Problems in Applied Educational Sociolinguistics: Readings on Language and Culture Problems of United States Ethnic Groups 9783110802313, 9789027977267

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Problems in Applied Educational Sociolinguistics

JANUA LINGUARUM Studia Memoriae Nicolai van Wijk Dedicata edenda curai

C. H. van Schooneveld Indiana University

Series Minor 162

Problems in Applied Educational Sociolinguistics Readings on Language and Culture Problems of United States Ethnic Groups edited by

Glenn G. Gilbert and Jacob Ornstein

Mouton Publishers The Hague • Paris • New York

Dr. Glenn G. Gilbert Department of Linguistics Southern Illinois University Jacob Ornstein Professor Emeritus Modern Languages The University of Texas at El Paso

ISBN 90 279 7726 7 ©Copyright 1978 Mouton Publishers, The Hague No part of this issue may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers. Printed in Germany

Preface

The essays in this volume are revisions of papers submitted for the Workshop on Southwest Areal Linguistics, University of Texas at El Paso, April 6—8, 1972. This was made possible by a grant from the Gulf Oil Education Fund and was organized by the Cross-Cultural Southwest Ethnic Study Center, funded by the Spencer Foundation of Chicago. (The Center is devoted to cross cultural and interdisciplinary research on ethnic problems.) The editors would like to express their sincere thanks to these organizations. Ten of the papers deal with various problems associated with Spanish and its speakers in the southwestern United States. They range from general descriptions, calls for research and progress reports to linguistic analyses and attitudinal and socio-linguistic studies. The papers by Allen and Remley and by Gilbert extend the ethnic coverage to additional groups in the Southwest. In order to provide for a wider range of opinion and subject matter, we have also included papers dealing with language problems of ethnic groups outside of the Southwest, e.g., the clash of Arabic and English among child bilinguals in Detroit. The papers are essentially oriented toward a kind of sociolinguistic empiricism which stresses the gathering of certain language/cultural data for those ethnic groups whose militancy has forced the larger society to pay serious attention to them. The editors, along with many others in the field, feel that available data for these groups is still too sparse either for grandiose language/ culture theorizing or for the effective formulation of concrete educational and language policy designed to accelerate social change. We hope that this collection of essays will prove interesting and useful to educators, social planners, socio linguists, and all those concerned with assuring a fair share, social as well as legal, to all citizens of the United States. The Editors

Contents

John M. Sharp Foreign Language as a Means of Introduction to the Study of Minority Group Cultures in the United States 1 Philip D. Ortego Some Cultural Implications of a Mexican American Border Dialect of American English 9 Garland D. Bills Desiderata in New Mexican Spanish Research 17 Robert S. Landmann A Lexical Compilation of Rio Grande Valley Spanish: Aspects of Applied Research Techniques in Cross-Cultural Survey Investigation in the United States 23 Jerry R. Craddock The Southwest Spanish Lexicon 35 Carina Ramirez Lexical Usage of, and Attitude toward, Southwest Spanish in the Ysleta, Texas Area 43 Paul Wershub Goodman and Kathryn Renner Social Factors and Language 55 Bates Hoffer Acquisition of English Syntax by Mexican Americans: Grades 1 - 6 63 Fritz Hensey Some Research Problems in Southwestern Spanish Grammar 73 David William Foster The Phonology of Mexican-American Spanish 85 Paula Allen and David A. Remley Literature and Writing for American Indian Students 101

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Contents

Glenda Eloise Gill Communication Patterns in the English of Black Students in the Southwest and Elsewhere (abstract) Aleya Rouchdy Elicitation Techniques for Research on Child Bilinguals Glenn G. Gilbert Origin and Present-Day Location of German Speakers in Texas Walburga von Raffler-Engel On the Inter-Relatedness of Minority Languages: A Position Paper

109 Ill 119 131

List of Contributors

Ms. Paula Allen Professor Garland D. Bills Professor Jerry R. Craddock Professor David William Foster Professor Glenn G. Gilbert Ms. Glenda Eloise Gill Professor Paul W. Goodman Professor Fritz Hensey Professor Bates Hoffer Professor Robert S. Landmann Professor Jacob Ornstein Professor Philip D. Ortego Professor Walburga von Raffler-Engel Ms. Carina Ramirez

Department of English, University of New Mexico Chairman, Department of Modern Languages, University of New Mexico Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California at Berkeley Department of Foreign Languages, Arizona State University Department of Linguistics, Southern Illinois University Department of English, University of Texas at El Paso Department of Sociology, University of Texas at El Paso Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Texas at Austin Department of English, Trinity University, San Antonio Director, Andean Study Center, University of New Mexico Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at El Paso Department of English, San Angelo College Program in Linguistics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at El Paso

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List of Contributors

Professor David A. Remley Ms. Kathryn Renner Professor Aleya Rouchdy Professor John M. Sharp

Department of Englisn, University of New Mexico Department of Sociology, University of Texas at El Paso Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, Wayne State University Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, University of Texas at El Paso

JOHN M. SHARP

Foreign Language as a Means of Introduction to the Study of Minority Group Cultures in the United States A perennial theme of Southwestern "letters to the editor" is the complaint against Mexican-Americans who prefer to speak Spanish. Hardly a week passes without several such letters appearing on the editorial pages of the El Paso dailies. The writers of such letters appear, in general, to fall into two categories: (1) Anglo-Americans with little or no knowledge of Spanish; (2) socially mobile Mexican-Americans in the process of assimilation into the dominant English-speaking middle class. The specific grounds that these letter-writers cite for their complaints against Spanish-speaking Mexican-Americans are: (1) The "official" language of "America" (¿a, the United States) is English; (2) Mexican-Americans who insist on speaking Spanish are accordingly, "disloyal" to "America". The conclusion drawn by the overwhelming majority of letter writers is that Spanish-speaking Mexican-Americans should either give up speaking Spanish or "go back to Mexico." It seems likely that the attitude of these writers reflects that of many English-speaking people in the Southwest, a goodly proportion of whom may be assumed to be college graduates. Our Southwestern institutions of higher education, hence, may be judged to have done a less than effective job of instilling in many of their graduates a respect for cultural diversity in this country. In contemporary re-evaluation of the traditional components of the liberal arts curriculum, foreign languages on many university campuses have been a prime target of adverse critics. "What possible point can there be," they demand, "for obliging the average U.S. college student to struggle through two years of study of a foreign language for which he will have little or no use?". These critics — both students and faculty — of the traditional foreign language requirement point out, not too unreasonably, that the average student does not achieve a really effective command of a foreign language in two years of college study; that, accordingly, the acquaintanceship with the literary

