Month: October 2021

In its everyday use, language is constantly changing. It adapts to best fit the current needs of a society and reflect what is culturally relevant. When analyzed correctly, language is a record of a culture – relating norms, cultural roles, dynamics, etc.

Take a look at the following quote:

“The father, what he wanted was that his daughter leave the house dressed in white and that was his goal” (Perez, excerpt 8).

Without further context, this excerpt allows for some insight as to what gender roles and familial expectations characterized this speaker’s community. Here, there is an emphasis on community and culture, because the speaker’s expectations have been determined by the interactions within their own community, which in turn, is reflected in their use of language.

This is not a new take on language and can be tied back to symbolic interactionism. This theory posits that meaning is constructed through everyday interactions and conversations (“Symbolic Interactionism Theory”, 2014). In other words, much of what we come to value, identify with, expect, draw meaning from, etc., was learned through our interactions with others within our community.

This is the framework that formed the basis of the present study. With a focus on word choice, our interest was with Latina immigrant mothers, women who grew up within Latin American norms and expectations, then found themselves having to immerse themselves into a new culture and unfamiliar social contexts (often resulting in conflicting interactions).

According to prior research, Latina immigrant mothers’ perceptions of education are impacted by interactions in both American and Latin America social contexts. To illustrate, in Mexican culture, women are often expected to prioritize familial obligations over their education (Perez, 2009). In addition, women in Mexico are expected to be most involved in their children’s lives, while in the U.S., it is common for both mother and father to work (resulting in comparatively less involvement) (Perez, 2009). Overall, prior findings support the assertion that immigrant women often form judgements from experiences and meaning created during early-life interactions (Perez, 2009).

With the intention of seeing how these findings manifested within an immigrant mother’s direct interactions with their children, we were looking to explore the following: What factors influence the expectations of immigrant Latina mothers? How do they communicate this to their children?

The study’s analysis was collected via informal interviews with two Latina immigrant mothers. Mother 1 is from Jalisco, Mexico. She immigrated to the U.S. 41 years ago, at age 8. Her two daughters are 19 and 16 years old. Mother 2 is from Oaxaca, Mexico. She immigrated to the U.S. 30 years ago, at age 16. She has two daughters, ages 19 and 23.

We hypothesized that Latina immigrant mothers have higher expectations for their older daughters. These expectations take the form of expecting the daughters to attain a higher education. We further hypothesized that Latina immigrant mothers would demonstrate these ideals through word choice, specifically, through the use of more positively correlated words and less fillers when being interviewed about their daughters’ educational goals.

In order to investigate our hypothesis, we had each daughter interview their respective mothers- mother 1 was interviewed by her oldest and youngest daughter and mother 2 was interviewed by her oldest and youngest daughter. The younger and older daughters each asked their mother the same series of ten questions (see the list of questions below), but they interviewed their mothers on different days and asked the questions in different orders. Each of the younger daughters asked the interview questions on the first day, and, then, a few days later the older daughters interviewed their mothers.

We recorded these interviews in order to be able to transcribe them so that we could make note of the following nuances in the mothers’ speech patterns: pauses, filler words, connotative word choice, levels of detail and any phrases that may allude back to gendered expectations. For the purpose of our research, we took pauses longer than two seconds into consideration; we did not analyze one second or less than one second pauses because we interpreted them as the mothers taking a moment to formulate their thoughts. We analyzed pauses longer than two seconds as an indicator of hesitancy on the mothers’ behalf about how they should respond to the question that was posed to them. We counted all the instances of filler words such as “Ah,” “Ahm,” “Uh,” “Uhm,” “Eh,” “Ehm,” and “Mmm ”as markers of hesitancy when preceded or followed by a pause as well.

We also used the context of the mothers speech to determine what pauses or fillers the mothers used to give themselves time to think and what pauses or fillers the mothers used when hesitant about how to deliver their responses. In addition to that, we also focused on words such as “orgullosa,” meaning proud,” or “gusta,” meaning “like,” as samples of connotative word choice in order to quantify how approving or disapproving the mother was in her response. We noted the amount of detail mothers went into in their responses for each question from the interview with their youngest daughter and cross referenced it with the length of their response from the interview with their oldest daughter. We made note of this, in order to determine if going into more or less detail with one daughter or the other had any implications in regards to their expectations for each daughter. While doing all of that, we also analyzed the data for any instances of references to gendered expectations the mothers brought up to draw conclusions about how well the educational expectations the mothers held for their daughters aligned with gendered expectations that are typical of Latinx culture.

