Love and Hate for Spanish Bilingualism in the United States
By Prashanth Thomas
Introduction:
In the present-day United States of America (USA), we’ve reached a point where we have many diverse groups of immigrants. Being built on immigrants is commonly referred to as one of America’s biggest narratives. With these immigrants, come foreign languages and cultures. This also leads to many people being bilingual speakers. Jennifer Austin defines bilingualism as “a general term for knowing two, three, or more languages”(Austin 3). In the more common definition, this would be referred to as multilingualism, while being multilingual in 2 languages is known as bilingualism. “In 2016, 22% of the population of the United States over the age of five reported being able to speak a language other than English (United States Census Bureau, 2016). After English, Spanish is the most frequently spoken language in the U.S., it is used by 35.8 million Latinos and 2.6 million non-Latinos (Pew Research Center, 2015). This number is likely to increase further, because the Latino population is the largest minority group in the U.S. and is projected to triple in size, from 42 million to 128 million, by 2050 (Pew Research Center, 2008)” (Gimenez Arce 4). Although The United States has no official language, there is a large opposition to speaking languages other than English. As one of the biggest groups of foreign language speaking in the United States, Spanish speakers are significantly subjected to this. On social media there’s a plethora of videos of people being ostracized in public at places like grocery stores and malls, for speaking in Spanish, and being told offensive lines such as “Go back to your country”. This sentiment influences people of different backgrounds, especially those of bilingual speakers who can speak English, but may prefer to speak Spanish at other times. Immigrants face a dilemma of adapting to a different country, and the children of immigrants have to deal with a constant liminality between their ancestral language and English. Spanish is the second most spoken language in this country, and as such, Spanish bilingual speakers face this problem of pressured assimilation the most. People have a fear of being looked at as an “outsider.”
Many people also associate proficiency in “proper English” with education or power in America, but to what level does this make sense, if the concept of a “standard English” is just an ideal that doesn’t necessarily exist? Language constantly evolves, and the way we speak English is different from the way British people speak it. If “proper” language is a construct, it makes us wonder if so much emphasis should even be placed on this proper English. This raises many questions. What is it like to be a Spanish bilingual in America? Should we have bilingual schools in America or should bilingual speakers be pushed towards one language in school? Is there benefit to teaching children Spanish, if based on research, within a couple of generations, the second language is lost for bilingual families? First, I’ll be looking into bilingual experiences, and people’s sentiments towards maintaining two languages, as well as sentiments towards monolingualism. Next, I’ll be conducting an interview with a Spanish speaking 2nd generation Mexican immigrant to get a personal account on Spanish bilingualism. After that I’ll be analyzing the sentiments expressed in the text, and in the interview to look at the potentially positive or negative aspects of bilingualism in society and in general, as well as if it is better to point people towards one language. Finally, I’ll be looking into how educators and administrators should go about introducing bilingual education into schools.
The Bilingual Experience and Receptions to Bilingualism Bilingualism is a regular part of Latino immigrants’ and their descendants’ lives. On one hand, children are expected to understand and speak Spanish, and Latino immigrants are disappointed when their children can’t speak it. On the other hand, Spanish speakers are also pressured to abandon speaking Spanish, and assimilate by adopting English as their main language. This causes children to feel like they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They feel pressure from both sides not to go to the other.
Many Latinos have written about the pressure to know Spanish by family and friends in their communities, and are critiqued when they know English better, or have assimilated more into American culture than Latino culture. “’Pocbo, cultural traitor, you’re speaking the oppressor’s language by speaking English, you’re ruining the Spanish language,’” (Anzaldúa 77). Part of this comes from people associating cultural identity and practice with speaking a language. At the same time, some others feel the opposite. “U.S. Latin@s of all generations are redefining their native cultures without a language requirement. In interviews with 1.018 Latin@s in New York City (a convenience sample), 84 percent of the U.S. born (n = 510) and 67 percent of those born in Latin America (n= 508), agreed that someone could be a Puerto Rican/Dominican/etc. ‘without knowing Spanish’. For the majority of those interviewed, Spanish was not an indispensable part of their culture” (Zentella 332). Thus, there is mixed a feeling coming from the Latino community in regards to knowing Spanish.
The pressure to drop Spanish is described by Austin. “When languages come into contact, the minority language may be affected by its status as a minority language. Sometimes bilingual speakers stop using the minority language and start using (and teaching to their children) only the majority language. This is called language shift. In the most extreme cases, this leads to language death (Austin 10). Unlike many other countries in the world such as France and Italy, where bilingualism is accepted as commonplace, and a positive skill to have, in the United States, bilingual speakers can be pressured to stop speaking the minority language. Gloria Anzaldúa also talks about her experiences growing up. She says “I remember being sent to the corner of the classroom for ‘talking back’ to the Anglo teacher when all I was trying to do was tell her how to pronounce my name. ‘If you want to be American, speak ‘American.’ If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong.’” (Anzaldúa 75). She also faced this again as an adult: “In 1971, when I started teaching High School English to Chicano students, I tried to supplement the required texts with works by Chicanes, only to be reprimanded and forbidden to do so by the principal. He claimed that I was supposed to teach :American” and English literature” (Anzaldúa 82). Opponents of Spanish speakers even tried making English the official language of the United States, motivated by hateful sentiment against Latino immigrants. Samuel Huntington said that “The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream US culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves – from Los Angeles to Miami– and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant dream. There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English” (García 676). Clearly, anti-Spanish sentiment has been a big impediment to Spanish bilingualism.