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achievements of a major foreign culture by which the student is supposed to benefit in his foreign language study is simply not a goal that is usually attained; and that, hence, the time devoted to a foreign language would be more profitably spent on some more "relevant" subject. Unfortunately for those of us in the foreign language fields there is a considerable measure of justice in these charges. It can hardly be denied that the average college student achieves, at best, a marginal proficiency in a foreign language by the end of the usual two-year course. Certainly, in most cases, his reading ability is hardly more than adequate to painfully decipher the literary texts that are thought to justify the 12—14 course-hours he is required to devote to Spanish, French, German, or some other language. Yet despite the fact that the average U.S. college student seldom achieves the first-hand knowledge of a major foreign literature that is so often the supposed justification for inclusion of the foreign language requirement in the liberal arts curriculum, it is this writer's opinion that the requirement is defensible on other than purely esthetic grounds. It is a truism to point out that in the world of today there is hardly a region so isolated that its inhabitants can claim to live free of any "foreign influence". In the United States, one of the two (or three?) "superpowers," the average man is intimately affected in his daily life by the ways of thinking and acting not only of foreigners, but also by the attitudes and life-styles of hardly less "foreign" minority groups in his own nation: Indians, Mexican-Americans, and Blacks. In turn, his attitudes toward these people - whether they be foreigners beyond his own borders, or "foreign" groups that dwell in his midst — may be well nigh a matter of life or death to them. If Rubén Darío's statement about the United States, ". . . when they stir, a deep tremor passes down the enormous vertebrae of the Andes," 1 was true in respect to nineteenth-century Latin America, a closely analogous statement would have no less application to the millions of our own fellow-citizens who belong to minority groups: not the least among them, our Mexican-Americans. Since, then, it is a fact of contemporary American life that our fate is inextricably bound up with that of "foreign" cultures - many of them no farther away than our next door neighbor — whose value-systems and ways of living intimately affect our own and are, in turn, profoundly affected by the latter, some sympathetic acquaintanceship with such foreign cultures would seem to be of more than passing relevance to the education of our youth. Surely an especially high priority should be assigned to the study of the source-cultures of minority groups whose members have immigrated in force into this country: viz., Orientals in California, Mexican-Americans in the Southwest, Cubans in Florida, etc. The goal of college courses dealing with foreign cultures in this respect should be to make our students sympathetically

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and experientially aware that their own way of thinking and living is not the only reasonably possible one ; and that some cultures are often keenly perceptive in areas in which others are short-sighted. Hence, an acquaintanceship with almost any foreign culture often enables one to fill in gaps in which his own culture is deficient and, thereby, to live a more meaningful life. In this writer's opinion, the study of a foreign language is an excellent means to gain a view of a foreign culture from the inside: that is, to view the world as that culture views it. As Edward Sapir pointed out several decades ago, a language is a faithful mirror of the way the world looks to people that speak it: Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group . . . . We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. 2 Like Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf defends the thesis that a language is shaped by its culture and, in turn, limits that culture by channeling the thoughts of its speakers in the directions that are most readily expressable by the linguistic resources available to them. 3 If, then, as Sapir and Whorf maintain, a language faithfully represents and delimits the outlook of its culture, a properly taught course in a foreign language should prove to be an excellent introduction both to foreign cultures as well as to the cultures of foreign-language-speaking minority groups in our own country. That such a course must be properly taught with this goal in mind cannot, in this writer's opinion, be overemphasized. Foreign language instructors are prone to two "mortal sins" in their teaching of culture: either to stress too much the "picturesque" or "curious" aspects of the culture, thereby leaving their students with the impression that the speakers of the foreign language are amusing buffoons, not really to be taken seriously; or to minimize the differences between the foreign (or minority group) culture and our own to such a point that the cultural content of the course is all but eliminated! It may be noted in passing that the latter sin is aided and abetted by some of the foreign language textbooks now in use, which tend to conceal or disguise important cultural differences by the context of their dialogues and illustrations.

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Some specific examples of how languages reflect ways of life and value systems of particular cultural groups may be useful at this point. Languages, as a rule, as accurately reflect the history of their cultures as trees record annual climatic conditions by their growth rings. Dominant, highly developed cultures leave their mark upon their neighbors: witness, for example, the multitude of loan-words that entered Spanish at various points of the historical development of Hispanic culture, and which reflect major foreign cultural influences brought to bear upon Spanish speakers during successive periods: Arabic during the middle ages; Italian during the Renaissance; English (particularly American-English) during the twentiethcentury period of industrial development in Latin America. The fact that not only the Spanish of the U.S. Southwest, but, indeed, of all Latin America, has been massively invaded by English loan-words is, accordingly, hardly a "new" type of phenomenon, nor one limited to Spanish. Many of the supposed traits of Chicano Spanish, in fact, crop up in Hispanic lands far from our borders. Let us cite an example: this writer, long accustomed to hearing the verb parquear (to park) held up as an example of the "incorrectness" of Chicano Spanish, recalls his surprise at being directed by a traffic officer in Toledo, Spain, to aparcar his car in a parking lot (aparcadero) in the next block! Under the impact of other cultures, the Amerindian languages, like Spanish, have been similarly invaded by foreign terms: . . . it should not be forgotten that the impact of Spanish on these languages [the Amerindian languages] has been tremendous. A large European vocabulary has had to be acquired for things unseen theretofor in America: caballo, señora, jarro, sombrero, and other everyday terms. . . . Spanish has commingled the languages, carrying the Arawak canoa and the Quechua quinina or quina into all the American languages as well as all over the rest of the world.... There has been interference with the intimate structure of the [Nahuatl] language, by which verbs, nouns, adjectives, particles and phrases are used as though they were true Nahuatl stems: ri-desear-oa 'you wish'.. . 4 Similar linguistic borrowings are to be observed in the speech of our Mexican Americans in the Southwest. For example, English loan-words such as the following, representing concepts incorporated into Mexican American culture from the surrounding Anglo American society, have come to form part of the Chicano vocabulary: "to type" taipear; "wheel" [bicycle] juila; "to shoot" [a basket, in basketball] chutear; "brawl" [to dance without restraint] borlotear; "to stool" [to be an informer] estulear. Languages accurately reflect the social structures of their cultures. In the