Before we discuss our results, click this link: Latina Mothers in order to hear the audio.

The word choices in the recorded interactions were meant to indicate hesitancy or show intention in the responses, with a special focus on the answers from the mother. Filler words and phrases were tallied specifically with consideration that it might mean there was more difficulty finding a word, alluding that mothers felt the need to be more intentional with their responses. While there was a very large contrast between the amount of them the mothers used, the results indicated that amongst them both, they used more filler words with their older daughters. Specifically Mother 2 used 17 filler words with her youngest daughter and 23 with her oldest daughter. Similarly, Mother 1 used 2 filler words with her youngest daughter and 4 with her older daughter. This observation was especially interesting, given that in both cases the older daughters interviewed their mothers after the younger ones had so despite having already been primed 2 days prior, there was still more use of filler words with older daughters.

Pauses had the opposite results. When tallying we counted pauses above two seconds, and found that both mothers used more pauses when communicating with their younger daughters. In this case the mothers used a similar amount of pauses despite the location varying. Mother 2 used 16 pauses with the younger daughter, compared to just 13 pauses with the older one. Mother 1 used 13 pauses with the younger daughter and 12 pauses with the older daughter. Analyzing pauses was done with the intention of considering their hesitation when answering questions in a certain way. Overall this analysis indicated that when speaking with their younger daughters, the mothers used more pauses for their younger daughters. This could signify that the word choice required more thought and was more selective. However, it is also important to recognize that this length in pauses could be attributed to the younger daughters interviewing their mother first.

The next part of the analysis consisted of finding words that held strong positive or negative connotations. We immediately noticed that there were not any explicit words that had negative meaning or were used to allude to something in a negative light. On the other hand, we were pleasantly surprised with the amount of words with positive meaning. Although they were used in varying contexts, both mothers expressed about the same amount of positive words. Most of these words overlapped in all conversations, with some of the most recurrent being “orgullosa” meaning ‘proud’, “exitosa” meaning ‘successful’, and “gusta” meaning ‘liking/liked’. Each word was interpreted as approval of their accomplishments or what they’re doing academically. These positive words were evenly spread among all interviews and didn’t indicate any biases for stricter expectations with one or the other daughters. One interaction that exemplified the role of maternal figures in setting expectations, was Mother 1’s response to the question “What do you think about my goals compared to the cultural expectations you grew up with?”. She responded with, “Esta buena pregunta para tus abuelas”, ‘this is a good question for your grandmothers’ possibly implying that expectations for women are set by the women that raised them.

Finally, our study analyzed the level of detail provided in the responses. The purpose of taking detail into consideration was to see if the mother was involved more with one daughter than the other or if the mother felt the need to explain her responses because of a more demanding expectation to either of her daughters. While the answers varied in length, there was an increased length in the responses for the older daughters from both mothers. This again could indicate that mothers feel the need to reinforce specific goals and expectations more thoroughly to their older daughters.

However, in studying this we observed other responses that supported our hypothesis that Latina immigrant mothers held higher expectations for their elder daughters in comparison to their younger daughters. The first question being “How do you feel about my career choices?” where Mother 1 explains to both daughters that she is content in their choices. However, she then goes on to note that her older daughter’s aspirations are rather competitive and she wants to see them all the way through. This was in contrast with her response to her younger daughter where she suggested a career in Broadway, which is much more difficult to land a secure spot in. This response perhaps shows that the mother wants her older daughter to be more secure in her career choice, followed by the expectations of being in a stable job — expectations not found in the interview with her younger daughter.

In summary, our study found that with the cases given, we were able to find some indications of older daughters being held to a higher career standard. Such instances were found in word choices analyses regarding careers and education. Specifically, we were able to find patterns of correlating pauses and filler words, and were even able to find patterns of expressing more detailed answers to older daughters. However, due to certain limitations (to be specified in subsequent paragraphs), it is clear that these findings are not substantial enough for a definitive conclusion. 

