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SPANISH AS A HERITAGE/MINORITY LANGUAGE
A multifaceted look at ten nations
Kim Potowski
THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO, USA
Introduction
It is estimated that the combined total number of ânativeâ Spanish speakers1 around the world is between 437 million (Ethnologue 2016, www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size) and 472 million people (Instituto Cervantes 2016), making it the second most commonly spoken language in the world. It is spoken by sizeable populations over 20 countries; the top ten countries with the largest numbers of Spanish-speaking inhabitants are displayed in Table 1.1.
This table assumes that all residents in each country (except the U.S.) are Spanish-speaking, although this is not totally accurate. For example, although it is estimated that over 95% of the population in Mexico speaks Spanish, the number in Paraguay is closer to 69% (Moreno FernĂĄndez & Otero Roth 2006). The presence of the U.S. on this list surprises some people, particularly its position as home to the third largest Spanish-speaking population among the worldâs nations.2
Before continuing, I should make clear the problematic nature of two principal concepts discussed in this chapter and the volume overall. The most basic is the idea of âSpanish.â As noted by Otheguy, GarcĂa, and Reid (2015, p. 286), named languages such as âSpanish,â âEnglish,â and âQuechuaâ are not actually independent linguistic objects, but rather constructs that exist only socially according to the definitions and affiliations of its speakers. Similarly, the concept of âcountriesâ is problematic. The emergence of most modern nation-states in the 19th century resulted from wars and annexations, and as a result, many populations of individuals with similar ethnic, religious, and/or linguistic affiliations were arbitrarily split by lines drawn on a map. Thus, when contemplating ideas about âSpanishâ and about âcountries/nations,â readers should keep present the fact that these constitute a kind of conceptual shorthand that do not always correspond to realities as individuals experience them. Despite these important limitations, I believe that much can be learned about what we generally understand to be the Spanish language via a study of those who claim to speak it in different parts of the world.
Table 1.1 Estimated Spanish-speaking populations by country
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In most of the 21 nations where Spanish is an official or national language (either de facto or de jure), it exists in contact with at least one other language. For example, it is estimated that 43% of the population of Guatemala, 37% of that of Bolivia, 35% of Peru, and 5.4% of the population of Mexico speaks an indigenous language. Yet in these contexts, Spanish is the dominant language of society â the one typically taught in schools, used in the media, and necessary for economic stability. In other places, Spanish is in contact with another language, but it has equal official status with that language. Such is the case in three autonomous regions of Spain (the Basque Country, Catalonia, and Galicia) where children are frequently educated through varying proportions of Basque, Catalan, and Galician respectively. However, despite its co-official status, in these autonomous regions Spanish is typically seen as having greater social value. For example, there are few if any adults who are monolingual in Basque (Cenoz 2008) or Catalan (Boix-Fuster & Sanz 2008),3 and all Spaniards are obliged to know Spanish but not any other language (del Valle 2000). In any case, in places like these around the world where Spanish is the majority and high status language â both where Spanish exists largely by itself as well as where it is in contact with but shares equal legal status with another language â there has been a great deal of linguistic research documenting micro- and macro-level linguistic features.
However, in locations where Spanish is a minority language, and especially where it is a minoritized language, the sociolinguistic reality is very different. The term minority is easy enough to define: it refers to a quantity less than 50%. The Cervantes Institute (Instituto Cervantes 2016) calculated a total of 45.8 million native Spanish speakers residing in non-Spanish-speaking countries (i.e. where Spanish is a minority language) including Australia, Russia, and Switzerland. However, this source likely undercounted the Spanish-speaking population in the U.S., listing it at 42.7 million, which is 3.8 million short of the 46.5 million listed in Table 1.1. If we add these 3.8 million U.S. Spanish speakers to the 45.8 million estimated by the Cervantes Institute, we get a possibly more accurate total of 49.6 million Spanish speakers around the world residing in non-Spanish-speaking countries. It is likely that no language besides English has as many ânativeâ speakers living in places where it is not the common tongue.
Clearly the largest number of Spanish speakers in this situation (46.5 million out of 49.6 million, or 94%) live in the U.S., constituting approximately 15% of its national population. Figure 1.1 shows the proportion of U.S. Spanish-speaking residents by county. The areas marked with the darkest shade have a proportion of Spanish speakers greater than 68%, and some areas demarcated with the next darkest shade have over 50%. We notice that in counties in the Southwest, southern Florida, and rural Washington, Idaho, and Kansas, Spanish speakers form the majority of the local population.
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Despite these local majority concentrations, on the national level Spanish remains a minority and minoritized language in the U.S. Minoritized means that in addition to being in the minority and having no legal status or support, Spanish is marginalized and sometimes outwardly discriminated against. Both local and national discourses frequently frame it as inferior, problematic, and a threat to national unity and to childrenâs advancement in school. These negative forces lead many individuals to abandon Spanish and not pass it down to future generations (see Potowski 2010 for evidence that this is in fact the outcome for almost all non-English languages in the U.S.). Around the world, it is common for minority and minoritized languages, which I will abbreviate as minority/ized, to be replaced by the locally dominant language. Lambert (1977) described this phenomenon as subtractive bilingualism, in which lower status, negative attitudes, and lack of educational opportunities in the language lead to its weakening or total replacement. Thus, unlike studying Spanish in contact with GuaranĂ in Paraguay or with Galician in Spain, for example, where Spanish is not minority/ized, it is reasonable to hypothesize that there will be different linguistic and social features of Spanish where it is a minority/ized language â not least of which is the fact that under these conditions, the language is very frequently on a path towards loss.