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5

supposedly égalitarian society of the United States, "you" serves as the second person pronoun for all social ranks (still, even here one tends to say "sir" or use a title in addressing certain people!). In many other societies, however, the complexities of second-person address clearly correspond to culturally-conditioned degrees of formality. In Spanish, for example, tú ("you", familiar) and usted ("you", formal) represent clearly defined social relationships within Hispanic culture: one's father is usted, one's mother, tú (patria potestas is evidently still a force to be reckoned with in Hispanic society, though some of the writer's Chicano students call their fathers tú, an apparent indication of a modern shift in the Mexican-American value system). Among Mexican-Americans, one's fiancee may also be the formal ustedl For this, the writer's Chicano students offer the explanation that the neighbor girl to whom one has become engaged was tú when she was just "the kid next door," but that the dignity of adulthood and engagement demand that she be addressed as usted. Accordingly, the Spanish spoken by the Mexican-American effectively reflects the social reality of the situation in which he finds himself. His Spanish becomes increasingly more influenced by dominant Anglo-American culture in direct proportion to his distance from the nucleus of his traditional culture, the family. Common household terms for kinship relations, food, domestic artifacts, and Hispanic ways of looking at life ("se me olvidó el libro"; "me dejó el camión"), are given linguistic expression in a manner that does not differ importantly from the speech of persons of like socio-economic status in Mexico (within the domestic sphere, where noteworthy differences from Mexican usage do appear, this writer suspects that some change in traditional values is thereby indicated: for example, a Chicano youngster who refers to his parents as mis jefes may be unconsciously evidencing a lessening of the time-honored respectful attitude of Hispanic children toward their elders). The farther the Mexican-American departs from his family and barrio into the Anglo-American dominated world, the more clearly apparent is his progressive separation from his own culture in terms of an ever-increasing number of English loan-words in his speech. His domestically-oriented Spanish vocabulary has not provided him with words for the myriad technological artefacts with which he must contend on his job in Anglo-American society. He frequently finds a practical solution to this problem by adapting English words to Spanish phonology {e.g., pompa "pump", rula "ruler", baquiar "to back up" (a car), troca "truck"); or, occasionally, he makes use of some vague and capacious term such as la máquina for a wide variety of mechanical devices. (The writer's cleaning woman, for example, requests la máquina to vacuum the rugs; while the yardman asks for la máquina to cut the grass and to trim

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John M. Sharp

the shrubs.) A third solution often employed by Mexican-Americans to designate Anglo-American machines, foods, and so forth, that do not form part of his domestic vocabulary is to adapt standard Mexican-Spanish words to new meanings: for example, Mexican-American mechanics in El Paso use the term copa (literally, "goblet" or "cup") for "hubcap"; a doughnut, because of its shape, is called llanta (literally, "tire"). This metaphorical extension of the meanings of standard Spanish words, though often derided both by Anglo-Americans and by educated persons from the interior of Mexico, is really very closely analogous to the process by which the Spanish gave familiar names to the exotic flora and fauna of the New World: the álamo ("cottonwood") of the Americas is a tree quite different from the álamo ("poplar") of Spain, for example; and there is an enormous difference between a plátano ("banana plant") in Mexico and a plátano ("plane tree") in Spain!s The above examples are a clear indication of the processes of cultural change through which the Mexican-American has been passing. The impact of AngloAmerican culture on his way of life and on his value system is obviously reflected by the lexical innovations of his Spanish, which provide the student of his speech with an intimate view, from the inside, of the changing culture of this important minority group. Languages, accordingly, accurately reflect and reveal the character of the cultures that produce them and make use of them. It is, hence, this writer's opinion that one of the strongest justifications for continuing to make the study of a foreign language an essential part of the liberal arts curriculum is the fact that the teaching of foreign languages offers the university an unparalleled opportunity to acquaint its students with the way of thinking and living of another people, whether foreigners beyond our borders, or foreign-language-speaking minorities in our midst. Surely, recent events both at home and abroad must make it abundantly clear that excessive ethnocentrism is a luxury that we can ill afford! The writer of this paper, in conclusion, would urge scholars engaged in research on Mexican-American culture to give serious thought to the preparation of pedagogical materials related to such aspects of the cultural conditioning of this group's Spanish as have been briefly touched on here. Such materials, specifically designed for class use by college Spanish instructors, would be of invaluable aid in winning understanding and respect for our Mexican-Americans. Notes 1

Rubén Darío, "A Roosevelt," Antología poética (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1949), p. 105.

Foreign Language as a Means of Introduction 1

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Quoted by Benjamin Lee Whorf in "The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language," Language, Thought and Reality (New York and London: John Wiley & Sons, 1959), p. 134. 'Whorf, op. cit. 4 William J. Entwistle, The Spanish Language (London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1936), pp. 238-9. s For a more detailed treatment of the processes of lexical innovation in Mexican-American Spanish, see John M. Sharp, "The Origin of Some Non-Standard Lexical Items in the Spanish of El Paso," Studies in Language and Linguistics 1969-70 (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1970), pp. 207—232. For a comprehensive lexicon of Mexican-American Spanish, the reader is referred to Lurline Coltharp, The Tongue of the Tirilones (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1965).

PHILIP D. ORTEGO

Some Cultural Implications of a Mexican American Border Dialect of American English

There is no accurate measure of the number o-f Spanish-speaking Americans and immigrants in the United States, but the most consistent figures suggest a population of approximately 10 to 12 million. This then, would make Spanish-speaking Americans and immigrants the second largest linguistic group in this country next to the speakers of the national language, with all of its various dialects. While there are significant numbers of Spanish-speakers in such urban centers as New York, Miami, and Chicago, most of the Spanishspeakers in the United States are concentrated in the five-state area of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and California, with the single largest concentration in Los Angeles. And along the 1600-mile United States—Mexico border, particularly, Spanish-speaking Americans and immigrants constitute the majority population. 1 In a recent report issued by the United States Office of Education, 5.5 million Spanish-speaking children were reported attending schools in the Southwest. There is a wide range of opinion regarding the nature of the language problem of Spanish-speaking children in the Southwest. Holland, for example, views the problem as being essentially rooted in the "language barrier" imposed upon the learner. 2 Anderson and Johnson, on the other hand, emphasize the "home environment" as a determinant of English language achievement among Spanish-speakers. 3 Forbes points to race and culture as the significant factors. 4 Also to be considered, of course, are the determinants of individual differences. In a study of the intellectual development of slum children, Vera P. John confirmed the linguistic truism that "words may be one of the primary and perhaps most essential methods by which the child pools his varied experiences in order to process incoming stimuli effectively." 5 Not only is language "the primary means by which the child is inducted into the life of society," 6 but it is the factor which shapes his entire view of the world. In fact, linguistic research now supports the proposition that all languages