Our research would benefit from further research to argue for a more solid conclusion. Additional exploration and analysis on our test subjects and methods could provide more substantial evidence for whether or not Latina immigrant mothers have higher expectations for their first eldest daughters compared to the youngest.

Our research limitations consisted of a few things. First, out of the interest of time, our interviewees were only allowed ten questions to ask their mothers. These questions did not include follow up questions, which would have greatly expanded on certain ideas. For example, one instance that could have benefitted from more explanations from both responses is to the question “How involved do you think you were and are in my school life and extra curricular activities?”.

To expand, one mother replied with “..un ~ochenta y cinco~ por ciento posiblemente” ‘possibly 85 percent’  for both daughters. This mother only expands briefly when talking to her older daughter, ranging her involvement between elementary school and high school. However, one way to have gained more qualitative data would have been to ask specifically in what ways this mother came to the conclusion of 80 percent.

The other mother responded with “I am very involved in the activities and studies of my daughters”  for the younger daughter and “Very, very much in school” for the older daughter. Similar to the previous mother, a follow up question of asking “How so?” or “In what ways?” could have provided more data to compare to with the first mother, in regards to what these two mothers did to stay involved.

Moreover, our study only used two mothers, therefore, our work should be considered as a case study rather than extensive research. It is only a small representation of the Latina motherhood community. On a similar note, with only two mothers, it was difficult to compare and draw conclusive statements. However, if there were more resources, subjects, and time allowed, these limitations could be reduced.

These findings may contribute to a larger phenomenon on who maintains such expectations in a Latina community, as well as connecting to as far as how this affects a woman’s social identity in her aspirations. 

References

Aviles, G. (2019, November 20). More Latinas have college degrees, but they’re still making less than white males. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/more-latinas-have-college-degrees-they-re-still-making-three-n1087101

Clark, H. H., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2002, February 27). Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking. Retrieved from http://www.columbia.edu/~rmk7/HC/HC_Readings/Clark_Fox.pdf

Crosnoe, R., Ansari, A., Purtell, K. M., & Wu, N. (2016). Latin American Immigration, Maternal Education, and Approaches to Managing Children’s Schooling in the United States. Journal of marriage and the family, 78(1), 60–74. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12250

Field research. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2021, from https://www.researchconnections.org/childcare/datamethods/fieldresearch.jsp

Mendoza-Denton, N. (2008) “THAT’S THE WHOLE THING [tɪŋ]!”: DISCOURSE MARKERS AND TEENAGE SPEECH. In J. McIntosh (Ed.), Homegirls (pp. 265-291). Wiley.

Perez, A. (2009). Understanding Attitudes about Education within two Cultural Contexts: Comparing the Perceptions and Expectations of Mexican Mothers in the Greater Los Angeles Area to their Cohort in Mexico. Graduate Studies At California Lutheran  University.

Symbolic Interactionism Theory. Communication Theory. (2014). Retrieved May 2021, from https://www.communicationtheory.org/symbolic-interactionism-theory/.

Introduction & Background

Our goal was to study multilingualism in families and the social patterns that are common in failure of heritage language maintenance. We found a significant amount of research on the rates of heritage language retention among immigrant populations around the world. However, the majority of this has been structured around maintenance of Spanish speaking immigrant families in the United States. Also, much of these studies further focus on particular populations such as Cubans in Florida (Lambert, 1996). This is a gap that we wanted to address, as our research contains data points from many different language groups. These studies did give us a good amount of information as to the cause behind heritage language loss, some of which include socio-economic class (Pearson, 2007), education level of family (Bill,  Hernandez-Chavez & Hudson, 2000), and perceived social status of heritage culture/language by local society (Kloss, 1966). However, some of these studies have varying results, which makes it difficult to take away one consistent conclusion. Additionally, none have compared all these factors across different immigrant populations of various status and locations to find the commonalities that might exist among the specific low heritage language maintenance group. We took this information as a starting point, and decided to aggregate all of our data points to make a full comparison. With the increase in positive attitudes toward ethnic diversity in the United States (Budiman, 2020), there seems to be a shift underway that could impact the maintenance of heritage languages and culture in both multigenerational immigrant families in the country and families who may immigrate in the future. Our study aims to observe these factors in low heritage language maintenance families and understand commonalities in this group.  We hypothesize that younger people will have a more positive outlook towards heritage language acquisition,  but we also hypothesize that this will contribute less to language maintenance than factors such as formal education and language use outside of the household. Additionally, we hypothesize that code switching does not occur in these families but that they may pass on small bits of language, like vocabulary that allows them to communicate things in particular social situations, such as when they want to talk about something they want to keep private while not at home.