In the U.S., non-English languages are commonly referred to as heritage languages. The first part of the 21st century saw the creation of the National Heritage Language Resource Center in addition to numerous Spanish for heritage speakers educational programs (see chapters by Beaudrie and by ValdĂ©s & Parra, this volume). However, some scholars reject this term, embracing the position of GarcĂa (2005) that the word heritage âconnotes something that one holds onto vaguely as oneâs remembrances but certainly not something that is used in the present or that can be projected into the futureâ (2005, p. 601) and that:
2005, p. 605
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Despite these valid criticisms, the title of this volume and of the present chapter utilize the term heritage, although chapter authors use the terms of their choice.
It is important to note here that not all minority languages are minoritized. For example, English is spoken natively in Mexico by a relatively small number of people, many of whom refer to themselves as expats (even though they fit most definitions of immigrant). While proficiency in Spanish is necessary for most avenues of success in Mexico, many of these individuals are able to secure employment in white-collar professions and are not shamed for speaking English. Quite the opposite is true, in fact, with the worldwide prestige of English usually granting them high status and earning potential. Even so, as Anderson and Solis (2014) and Mar-Molinero (this volume) show, many Mexican-origin individuals who (in)voluntarily move to Mexico after growing up in the U.S. do not necessarily enjoy all the benefits of native English proficiency that one might expect, which is likely related to their lower socioeconomic position as the children of economically motivated migrants to the U.S. This forces an examination of the role of socioeconomic status in language prestige. Middle class Chilean political exiles in Sweden (Neilson Parada, this volume), for example, likely present a different sociolinguistic profile than poorer Ecuadorian immigrants in Italy (Bonomi and Sanfelici, this volume), the former perhaps more likely to maintain Spanish intergenerationally and the latter to lose it.
The purpose of this volume is to explore Spanish as a minority/ized language in different parts of the world, its authors examining macro and/or micro elements of Spanish as well as issues that impact speakersâ use of the language. Most work to date on Spanish as a minority/ized language has focused on adults and has been produced in the U.S. by two groups: linguists, and high school and postsecondary language instructors in heritage Spanish programs. In addition to these two important areas of scholarship, this collection presents the perspectives of researchers working in the fields of primary school education (grades preschool through eight) and Latina/o Studies. The focus thus moves beyond Spanish as a minority/heritage language to include a variety of linguistically relevant considerations about the people who speak it, and includes work focused on adults and on children.
I divide this introductory chapter into the same four Parts that structure the volume: (1) social issues, (2) linguistic studies, (3) educational issues, and (4) countries outside of the U.S. These divisions are somewhat arbitrary in that there are obvious intersections between social issues, education, and linguistics both within and outside of the U.S. For example, Jones DĂaz and Walkerâs chapter on Spanish-speakers in Australia and New Zealand combines social and educational issues, while Bowlesâ chapter detailing outcomes of adult classroom heritage language instruction involve some linguistic descriptions of their Spanish systems. Despite these thematic overlaps, the Parts are meant to help readers conceptualize broader themes. Countries outside of the U.S. appear in their own Part because research on Spanish in these locations is scant; except for the lexical availability analysis in Neilson Paradaâs chapter about Chile, and Mar-Molineroâs chapter about U.S.-raised Mexican-origin individuals in Mexico, these chapters are limited to offering an introductory overview of how Spanish came to be spoken in each country and considerations regarding its continued vitality.
Part I: Social issues
The nine chapters in this Part address a variety of social issues related to Spanish in the U.S. The chapter by Lynch presents an analysis of the forces that brought the construct of latinidad, and the Spanish language as an essential feature of it, into the U.S. cultural landscape during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He traces the early presence of âHispanic-positiveâ novels and Hollywood actors along with the incorporation of New Mexico into the U.S. and the scholarship of Aurelio Espinosa, but shows that by the 1930s the country had shifted to more Hispanophobic realities, the likes of which would prompt actress Margarita Carmen Cansino to change her name to Rita Hayworth. Moving to more current times up through April 2017, Carter outlines what he calls the âparadox of Spanish in the United Statesâ via an examination of two phenomena: the use of Spanish in political discourse, and language policies toward Spanish in the U.S. For example, he notes that âthe act of speaking Spanish figures differently depending on who is doing itâ and that race is always present in questions of language and politics (also a theme in NegrĂłnâs chapter). He concludes with an important consideration of the role of Spanish Language Academies in supporting Spanish in such hostile environments, noting that to date, they have generally shown disdain for the way Spanish is spoken in the U.S. Both of these chapters offer timely insight into the current resurgence of nationalist, anti-immigration discourse in the U.S. under the Trump administration.
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After this consideration of the effects of the political and discursive landscape in the U.S. on the use of Spanish, Jenkinsâ chapter presents a demographic update of current Hispanophone populations around the country. Interesting trends include that Mexicans are the fastest growing Spanish-speaking group in the New York City area (heretofore dominated by Puerto Ricans and Dominicans); Orlando has become a nouveau Puerto Rican enclave; and the Eastern seaboard is the region that has seen the most significant numerical increase in Hispanic residents between the 2000 and 2010 Censuses. He then moves into a deft analysis of several trajectories that lead to predictions about the future of the language. Franco RodrĂguezâ chapter follows nicely with a summary of work on the presence of Spanish in the âlinguistic landscapeâ of the U.S., with many studies finding that the visibility of Spanish is disproportionately low in relation to the size of the Hispanic population, in part due to an increasingly English-centered ideological environment.
Next, the chapter by Torres explores connections betwe...