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produce distinctive conceptual systems or Weltanschauung-, in other words, that "modality" in the human experience is predicated by the language we speak. Few people would doubt that the linguistic disabilities of the underprivileged and minority groups represent their most serious handicap. Sufficient studies have shown that there is a specific pattern of difficulties in educational and vocational performance among members of the poorer classes, both of which are linguistic difficulties, essentially. For example, Mexican Americans in the Southwest are plagued with the difficulty of English pronunciation. In other parts of the country differences in grammar have been considered as social differentials; but in the Southwest, when the pronunciation of Mexican Americans is compared with the pronunciation of Anglo Americans, the general assumption is that the difference reflects ethnic and cultural retardation on the part of Mexican Americans. Some social scientists insist that an accent can be a serious linguistic handicap in the realization of full educational and economic achievement. They may be right, but for the wrong reason. To begin with, an accent can be a serious linguistic handicap only if the auditor chooses to make it a handicap. Admittedly an accent could create transmission interference, but it is insurmountable only if the auditor so chooses. The real problem is that an accent sometimes evokes a certain attitude, a prejudice or bias on the part of the auditor that is somehow unmistakably conveyed to the speaker. The result can be a sense of frustration, hostility, and even a sense of inferiority. Yet most of what we call accent is really dialect, or, at the very least, pronunciation audibly different from the pronunciation of other members of a speech community. Linguistic science has pointed out that we all speak differently, that we all speak a dialect of some kind or other, that we all speak our own idiolects. In the American Southwest, Mexican Americans have been particularly singled out and penalized for their accents; that is, for their "spanglish", as their border brand of English is sometimes called. Mexican American children are indoctrinated early in the goal-concept of achieving Standard American dialect (whatever that is). In fact, most high schools of the Southwest still have special English courses (usually identified as English X, for want of a better euphemism) designed to help Mexican American students overcome (and "hopefully" eliminate) their accents. This means concentrating on special lists of words that always include the word "sheet". It is important to point out that the single greatest cultural force influencing the pronunciation of English by Mexican Americans in the Southwest is the proximity of the Spanish-speaking country of Mexico. The result is that many Mexican Americans continue to speak Spanish as their first language and

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English only as a second language. And the fact that many Mexican Americans can trace their American roots considerably before the treaty of GuadalupeHidalgo hardly alters the fact that they will regard Spanish as their first language. It is true that many of the more educated and sophisticated Mexican Americans have become truly bilingual, speaking both Spanish and English without a trace of "accent" in either. But the English pronunciation of the vast majority of Mexican Americans who speak English either as a first or second language is unmistakably influenced by Spanish phonology. Sometimes, only out of necessity, Mexican Americans have acquired English as a second language. And the learning (for children especially) has oftentimes been a vicious and degrading experience. But the height of linguistic "imperialism" in the Southwest occurs in the form of penalties imposed upon Mexican American students for speaking Spanish in the schools or their environs. There still exists in many Southwestern public schools one form of punishment known as "Spanish detention". This is an after-school detention for having broken the "no-Spanish" rules. The teachers identify and inform on the students. All of this simply makes the Mexican American feel that Spanish is an inferior language. And it has become fashionable among some Anglo-American educators to speak of Spanish-speaking Mexican Americans as being "illiterate in two languages", failing to realize that for many Mexican Americans a part of learning Spanish as their first language involved learning to read it. Considering the sociological, psychological, cultural, and linguistic factors in the acquisition of language and reading skills by Spanish-speaking children in the Southwest, the most significant factor appears to be the socio-economic level and status of the family. For, despite equal educational facilities, improved socio-economic circumstances tend to enhance the educational development of children. In her study of New York school children, Lazar found that bright students came from better home environments than average or dull students. 7 Thus, the success of language programs for the disadvantaged does not seem to be necessarily dependent or predicated upon a technique or methodology but, rather, upon the socio-economic milieu of the students. This conclusion was supported by the report of the National Council of Teachers of English Task Force on teaching English to the disadvantaged. They found that regardless of racial or ethnic background, the circumstances of disadvantaged children were identical, all coming from families existing on annual incomes falling below the established national minimum subsistence level.8 Yet, for the most part, current views about language, culture, and behavior are still influenced by historical and traditional concepts. In most cases, these concepts insufficiently explain the intricate relationship between language, culture, and behavior. Unfortunately, because of this umbilical dependence

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upon historical and traditional views, much cultural-linguistic and psycholinguistic research has all too often been simply a "quest for the quaint", 9 thus producing highly questionable conclusions. Equally unfortunate is that these conclusions tend to reinforce existing stereotypes about groups of people.10 For example, too many researchers in cultural anthropology keep turning up the same generalizations about Mexican Americans of the Southwest. The most pejorative (and perhaps the most damaging) of these is that Mexican Americans are philosophically "fatalists" and that they are enveloped by a cultural mystique called "machismo", which controls their sexual animation. As generalizations about a people, these are tenuous, to say the least. Yet these generalizations are used unsparingly (it seems) in documenting a variety of psycho-cultural propositions about Mexican Americans.11 While one cannot accuse all of these researchers of dishonesty, one cannot fail to bring their methods to task. It is amusing that Otto Jesperson himself believed that the Hawaiian language was simple, which simplicity he attributed to climatic circumstances. And many of these "quaint" conclusions are still with us. The great failing in the educational assessment of Spanish-speaking children, though, lies in the failure of most educators to understand the multifaceted role of language, that language is not only an intimate part of people but that it is the vehicle of the child's cultural system and perhaps the most important variable.12 However, the education of Spanish-speaking children centers more on approach than on methodology; that is, more on the question of conventional beginnings versus radical innovations. This conflict invariably yields a cross-purpose of objectives. The implicit assumption of those who favor the retention of the conventional approach is that all children begin school with the same advantage, thus belying, for the most part, the reality of the linguistic situation in the Southwest. The fact of the matter is that the Spanish-speaking child starts school with a deficit, with a decided disadvantage. This is not, however, "linguistic impoverishment" as someieducators call it, but simply a handicap in an educational system geared specifically to the dominant national language. Traditionally, the resultant (and in most cases inevitable) conclusion on the part of non-Spanish-speaking teachers and educators has been simply to identify Spanish-speaking children as "retarded". Thus, in considering the psycho-cultural factors in the acquisition of reading and language skills by Spanish-speaking students in the Southwest, the most critical factor to be considered is the school environment. Despite the conclusions of the Coleman Report 13 which cites the differences in the background of students as a significant variable in their education, it is the differences in the background of teachers which in fact becomes the essential variable in the education of children from diverse backgrounds, especially