Methods

A short survey was the primary method of data gathering. These surveys were sent to friends and classmates who are bilingual or multilingual adults and come from bilingual or multilingual homes. The surveys will attempt to understand the heritage level of heritage language mastery, methods of learning in the family, knowledge of English among older members of the family, living conditions, and other questions to assess attitudes towards heritage language maintenance and enthusiasm towards the heritage culture and ethnic identity. There were five yes or no questions and six short answer questions for individually specific information such as language(s) and exposure type. Following this, a short interview was conducted with three survey participants and one of their parents each. This was to get a more in-depth description of particular social and family factors that impact motivation and need to acquire the heritage language. After we collected the data, we measured the level of heritage language competence and in what ways, types of informal and formal exposure, and level of necessity of the language in the family environment. We then analyzed the data to identify common social and speech patterns in groups with low language maintenance.

Key Words

Active Language Skills: This term refers to skills with a given language that amount to some amount of active conversational ability or working proficiency.

Passive Language Skills: This term refers to abilities with a given language that amount to some understanding and ability to use the language in socially specific circumstances.

Heritage Language: This term refers to a language that is spoken by an immigrant family that is not the dominant language in the society in which they now live.

Formal Language Exposure: This term refers to exposure to a language that is purposeful and deliberate such as classes, school, guided reading, and/or cultural events focused on language.

Informal Language Exposure: This term refers to exposure to a language that is random and without specific purpose such as family speaking at home, presence in a larger speaking community such as a neighborhood, and/or random exposure to music and media of the language.

Findings

Our data included 18 respondents to our questionnaire and 3 interviewees. There may be some bias toward specifically individuals exposed to Tagalog as a significant portion of our respondents (7 out of 18) and interviewees (2 out of 3) described Tagalog in their responses. One interview was conducted in person, one interview via zoom call, and one interview through email. These data points are the basis of our findings, and while a more diverse data set and more speaking interviews would have been preferred, this is what was accessible to us due to the pandemic and time zone constraints.

There are two significant correlations uncovered in the questionnaire that may reveal important social factors regarding language acquisition. Firstly, every single respondent with active language skills also had formal language exposure. Conversely, of the thirteen respondents to not have active language skills, only 3 of them had exposure to the language in a formal setting.

The other highly correlated response to the questionnaire was the descriptions of motivation for the respondents to learn the language. All 13 respondents with only passive language skills either described their family as not motivating language acquisition or presented some roadblock to motivation. This included situations where only one parent spoke the language and thus hindered the overall family motivation for the children to also learn the language. On the other hand, 4 out of 5 of respondents with active language skills presented some necessity in understanding and using the language. In many of these cases, respondents described family members who did not speak English such as their grandparents, and a need to speak and understand the language to communicate with these family members.

The last piece of data from the questionnaire revealed an overarching positive opinion of bilingualism and multilingualism. Every respondent except for 1 thought of bilingualism or multilingualism as a positive thing. The one respondent who did not have positive views of bilingualism or multilingualism described their viewpoint as “Neither positive nor negative”. Additionally, every respondent said they would want to pass on the language to their children if they could. This indicates that sentiment about heritage language learning was positive, even in cases where the respondents had only passive language skills or limited vocabulary and gives little prediction into whether a child will acquire the language with active skills.