First-Hand Experience:
I conducted an interview with one of my friends, Flavio Perez, a second-generation Mexican immigrant, to get a perspective of being a Spanish bilingual. He’s from Sunset Park, a neighborhood inhabited by many Dominican, Puerto Rican and Mexican immigrants. He is also fluent in Spanish, but says that his Spanish is referred to as broken by others. He learned Spanish first as a child, and then shifted to English as he entered school. He stated that he felt that being bilingual was a strength and skill. I questioned him on his views towards Spanish bilingualism and if bilingualism should be taught in schools or not. Although he wasn’t sure about bilingual education, he noted that he was naturally pushed to adopt English as his primary language as New York City public school taught in English, and mentioned that much of his success academically compared to other Spanish speakers came from taking on more English. At the same time, he says that he was looked at differently by other Mexicans, with them calling him a derogatory names like “gringo”, for being “whitewashed”. This matches up with the experiences of many other Spanish bilinguals, who must face being in between an English and Spanish language culture and face opposition from both sides. He feels that if the whole country would learn both English and Spanish, a lot of the hateful sentiment people have towards bilinguals would go away. He also felt that it was fair for immigrant children to be put into ESL to help them learn English to put them at a better chance of succeeding, but also felt that it was wrong that people including himself looked down on ESL students. He also agreed that because of the view that people had on ESL students, speaking Spanish was looked down upon. He also felt that the problem with ESL was that the children were separated, and that if there was more combined bilingual education, the children would be able to learn together. In an ideal scenario, he would agree that it would be great to have bilingual education. When he was younger he felt that his parents should adopt English, but as a New York City resident, he learned to accept that it was alright for them not to be proficient in English if they can still make a living for themselves. In addition, living in New York City made it easier to be a Spanish speaker, as there are many Spanish speaking residents throughout the City. He also agreed that the reason he might’ve felt a certain pressure to ask his parents to speak English came from the push in his own life to speak English. He felt that it would be better to be proficient in one language than decent in two, although he would agree that the best would be to be proficient in multiple.
Analysis of Common Bilingual Benefits and Detriments:
There are countless positive aspects to knowing a second language, many of which are discussed by Austin. “Far from a handicap, bilingualism is an advantage for many practical reasons (e.g., being able to communicate with more people, access to more job opportunities) (Austin 4). This is why the teaching of second languages are so commonplace in the educational system. Spanish is also one of the 5 most common languages spoken around the world, along with Chinese, English, Hindi and Arabic. Knowing more than one of these languages can put one at a significant advantage in communication with people from other places, and this could reap benefits in a variety of fields such as business, education and medicine. Both Austin and Baker mention that “gray matter density was greater in bilinguals than monolinguals” (Baker 151). “Bilingualism has also been found to improve subcortical auditory processing” and in one study bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on tasks measuring selective and auditory attention (96). Bilingualism is also associated with “more creative imaginative, elastic open ended and free” (Baker 152) thinking, which is referred to as divergent thinking. There were also better results for “balanced bilinguals”, bilinguals “equal in their ability or use of their two languages” (Baker 4). The distinction comes more between teaching something as a second language, and knowing English and Spanish equally. Bilinguals also tend to be better at “abilities that depend on executive cognitive control” (Baker 160), and have reduced decline from aging at cognitive tasks. “This implies that the ‘lifelong’ experience of managing two languages attenuates the age-related decline in the efficiency of inhibitory processing” (160).
There are also many negative aspects that people associate with Spanish bilingualism. Although being bilingual has many benefits, it can also be a hindrance for children that aren’t adopting the majority language as much as the minority language. Not every bilingual speaker is necessarily proficient in both languages, which is why bilingual education methods are so important. There is also a difference in English proficiency for children who don’t have parents fluent in English and Spanish. As Mr. Perez expressed in his interviews, many of the children who didn’t assimilate as well to speaking Engilsh proficiently, would have trouble with school. This could lead to some of them not succeeding academically, and dropping out to engage in illegal activities. Although many people perceive there to be negative aspects to bilingualism, they come from errors in educational systems, rather than fault in being bilingual in itself. Some also worry that knowing 2 languages can be confusing and prevent the achievement of proficiency in either of them, but this can be prevented by a proper bilingual education. Many of the negative associations people make with being bilingual are more of misconceptions and stigmas that result from an educational system that doesn’t promote bilingualism, rather than a problem with being bilingual.