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Spanish-speaking children. For example, in their research for Pygmalion in the classroom, Rosenthal and Jacobson14 deceived a group of teachers into believing they were working with "gifted" Mexican American students, when in fact the children had been selected randomly from various achievement groups. The upshot of the deception was that the "gifted" children actually progressed more rapidly than the other students simply because of the "positive attitude" of the teachers. Unfortunately, in the Southwest too many teachers approach their Spanish-speaking students with attitudes that engender only failure and disappointment instead of achievement. Of course the training of the teachers of English to speakers of other languages in elementary and secondary schools has been about as precise as the training once given to army sharpshooters, whose last instructions were to crank in "Kentucky windage" before squeezing off their second shot at the target. The first shot was just to see whether or not they were on target. So, too, TESOL teachers in the public schools "fire away" at their Mexican American students, using about as much judgment about their sharpshooting teaching techniques as "Kentucky windage". But the linguistic situation in the Southwest today is still pretty much where it was yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.ls For example, most classes in the methodology of teaching English as a second language are simply exercises in the repetition of the problem — few solutions emerge. And those that do emerge are seldom implemented. Unfortunately, these TESOL methodology courses for teachers of Mexican Americans concentrate on linguistic analysis at the most superficial level. The inevitable conclusions of these "methodology" courses consistently,point out the same facts: that Mexican Americans are linguistically disadvantaged. NDEA Language Institutes help to make some English teachers aware of the specific linguistic difficulties of Mexican Americans, but little if anything happens in their classrooms when they get back to their schools. The teacher is all too often only a pawn in the community game of scholastic upsmanship. Supervisors and administrators establish standards in English which the teachers are required to meet. And sometimes it is easier for teachers to conform to the requirements of the syllabus than to the principles of their profession. Thus it is not uncommon for a teacher to spend a summer studying the latest techniques of teaching English as a second language and the application of linguistics to the teaching of English, only to go back to his or her school and take up the old ways and old prejudices. Linguistic truths give way to invidious fallacies. And before long, Mexican American students are considered once more as lazy, unambitious, stupid, and retarded because they fail to meet the linguistic standards of the schools. We are faced, then, with the question of whether the teacher of Mexican Americans is concerned with

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language as communication or language as group identification. 16 Therefore, Mexican Americans have found themselves at the bottom of the language heap, more often than not condemned by the abuses of (perhaps? ) well-meaning but misguided teachers and administrators. And it is not surprising that over the years Mexican Americans have come to believe the linguistic doctrine perpetuated by the schools. Yet, while linguists have been mining the eastern sector of the U.S. for the Linguistic Atlas, very little — if anything — has been done in the Southwest in mapping out and explaining the linguistic variations of its inhabitants, especially Mexican Americans. The studies that have been conducted in the Southwest by linguists and anthropologists have focused on the languages of American Indians. Studies by others have focused on the quaint, the curious, and the queer, specifically the languages of the Curanderos, the Pachucos, and the Tirilongos, three hardly representative groups. But the various dialects of the AVi million Mexican Americans of the Southwest have been ignored. That in an area covering over five states 4H million Mexican Americans would speak almost as many dialects of English as are spoken along the Atlantic seaboard seems not to have aroused much interest on the part of linguistic researchers. It seems to me that genuine linguistic research17 in the Southwest can help considerably in reducing language prejudice by pointing out that differences in pronunciation are as much a part of natural phenomena as run-off and erosion. And that the English spoken by Mexican Americans of the Southwest United States is as much English as the English spoken by a New Englander or a native of the Bronx.

Notes 1

Philip D. Ortego, "The Minority on the Border," The Nation, 205, 1967, 20. Willian R. Holland, "Language Barrier as an Educational Problem of Spanish-speaking Children," Exceptional Children, 27,42. 3 James C. Anderson and William H. Johnson, "Sociocultural Determinants of Achievement among Mexican American Students," A paper prepared for the National Conference of Educational Opportunities for Mexican Americans sponsored by ERIC/CRESS, Austin, Texas, March 1968. 4 John D. Forbes, Mexican Americans: A Handbook for Educators (Berkeley, California, 1968). 5 Vera P. John, "The Intellectual Development of Slum Children: Some Preliminary Findings," The Psychology of Language, Thought, and Instruction, eds. John P. DeCecco et al (New York, 1967), p. 120. 'John J. Deboer, "Some Sociological Factors in Language Development," Elementary English, 29,1952,482. 7 May Lazar, Reading Interests, Activities, and Opportunities of Bright, Average, and Dull Children (New York, 1937). * Richard Corbin, "Literacy, Literature and the Disadvantaged," Language Programs for the Disadvantaged, Report of the NCTE Task Force on Teaching English to the Disadvantaged, Champaign, Illinois, 1965, p. 6. 2

Mexican American Border Dialect of American English

15

' Ralph Guzman, "Ethics in Federally Subsidized Research — The Case of the Mexican American," Testimony presented at the Cabinet Committee Hearings on Mexican American Affairs, El Paso, Texas, Oct. 26-28, 1967. '"Philip D. Ortego, "The Green Card Dilemma," The Texas Observer, 60, 1968, 5. 11 Philip D. Ortego, "The Mexican-Dixon Line," El Grito: A Journal of Contemporary Mexican American Thought, 1, 1968, 4. 12 Philip D. Ortego, "The People of Sanchez," The Nation, 209, 1968, 15. 13 Coleman, et al, Equality of Educational Opportunity (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966). 14 Robert Rosenthal and Leonore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom (New York, 1968). 15 Carl L. Rosen and Philip D. Ortego, "Language and Reading Problems of Spanishspeaking Children in the Southwest," Journal of Reading Behavior, 1, 1 - 7 0 . 16 Carl L. Rosen and Philip D. Ortego, Problems and Strategies in Teaching the Language Arts to Spanish-speaking Mexican American Children. (U.S. Office of Education. ERIC/CRESS, Feb. 1969). "Carl L. Rosen and Philip D. Ortego, Issues in Language and Reading Instruction of Spanish-speaking Children. (Newark, Delaware: International Reading Association, 1969).

GARLAND D. BILLS

Desiderata in New Mexican Spanish Research

Recent and growing demands for social and educational services related to the use of New Mexican Spanish make it essential that pure research produce for this language a body of knowledge that can serve as a solid basis for applied research. The purpose of this paper is to suggest guidelines and priorities for this needed pure research in the areas of geographical and social dialectology. Spanish has been a basic component of life in New Mexico since Coronado's initial exploration of the region in 1540. It was the dominant language of the state up until the Second World War, when a continuing influx of English speakers reduced it to a numerically secondary role. Today perhaps a third of the population is Spanish-speaking. Correspondingly, a significant amount of scholarship was devoted to New Mexican Spanish during the first half of this century, but in the past twenty years there has been a notable paucity of such linguistic research. However, a renewed interest has begun to surface because of the concern for social and educational problems related to the use of this language. In anticipation of a continued interest, this paper proposes to offer some guidelines for priorities in research on the Spanish language of New Mexico. It is essential at the outset to distinguish two possible areas of such research: pure and applied. Pure research refers to the effort to compile a factual body of knowledge in some field. It is concerned primarily with data collection and analysis. I do not wish to imply by the term "pure" an emphasis on theory, although it is clearly true that data collection and analysis will invariably be carried out within the framework of some theory and will yield implications for that theory that should not be ignored. In the meaning that I intend, pure research is simply research for the sole purpose of gaining knowledge. Applied research on the other hand is very purpose-oriented. It is aimed