The interview allowed us to observe how the interviews used their limited language skills in their everyday life. All 3 interviewees described their language skills as “limited vocabulary only” but still made significant use of the language. Namely, all interviewees were able to immediately recognize the language when hearing people speak it. They all had limited vocabulary as they described and some of the terms and phrases common amongst all of the interviewees included food items and common greetings. More significantly, however, is that all interviewees actually used the language in certain social situations with their family members. The first interviewee’s younger brother refers to her as “ate” or “older sister” in Tagalog, and despite not speaking Tagalog she is uncomfortable with him referring to her by her name. The second interviewee described using the language “strategically” in disguising some sensitive vocabulary in public. This included describing items as “cheap” or “expensive” while shopping to not offend the clerks or describing the physical appearance of someone. The last interviewee described their family using Spanish to ask for favors from each other. The family viewed Spanish as more formal and a more polite and effective way to ask something of each other.

Combining these findings, we learn that the strongest correlations are found in active language skills being present with highly motivated families whose children were exposed to language in formal settings. Conversely, members of the group without active language skills only had very low formal language exposure and did not have families that highly motivated language acquisition. The passive-only language skills group all seemed to acquire some level of the language and all interviewees still used the pieces they knew in socially significant manners. From these findings, we can predict that the informal language exposure in the passive-only groups still had social meaning to this group and even low levels of language acquisition are often used in socially specific tasks. In other words, informal language exposure in families with low motivation to pass on their language still resulted in the language being a part of the way they speak and interact with other members of the family. Particularly, the language is often leveraged for specific social tasks and part of the speech patterns of the family even when the dominant language is not the heritage language.

Conclusion

Based on our results, we conclude that a child’s educational environment plays the most significant role in failing to pass down languages. Even when parents wanted to pass down their native language, the primary language spoken in the host nation’s environment interfered with that goal. Unless some form of formal language education was pursued by the family. Additionally, children who grew up in bilingual households retained culturally significant words more than they did with other general words. These types of words include food and words related to etiquette in the culture. Lastly, the people we surveyed generally had a positive outlook on multilingualism and would want to pass down their heritage language if they could.

To expand our study, we suggest studying heritage learners who grew up not just in multilingual households but multilingual communities. In our research, almost everyone we surveyed grew up in predominantly English-speaking communities. We are interested to see whether or not we’d be able to see different social patterns that contribute to the lack of maintaining a heritage language had the children grew up in multilingual communities. We also suggest finding people who learned a second language in only formal settings and comparing their retention rate to that of a person exposed only in informal settings. Furthermore, a more comprehensive study in the United States tracking social and educational factors across all immigrant communities might further shed light on the strongest factors affecting heritage language maintenance. Our study aimed to answer some of the many questions posed to understand the social implications of multilingualism.

References

Bill, G., Hernandez-Chavez, E., & Hudson, A. (2000). Spanish home language use and English proficiency as differential measures of language maintenance and shift. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 19, 11–27.

Budiman, A. (2021, April 28). Americans are more positive about the long-term rise in U.S. racial and ethnic diversity than in 2016. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/01/americans-are-more-positive-about-the-long-term-rise-in-u-s-racial-and-ethnic-diversity-than-in-2016/.

Kloss, H. (1966). German-American language maintenance efforts. In J. A. Fishman (Ed.), Language loyalty in the United States: The maintenance and perpetuation of non-English mother tongues by American ethnic and religious groups (pp. 206–252). The Hague: Mouton.

Lambert, W. E., & Taylor D. M. (1996). Language in the lives of ethnic minorities: Cuban American families in Miami. Applied Linguistics, 17(4), 477–500.

Pearson, B. Z. (2007). Social factors in childhood bilingualism in the United States. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 399–410.

For our study, we chose a convenience sample of three participants. The target demographic were nonbinary English-speakers in the Millennial/Gen Z age-range. One participant was assigned-female-at-birth and part of the cisgender control group. The other two participants were agender, and this group was a mix of assigned-female-at-birth and assigned-male-at-birth. Each participant provided at least six formal email threads for analysis. At least three of these were addressed to male recipients while the other half were addressed to female recipients. All recipients held a position of power over the participants. Before examining the emails, we produced a codebook full of key words and markers which signify powerless language. Here are a few examples of markers we coded:

We tallied these codes to calculate the average frequency of powerless markers for every X amount of words in each message.