Bilingual Education Methods:
As we can see, the positive effects of being bilingual outweigh the negative. There are “social, cultural, academic, professional, even cognitive” (Reyes 7) advantages to knowing multiple languages. If this is the case, there has to be a way to correctly navigate teaching students bilingually, while also avoiding the problems many bilingual speakers face. Sharon Reyes and James Crawford talk about bilingual education in their book “Diary of a Bilingual School”. They describe different bilingual schools and modes of education. “The evidence is clear: Speaking two or more languages not only enriches our lives; it can also make us smarter and more successful.” (Reyes 7).
Reyes and Crawford talk about dual-immersion programs, which are programs in which students are taught in 2 different languages. Unlike other programs, these programs are more application based, and not as much memorization based. This makes it a more natural absorption of the language, making the language more useful for real-world use. Janet Nolan and Adela Coronado-Greeley founded the Inter-American Magnet School in Chicago, based on French immersion programs in Quebec in the mid 1960s, which showed that “under the right conditions, bilingualism could be acquired incidentally and naturally”(Reyes 9). They made their school differently though, in that the students were mixed with the English and Spanish language speaking children. They found that doing English and Spanish at a 50:50 ratio caused Spanish speakers to lose Spanish proficiency, so they changed it to 80:20 of Spanish to English until 2nd grade, and then back to 50:50 in 5th to 8th grade which lead to high proficiency in both languages. The attention given to teaching both languages is also shown by Austin. Consistent exposure to 1 language negatively affects cortical activation in the other. “Although these participants had learned both languages in early childhood and had high proficiency in both languages, they had greater ongoing exposure as adults to one of the two languages, which was also their first language.” (Austin 97). She elaborates saying “most researchers assume that the increased activation seen in the less proficient language of bilinguals reflects greater processing demands faced by bilinguals in language tasks, due to frequency effects and to cross-linguistic competition from the stronger language (97). This shows that for bilinguals, even if they are proficient in two language, it’s important not to lose ongoing exposure, otherwise it’ll be harder for them to speak the non-dominant language, which shows that it’s beneficial to teach language in schools bilingually, so that there is less activity needed to use the language.
Reyes and Crawford also talk about the method of teaching used in these dual-immersion programs. These programs used constructivist rather than transmission models of education. “Transmission models of education, which are designed to ‘deliver’ a predetermined body of knowledge and skills, treating children as passive receptors of ‘content’, simply don’t work well when it comes to learning languages”(Reyes 10). “Rather than an education strategy or a methodology, constructivism can best be described as a philosophy of knowledge and how it is acquired” (Reyes 12). Later on, the book lists the things needed for a dual-immersion program: additive bilingualism and biliteracy, mix of language groups, cross-cultural emphasis, stress on sheltering, language separation, linguistic balance, classroom resources, long-term approach, instructional consistency, assessment, personnel quality, professional collaboration and home-school relations. The cross-cultural emphasis is very important as it helps children “appreciate different languages and cultures” (Reyes 21). This prevents the previously mentioned pressure to assimilate, that causes many Spanish speakers stress and anxiety. It also shows non-native Spanish speakers, that it’s alright and actually beneficial to learn other languages.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, being bilingual in Spanish is a skill that should be sought out after. Although many Spanish bilingual speakers are discouraged from being fluent in both English and Spanish, by people in their daily lives both at and away from the home, there are too many benefits to knowing a second or third language. In addition to the general benefits of being bilingual, specifically being bilingual in Spanish is especially rewarding, as it is one of the most common languages in the world and will provide many doors of opportunity to succeed. The opportunity to do bilingual education has been utilized successfully and unsuccessfully, but with methods in schools like the Inter-American Magnet School, we can move forward with successful bilingual education, that won’t cost the degradation of either language, but rather the advancement of proficiency in both languages for American and Spanish bilingual speakers.
Works Cited
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La frontera. Vol. 3. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987.
Baker, Colin, and Wright, Wayne E. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 6th ed., 2017.
García, Ofelia. “Planning Spanish: Nationalizing, Minoritizing and Globalizing Performances.” The Handbook of Hispanic Sociolinguistics, 2011, pp. 665–685.
Gimenez-Arce, Lissete. Language Access in Early and Late Spanish-English Bilinguals : an ERP Study. CUNY Academic Works, 2019.
Maria I. Fionda. “Austin Jennifer, Blume María, & Sánchez Liliana (2015). Bilingualism in the Spanish-Speaking World: Linguistic and Cognitive Perspectives. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.” EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, vol. 2, no. 2, 2015, pp. EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, 01 December 2015, Vol.2(2).
Reyes, Sharon Adelman., and Crawford, James. Diary of a Bilingual School : How a Constructivist Curriculum, a Multicultural Perspective, and a Commitment to Dual Immersion Education Combined to Foster Fluent Bilingualism in Spanish- and English-Speaking Children. 1st ed., DiversityLearningK12, 2012.
Zentella, Ana Celia. “Latin@ languages and identities.” Latinos: Remaking America (2002): 321-338.