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at elaborating practical solutions to existing problems. It is concerned with studying, interpreting, and interrelating the knowledge compiled through pure research in various fields, e.g., linguistics, psychology, sociology, education, and so forth. Applied research is based upon, and therefore secondary to, pure research. Consequently it can be only as adequate as the pure research upon which it is based — usually it is far less adequate because much of pure research is not immediately relevant to the needs of applied research. If my use of the terms "pure" and "applied" is accepted in principle, the point that I am making is self-evident. I stress it only because it seems to me that for a variety of reasons today the attempt is often made to place the cart before the horse. Especially in the area of bilingual education applied research has been undertaken with practically no established body of knowledge to use as a basis. This too frequently contributes to both poorly motivated research and results of little use for practical application. Project proposals often vividly illustrate the problem. A few years ago, for example, the Albuquerque Public Schools received federal funds for a bilingual education program for "nonlinguals" — children who seemed incapable of communicating in any language. A little pure research would have shown that these children spoke both English and Spanish, but the standard form of neither. In his survey of "The First Seventy-Six Bilingual Education Projects" A. Bruce Gaarder cites numerous examples of similar naïveté and misunderstanding.1 Nevertheless, his suggestions for future research are almost invariably in the applied area. Although necessity may often force the premature implementation of applied research, it still remains true that applied research, whether it be the design of bilingual programs for nonlinguals or of moon rockets for transporting green cheese, ought to be based on a factual body of knowledge provided by pure research. In New Mexican Spanish linguistic research, then, the highest priority must be the accumulation of a factual body of knowledge on the language. The remainder of my remarks will be confined to more specific desiderata within this needed pure research. A concise statement of the goal of this pursuit is quite straightforward: a complete description of the Spanish language of New Mexico. This is of course a fanciful goal, impossible of attainment. To heighten this feeling of impossibility, let me just briefly survey our current position on the road toward this goal. The most impressive bit of knowledge is the work of Aurelio M. Espinosa, best exemplified by his classic study, Estudios sobre el español de Nuevo Méjico.2 This description of the Spanish of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado contains a wealth of facts on phonology. There is also

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considerable information on grammar, primarily morphology, but it is so deeply buried in the mass of phonological data that it is not readily accessible. The similar but far less voluminous study by Elijah C. Hills also merits special mention here. 3 Otherwise, for phonology and morphology our legacy is a small number of theses and short articles; especially noteworthy are the dissertations by Juan B. Rael4 and J. Donald Bowen.5 With regard to syntax there is absolutely nothing. In the area of vocabulary, although no remarkable lexicographic study is available, a rather large body of data is contained in the above cited works, particularly that of Bowen, and in the joint publication of Kercheville and McSpadden.6 These specifically mentioned works are, I believe, the only major contributions to a description of New Mexican Spanish. Although this body of knowledge is important, its value is limited in at least three crucial respects: it is quite dated (the most recent work is now twenty years old), it is concerned only with the northern part of the state, and it is restricted largely to phonology and vocabulary. "A complete description of the Spanish language of New Mexico" — such a goal does indeed seem remote. Current linguistic inquiry apparently must begin virtually at the beginning. The beginning, it seems to me, should be a consideration of geographical dialects, the varieties of Spanish spoken in particular regions of New Mexico. It is generally assumed that there are two major dialect areas, a northern and a southern, with the dividing line running roughly across the lower-middle portion of the state. These two dialects, like all geographical dialects, seem to be the result primarily of historical settlement patterns. The northern dialect, which also includes southern Colorado, presumably derives from the early settlement of the area by Spaniards, beginning in 1598 with the group of colonists headed by Juan de Onate. The southern dialect, which probably shares more characteristics with the Spanish of other southwestern states, could be ascribed to the later settlement of that area by colonists from central Mexico and to the heavy influence during this century of immigration from northern Mexico. I hasten to emphasize that this division into two dialects is strictly an assumption. No valid dialect geography study has yet been performed. A preliminary step in this direction was taken by Lawrence B. Kiddle in his short but significant article, "Turkey in New Mexican Spanish," in which it is demonstrated that the Nahuatl-derived terms guajolote and guijolo are characteristic of the southern area while the Spanish-derived terms gallina de la tierra and gallina de la sierra are peculiar to the northern region.7 Again, however, it must be noted that this report is based on research performed in the 1930s. The present situation needs to be explored — in considerably more detail. In my opinion, then, the most important first step is a survey of

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geographical dialects. I do not necessarily mean that we should undertake a bold survey aimed at producing a traditional dialect atlas. Of tremendous value would be a pilot survey to sketchily determine the major dialect divisions. I conceive of such a preliminary survey along the following lines. Great care should be taken in the selection of informants. They should be native speakers of Spanish and possibly monolingual, reside in a rural area, have lived in that area since birth, and have had minimal contact with other regions. They should also be restricted to a certain age group (forty to sixty is a possibility) and perhaps even with regard to sex. The interviewer should be a native speaker of New Mexican Spanish and should be well-trained in interview techniques and the goals of the survey. The interviews should be conducted in the informants' homes and should elicit free conversation of the most natural type possible. A short questionnaire based on lexical forms with known dialect variations might also be employed. Due to the small population of the state, adequate information might be obtained from as few as thirty informants, roughly one per 10,000 Spanish speakers. Once the data is collected, the analysis could be merely a pragmatic consideration of those linguistic features that characterize dialect differences. The completed analysis should give us a crude picture of how many major dialects there are and where each can be found. With this limited but rather easily acquired knowledge we could then proceed to the more important stage of dialect geography research. In a few selected areas representing the predominant dialects intensive data collection and analysis should be launched and practical handbooks describing the phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary of each dialect should be prepared. These descriptions would provide a firm basis for all further research on New Mexican Spanish, including a more professional dialect geography survey, more specific descriptive analyses, language acquisition study, and sociolinguistic work. Dialect geography is concerned with language variation on a horizontal scale. There is also variation on a vertical scale: particular social dialects may be employed in the same region and indeed by the same speaker. Although there undoubtedly are social dialects of Spanish in New Mexico, no significant research has been performed on this topic. Since the role of social dialects carries serious implications for all applied linguistics activity, it is essential to initiate "sociolinguistic" research on New Mexican Spanish. It is my feeling, however, that this can best be accomplished after a body of knowledge on geographical dialects has been acquired. The main reason for such a statement of priorities is that the study of geographical dialects is simpler. In dialect geography data collection is controlled in order to hold sociological variation to a minimum. As noted above, the informant, the

