History; Educational History; French; Second Language Learning; Social Status; Code Switching (Language); Ethnicity

Abstract:
This article explores the diminished use of Judeo-Spanish among Jews living in Turkey and asks the following research question: What factors, ideologies, and practices contribute to the demise of Judeo-Spanish? To address this question, we employed life history inquiry based on two oral history archives documenting elderly Turkish-Jewish community members' lived experiences in Turkey. We argue that the endangerment of Judeo-Spanish is caused by the reciprocal interaction between broader, societal language ideologies and family-internal language practices. In particular, the opening of the Alliance schools among the Turkish Jewry in the second half of the nineteenth century relegated Judeo-Spanish to a lower social standing and promoted French as the language of Western enlightenment while Turkish nationalism and the "Turkish-only" language policies of the newly formed Turkish Republic aimed to create a monolingual public space in Turkey. To further explain how monolingual language ideologies influenced the use of Judeo-Spanish in the family, we discuss the negative language attitudes towards Judeo-Spanish that are reproduced in the family and specific language practices (e.g., code-meshing) that relegate Judeo-Spanish to linguistic periphery, yet keep this language as a marker of ethnic identity. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

Related Items: Show Related Items

Full-Text Availability Options:

More Info:
Help | Tutorial Help Finding Full Text |  More Info:
Help Find in a Library |  Publisher's website