Examining the relationship between Latinos’ English proficiency, educational degree, language preferences, and their perceptions on the Americans

Year 2020, , 290 - 305, 29.03.2020

Hilal Peker

https://doi.org/10.17263/jlls.712826

Abstract

Using data from the 2018 National Survey of Latinos that was conducted by The Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation, the researcher in the present study reports on the perceptions of Latinos on English and their educational degrees as well as their language preferences. This non-experimental quantitative study is considered one of the first ones focusing on Latinos’ language preferences conducted all over the United States. A highly randomly stratified 2,288 Latino adults (1,041 males and 1,091 females) who are 18 years old or older identified themselves as Latinos in this study. These participants were from 48 states in total. The results indicated that there was a positive relationship between the last degree attended and participants’ English proficiency; however, there was no association between participants’ preference of English over Spanish and their perceptions on the friendliness/closeness of American individuals. The implications and future direction are recommended at the end of the study based on these results.

Keywords

identity, language preference, English proficiency, Spanish

References

• Alba, R., Logan, J., Lutz, A., & Stults, B. (2002). Only English by the third generation? Loss and preservation of the mother tongue among the grandchildren of contemporary immigrants. Demography, 39(3), 467–484. Baker, K., (2006). The Quietest War: We've Kept Fallujah, but Have We Lost Our Souls? American Heritage, 57 (5), 17-32. Bourdieu, P. (1977). The economics of linguistic exchanges. Social Science Information, 16(6), 645–668. Carpinella, C. M., Chen, J. M., Hamilton, D. L., & Johnson, K. L. (2015). Gendered facial cues influence race categorizations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 405–419. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Connell, R.W., Ashendon, D.J., Kessler, S. & Dowsett, G.W. (1982). Making the difference. Schools, families, and social division. Sydney, Australia: George Allen & Unwin. Cummins, J. (1996). Negotiating identities: Education for empowerment in a diverse society. Ontario, CA: California Association for Bilingual Education. De Costa, P. I. (2011). Using language ideology and positioning to broaden the SLA learner beliefs landscape: e case of an ESL learner from China. System, 39(3), 347–358. De Costa, P. I., & Norton, B. (2017). Introduction: Identity, transdisciplinarity, and the good language teacher. The Modern Language Journal, 101(S1), 3–14. Dixon, T. L., & Linz, D. (2000). Overrepresentation and underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos as lawbreakers on television news. Journal of Communication, 50(2), 131–154. doi:10.1093/joc/50.2.131 Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin-Garvey. Gaither, S. E., Wilton, L. S., & Young, D. M. (2013). Perceiving a presidency in Black (and White): Four years later. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy http://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12018. Gardner, R. C., & Lambert, W. E. (1972). Attitudes and motivation. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers. Gee, G. P. (2008). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Giroux, H. (1992). Border crossings: Cultural workers and the politics of education. New York, NY: Routledge. Goff, P. A., Thomas, M. A., & Jackson, M. C. (2008). “Ain’t I a Woman?”: Towards an intersectional approach to person perception and group-based harms. Sex Roles, 59(5-6), 392–403. Johnson, K. L., Freeman, J. B., & Pauker, K. (2012). Race is gendered: How covarying phenotypes and stereotypes bias sex categorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(1), 116–131. Kayı-Aydar, H. (2019). Positioning theory in applied linguistics: Research design and applications. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Kayı-Aydar, H., Gao, X., Miller, E. R., Varghese, M., & Vitanova, G. (2019). Theorizing and analyzing language teacher agency. New perspectives on language and education. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Lantolf, J. P., (2000). Sociocultural theory and second language learning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Martin, A. (2009). Studying Spanish in Texas: An Exploration of the Attitudes and Motivation of Anglos. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). The University of Texas at Austin, Texas. Martin-Beltrán, M. (2010). Positioning proficiency: How students and teachers (de)construct language proficiency at school. Linguistics and Education, 21(4), 257–281. Mastro, D. E., & Behm-Morawitz, E. (2005). Latino representation on primetime television. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 82(1), 110–130. doi:10.1177/107769900508200108 McCollum, P. (1999). Learning to value English: Cultural capital in a two-way bilingual program. Bilingual Research Journal, 23(2&3), 113-134. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). English Language Learners in Public Schools. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgf.asp Nieri, T. (2012). School Context and Individual Acculturation: How School Composition Affects Latino Students' Acculturation. Sociological Inquiry, 82(3), 460-484. Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educational change. Essex, UK: Pearson Norton, B. (2013). Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Ortiz, M., & Behm-Morawitz, E. (2015). Latinos’ perceptions of intergroup relations in the United States: The cultivation of group-based attitudes and beliefs from English- and Spanish-language television. Journal of Social Issues, 71(1), 90-105. doi: 10.1111/josi.12098 Peery, D., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2008). Black + White = Black: Hypodescent in reflexive categorization of racially ambiguous faces. Psychological Science, 19(10), 973–977. Peker, H. (2013). Sociocultural factors affecting learner motivation in language learning (Masters thesis). Retrieved from Texas Digital libraries. Peker, H. (2016). Bullying victimization, feared second language self, and second language identity: Reconceptualizing second language motivational self system. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from Stars (5083). Peker, H. (2020). The effect of cyberbullying and traditional bullying on English language learners’ national and oriented identities. Bartın University Journal of Faculty of Education, 9(1), 185-199. Doi: 10.14686/buefad.664122 Pew Hispanic Center. (2018). National survey of Latinos [Data file and code book]. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/profile/ Sanchez, D. T., Good, J., & Chavez, G. (2011). Blood quantum and perceptions of Black-White biracial targets: The Black ancestry prototype model of affirmative action. Personal and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(1), 3–14. Simon, R. (1992) Teaching against the grain: Texts for a pedagogy of possibility. New York, NY: Bergin & Garvey. Sladek, M. R., Doane, L. D., Luecken, L. J., Gonzales, N. A., & Grimm, K. J. (2020). Reducing cultural mismatch: Latino students' neuroendocrine and affective stress responses following cultural diversity and inclusion reminder. Hormones and Behavior, 120, 1-11. Steele, C., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797–811. Sui, M., & Paul, N. (2017). Latino portrayals in local news media: Underrepresentation, negative stereotypes, and institutional predictors of coverage. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 46(3), 273–294. Sui, M., & Paul, N. (2020) Latinos in Twitter news: The effects of newsroom and audience diversity on the visibility of Latinos on Twitter. Howard Journal of Communications, 31(1), 50-70. doi: 10.1080/10646175.2019.1608480 Vitanova, G. (2013). Narratives as zones of dialogic constructions: A Bakhtinian approach to data in qualitative research. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 10(3), 242–261. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Warren, Z., & Moghaddam, F. M. (2018). Positioning theory and social justice. In P. L. Hammack Jr. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of social psychology and social justice (pp. 319–331). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Wedge, D. (2012). Celebrated Latino hire not bilingual. Retrieved from http://bostonherald. com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2012/03/celebrated_latino_hire_not_bilingual. Weedon, C. (1997). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory (2nd edn). London, UK: Blackwell. West, C. (1992). A matter of life and death. October, 61 (summer), 20–3.
 Williams, M. (1994). Motivation in foreign and second language learning: An interactive perspective. Educational and Child Psychology, 11, 77-84. Young, D. M., Sanchez, D. T., & Wilton, L. S. (2013). At the crossroads of race: Racial ambiguity and biracial identification influence psychological essentialist thinking. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 19(4), 461–467. Young, D. M., Sanchez, D. T., & Wilton, L. S. (2016). Too rich for diversity: Socioeconomic status influences multifaceted person perception of Latino targets. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 16(1), 392-416.