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interviewer, and the interview format will be carefully restricted to ensure comparability of geographical data. But in a sociolinguistic study all such social factors must be incorporated. As a consequence, the amount of data required is much greater and the methods of data collection and analysis become much more complex. Furthermore, social dialects are typically geographical dialects in origin. Through human migration and contact a particular geographical dialect is commonly relegated to a certain social level of usage. In these days of increasingly common mobility the sociolinguistic situation may become exceedingly intricate, especially in urban centers. The importance of prior dialect geography work is readily acknowledged by William Labov, the scholar who has contributed most to the refinement of the sociolinguistics discipline. In "Stages in the Acquisition of Standard English," for example, he notes that he is "quite fortunate" in having the eastern United States dialect geography studies to serve as a "reliable base" for his research.8 The New Mexican Spanish sociolinguist would be served equally well by an adequate geographical dialect basis. Because of the complexity of sociolinguistic investigation and the deficiency of our information on any kind of dialects in New Mexico, it would be imprudent of me to set down specific research guidelines in this domain. In very general terms, however, partial answers to the following two questions are needed. What are the linguistic variables that characterize the particular social dialects? And what are the sociological variables that govern the choice of each social dialect? Perhaps the best approach in seeking answers to these questions would be a rigorous pilot survey of a small, but sociologically complex, predominantly Spanish-speaking sector of the city of Albuquerque. This paper is limited to a discussion of research on New Mexican Spanish. However, in sociolinguistics it becomes imperative to deal also with New Mexican English and Indian languages and the maze of problems related to bilingualism and multilingualism. It is primarily in these areas that the recent excursions of applied research have suffered most from a lack of pure knowledge. Nonetheless, in my somewhat idealistic scheme I must place the study of bilingualism and multilingualism rather low on the list of priorities. Again, the reason for this is obvious to me: pure research on bilingualism or multilingualism will be accomplished with the greatest ease and validity in direct proportion to the body of knowledge accumulated on the languages involved. I have in this paper employed two criteria - ease of acquisition and validity of results — in an attempt to establish guidelines and priorities for research on New Mexican Spanish. In concluding, let me briefly summarize my views: 1. Pure research should precede applied research for the simple reason that the latter must be based on facts supplied by the former.

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2. The highest priority in pure research is a pilot survey to determine the prominent geographical dialects. 3. Representative samples of these dialects should then be the subject of fairly intensive linguistic descriptions. 4. Aided by the knowledge gained on geographical dialects, pure researchers should then begin to tackle the intricate problem of social dialectology. 5. Finally, having established a moderately adequate store of knowledge on New Mexican Spanish, scholars might most fruitfully explore the instances of bilingualism and multilingualism involving this language. To propose such priorities does not of course mean that I have any expectation that they will be followed. Both public pressure and scholarly interest will almost certainly promote research, especially applied research, in sociolinguistics and bilingualism to the exclusion of what I consider higher priorities. I can only hope that my remarks will encourage some sort of New Mexican Spanish research in the priority areas that I have discussed. Notes 1

Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics, No. 23, ed. James E. Alatis (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1970), pp. 163-175. 2 Boletín de Dialectología Hispanoamericana, 1 (1930). TTie original English version is Studies in New Mexican Spanish (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1909). 3 "New Mexican Spanish," PMLA, 21 (1906), 706-753. 4 "A Study of the Phonology and Morphology of New Mexican Spanish Based on a Collection of 410 Folktales," Diss. Stanford University, 1937. 5 "The Spanish of San Antonito, New Mexico," Diss. University of New Mexico, 1952. 6 Francis M. Kercheville, "A Preliminary Glossary of New Mexican Spanish" and George E. McSpadden, "Some Semantic and Philological Facts of the Spanish Spoken in Chilili, New Mexico," University of New Mexico Bulletin (Language Series), 5 (1934). 1 Romance Philology, 5 (1951-52), 190-197. *Readings in American Dialectology, ed. Harold B. Allen and Gary N. Underwood (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971), p. 474. This article was originally published in Social Dialects and Language Learning, ed. Roger W. Shuy (Champaign, 111.: NCTE, 1965), pp. 77-103.

ROBERT S. LANDMANN

A Lexical Compilation of Rio Grande Valley Spanish: Aspects of Applied Research Techniques in Cross-Cultural Survey Investigation in the United States Among many scholars, John Turner and others have clearly explicated the need for theoretical constructs and paradigmatic commitments to provide conceptual bases from which empirical investigation can be successfully undertaken. 1 The relationship between theory and what may be labeled "practical investigation" has now become axiomatic. Yet theory building and hypothesis formulation are only part of a larger model of scientific and scholarly research. Indeed, the research enterprise is clearly multi-dimensional and encompasses a need for many skills at many levels of activity.2 This paper, while recognizing theoretical imperatives in the research process, will nevertheless focus upon some very practical problems encountered in the course of a survey in the field.3 Too often, social scientists become fascinated and even intimidated by theoretical possibilities to the extent that they tend to neglect or fail to predict and account for many research obstacles which exist in the field. Despite all the caveats, all the recorded experiences, and all the literature devoted to applied research techniques, they frequently find themselves ill-prepared and unable to acquire information vital to their studies. Numerous pitfalls await the researcher: classified data, false or misleading information, language barriers, hostile informants, legal restrictions, and cultural impediments.4 Doubtless, data gathering techniques requiring personal contact with potential informants can present the greatest hazards and hindrances to the productive acquisition of information. The question becomes, then, how can the researcher avoid or minimize obstacles to data collection where direct contact with informants is a necessary step in his investigations? How can the interested scholar overcome or mitigate the barriers of ineffective communication and even outrigjht hostility in the pursuit of critical data? The following is a partial response to these questions based on personal experiences in the field during the course of a lexical compilation of Rio

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Grande Valley Spanish. The field work, conducted over a period of two years, has yet to be finalized. The impetus for the investigation was twofold: first, the researcher's interest in Spanish and the colloquial lexicon of the area; second, a corollary of the first concern, the need to develop a thorough knowledge of linguistic localisms in the Rio Grande Valley to increase and facilitate communication with area residents in order to operate more effectively in the field of social action and development. In all candor it must be stated that theoretical considerations, the development of a hypothetical framework, and the generation of paradigms were of remote interest or even appropriateness. Foremost in the mind of the researcher were the desire and need to compile and interpret a lexicon of colloquial Spanish in the Rio Grande Valley for the purposes already noted. With the ultimate goal set, the immediate objective was clear: to find informants who not only could furnish the requisite data, but who would be willing to share their knowledge. Over the period of the two-year investigation several types of informants were successfully approached in a variety of settings. What follows is an attempt to create a typology of informants encountered in cross-cultural survey work. It should be noted, as will be borne out in subsequent discussion, that all interviews were highly informal. In this type of work there are a number of obvious hazards which make accurate and complete data collection difficult. Some of these have already been mentioned. Others are impediments which may be found not only in working with informants of other cultures and sub-cultures, but also in interviewing individuals from one's own cultural system. Despite continued but fallacious arguments to the contrary, the United States is not a vast "melting pot" and synthesis of several cultural systems. The struggle for civil rights on the part of minorities is adequate testimony to this fact. Indeed, the inability of blacks, native Americans, chicanos and other ethnic groups to achieve full social, political, and economic status gave rise to the spate of socio-economic development programs which were created in the 1960s. These organized public efforts brought together individuals from various professions, not least of which were scholars in the social sciences. But as members of the minorities had been deprived of their full share of society's benefits, including a sound education, the corps of social scientists who worked with these new development and service programs were predominantly part of the "majority". Thus problems of cultural adjustment among staff members (and between staff and "client"), became a common feature of social action programs. On the one hand were minorities, the original raison d'être of the programs. On the other, the members of the predominant national society formed the bulk of the professional cadres designing, administering and delivering these program efforts. The result of this cultural