Gerard Van Herk’s What is Sociolinguistics? (2017) provides concepts of gender identity, performance, and practice. Herk asserts that “in cross-gender interactions we can expect to see the greatest gender effect,” therefore, we analyzed cross-gender interactions to help gauge the effect of perceived gender.

All data were coded twice, once by each of the researchers who did not compose said text. After coding was completed, we compared our findings in order to determine percent agreement of coding and in order to confirm that our coding system is well-defined and useful. Below are some example emails which we coded and analyzed as part of our data pool. The first is written by our assigned-female cisgender participant addressed to a female recipient, and the second is written by our assigned-male agender participant addressed to a male recipient. All names and sensitive information have been anonymized.

We found in our results that there is a notable increase in powerless markers in cross-gender interactions, according to assigned gender at birth. Below is a table summarizing the average frequency of powerless language towards female and male recipients for each participant:

We can see that gender identity had little, if any, effect on speech in emails. Regardless of identity, cross-gender interactions according to assigned gender at birth still produced more exaggerated use of powerless language, just as Van Herk predicted. As researchers, we expected that our agender participants, Amanda and Erik, would not conform to binary patterns. We predicted that their average frequency of powerless markers per message would be roughly the same across differently gendered recipients. Instead, our actual results imply that binary socialization, upbringing, and external perception impact the way that nonbinary people navigate the world. These results have many practical applications for the LGBTQ+ community. Some nonbinary people may be okay with presenting in a way that aligns with their assigned gender at birth; however, others may desire to present a different image. Perhaps agender and other nonbinary individuals can use this research to consciously move towards less gendered speech, if they so desire. Furthermore, individuals wishing to present as more masculine or more feminine may also use this research to alter their speech so that it better aligns with their identity.

However, it is also important to note that these cross-gender disparities are potentially social constructs. Powerless language is not inherently feminine or masculine, but we associate these qualities with gender performativity.

If a person is in a position of less power, they are inclined to use more polite language. This is not necessarily powerless language in itself. In fact, it can be powerful language in its own right, as the speaker or writer implements manipulative tactics in request-making. For those in a lower position, polite language is more likely to produce results.

There are several interesting topics for further research. As mentioned above, upbringing may have a significant impact on cross-gender language. Patriarchal, matriarchal, and neutral households may produce differing attitudes towards the power dynamic of men and women. So, depending on a person’s upbringing, they may use either more or less powerless language when speaking to different genders.

The sociolinguistic study of gendered language is said to have started with Lakoff’s early studies and eventually his book “Language and Woman’s Place” (1975). Since then, the study of language and gender has developed greatly. Lakoff’s Research has been referenced and expanded upon many times, but generally focuses on a binary view of gender, and non-binary topics are under researched fields of study. Although both gender identities and social genders outside of the binary have always existed, the term ‘agender,’ “denoting or relating to a person who does not identify themselves [sic] as having a particular gender” (Google Definitions), was first coined on the internet in the year 2000 (Them). Our own research is extremely limited, examining a small pool of data from a convenience sample of three participants, only two of which are agender. We did not study other nonbinary identities outside of agender, nor did we study binary transgender people. Further research may reveal more patterns or nuances which escaped our own research.

References

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2007). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. In Politeness: Some universals in language usage (pp. 61-83). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Cameron, D. (2010). Performing Gender Identity Young Men’s Talk and the Construction of Heterosexual Masculinity. In 1367818629 1000231388 D. Kulick (Author), Language and sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791178

Herk, V. G. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? In What is sociolinguistics? (pp. 86-100). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Myers, Kristen. (2012). Cowboy Up!. ResearchGate. www.researchgate.net/publication/276215982_Cowboy_Up.

O’Barr, William M., and Bowman K. Atkins. ‘Women’s Language’ or ‘Powerless Language’? Women and Language in Literature and Society, by Sally McConnel-Ginet (1980). New York: Praeger, pp. 93–110.

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Them. (2018). What Does It Mean to Be Agender? Them., Them. www.them.us/story/inqueery-agender.