Some Properties of Bilingual Maintenance and Loss in Mexican Background High-School Students

Abstract

Properties of the maintenance and loss of Spanish/English bilingualism wereinvestigated in 308 high-school students of Mexican background. Subjects were classified by their depth of familial establishment in the United States. The key variables investigated were their actual and self-reported proficiencies in Spanish and English, self-reported language choice behavior in various settings, and their language attitude. The largest difference in Spanish proficiency was found between the cohort who were born in the United States but whose parents were born in Mexico and the cohort whose parents were born in the United States, with maintenance of Spanish evident up to this group. Maintenance of Spanish proficiency was principally associated with adult language practice in the home, and was not predicted by the subject's language choice outside the home or their language attitude. In turn, adult language choice was found to be affected by the demographic fact of immigration, the adults ability to use English in the home, and increasing distance in the familial social network ties to Mexico. Outside of the home domain, language choice was found to show rapid and constant shift towards English. This shift in language choice was unrelated to Spanish proficiency, but instead was predicted by the subject's language attitude. Language attitude also appeared to contaminate self-reported proficiency in both Spanish and English. Finally, a response latency task for vocabulary production and recognition in Spanish suggested that attrition of Spanish is best characterized as difficulty in retrieval rather than total loss.