A Lexical Compilation of Rio Grande Valley Spanish

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imbalance, as it were, was the creation of a host of difficulties at all levels of program activity. Programers had to account for cultural differences in program designs; administrators had to carry out their duties and functions within a cross-cultural setting, dealing with the recipients of program services and at the same time with the "bureaucratic sub-culture" in Washington and at its regional offices. Field workers had to achieve a relatively high degree of bi-culturalism if they were to work effectively, be they members of a minority group or not. Finally, researchers, whose job it was to gather information and data upon which new program endeavors were to be based, had to design instruments which were culturally sensitive and pertinent and had also to learn to achieve a rapport with the people from whom they were attempting to gather information. Of course for some social scientists this was not unique or even new. Many of them, especially anthropologists, had worked in variegated cultural settings throughout the world. What did make this enterprise different, however, was its purpose, magnitude, and location. This was the first time in the history of the nation that a massive social development campaign was launched to work with specifically identified ethnic groups. This was the first time that such work received enormous publicity, information that was conveyed to the "target" groups via the pervasive communications media system that reaches practically the entirety of the continent. This was the first time that hundreds of social scientists went out into the field not simply to study people, but to amass data from which positive public steps were to be taken to relieve the misery of millions of Americans. At first glance, this may all seem vastly removed from the more esoteric world of applied research techniques. It is not. To begin with, the sheer scope of anti-poverty enterprise plus the nature of its needs helped to catapult many budding scholars into field work and, in turn, produced more and more insights into the problems of cross-cultural survey work. Second, it brought home forcefully the point that cross-cultural and comparative methodologies are not limited to study abroad but have a distinct and vital place at home. Third, the experiences in the field added to the growing body of literature on methodology of cross-cultural research. What follows, then, is an attempt to classify and type the kinds of crosscultural informants encountered in the field, citing the characteristics of each type and defining the subsequent problems each poses for the concerned investigator. It must be clarified, however, that the suggested taxonomy is based on interviews conducted with chícanos only, although the points to be made and the concepts to be generated may be useful to scholars engaged in research in other cultural tableaux. Three main types of informants have been formulated: The open, hostile, and culture-bound. Each type is a composite of common features drawn from

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the experience of a wide range of interviews. As previously stated, the purpose of the typology is to indicate in an orderly manner the kinds of dilemmas that await the researcher and to suggest ways in which some of them may be avoided. The Open Informant This class of informant may be divided into two sub-types: The open-informed (01) and the open-uninformed (OU). There do exist characteristics common to both, however. First, they are equally willing to provide the investigator with information. Second, they are generally easily approached and identifiable by their openness and accessibility. Third, they can both be either bi-cultural or monocultural. The Open Informed Type: The 01 informant is perhaps the most gratifying for the researcher. He is not only amenable to being subjected to interview, but is able to give accurate information. An important distinguishing feature of the 01 is his honesty. If he does not know the answer to a question he will admit it. Moreover, if he can, he will direct the investigator to a source that can provide the information He does not appear to be bothered by cultural differences that may exist between himself and the researcher. Indeed, the absence or minimal amount of cultural interference between the 01 type and the investigator is characteristic. The 01 type does not present any difficulties for the researcher. On the other hand, it may be the investigator who poses problems. If the latter is not specific enough in his inquiries, then the feedback may be inaccurate. Thus, it is incumbent upon the investigator to explain clearly and precisely what it is he is seeking. This may appear to be a blatant truism, yet in dealing with cross-cultural interview situations the investigator cannot be too careful in screening out cultural interference in communications. Examples of the 01 type may be seen in the following cases. In both cases it may be seen that the bi-cultural and bilingual abilities and attributes of the informants were so well developed that cultural barriers were absolutely minimal. Case 1: Mrs. Gonzalez was secretary to the author for a number of months during the course of his work in Austin, Texas. She was a high school graduate who had some ten years experience in secretarial work and had become fluent in both English and Spanish and reached a high degree of bi-culturalism. In the course of informal office talk, the author made known to Mrs. Gonzalez his project of collecting colloquial issues and asked if she would assist him by writing down words and phrases of possible interest. A friendly and

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conscientious woman, Mrs. Gonzalez would periodically write down and translate those words which she believed to be of possible use. The author would then discuss the origin and nature of the entries and verify them later on with other sources. Mrs. Gonzalez understood exactly what the author wanted, was exceptionally willing to oblige him, and, as it turned out, was extremely accurate in her information. Case 2\ Mr. Vargas was an employment counsellor in the same anti-poverty program in El Paso, Texas to which the author was a consultant. Mr. Vargas was completely bilingual and manifested a remarkable ability to function with ease in both the anglo and chicano cultures. In the course of his professional relationship with Mr. Vargas, the author would ask him to define words and phrases he used in his conversations in Spanish. Mr. Vargas was never at a loss to respond in great detail. He was especially valuable in his willingness to assist in verification of entries obtained elsewhere. Perhaps, because of his university training (Mr. Vargas held the B.A.) as well as his bilingualism, Mr. Vargas gave the impression that he understood completely what the author was attempting to do and thereby was able to be of great assistance. The Open Uninformed Type: While the cooperation of the open uninformed (OU) type is undeniable, it can be problematical for the investigator for a variety of reasons. First, there is the OU type who simply does not possess the desired information. Despite his willingness to supply the researcher with the requisite data, he cannot do so because either he does not have it or knows of no other possible source. Second, and more difficult for the researcher, the OU informant may not reveal his ignorance and simply give false or misleading information in order to appear friendly and knowledgeable and comply with the former's requests. Needless to say, if this is the case, it can cause severe problems. The greatest dilemma posed by this type of informant is that frequently it is difficult for the researcher to discover whether or not he is obtaining accurate data. This is especially the case in cross-cultural work. At times, the researcher is simply not prepared enough to be able to identify the cues which would lead him to suspect that data are fabricated or misleading. Obviously where the investigator or the informant are bi-cultural, or the former is aware of the cultural background of the latter, this danger is minimized. But where this is not the case, at least two steps may possibly be taken to avoid collection of erroneous information. The researcher may use the services of a reliable intermediary or he may verify information with another source. The following two cases present some examples of the problems encountered in interviews with the OU types.

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Case 1: The nature of the author's work in the field of anti-poverty put him in contact almost daily with undereducated chicanos and Mexicans who were living in the United States. During conversations held with them, the author would periodically inquire about the meaning or use of a word or phrase. In one instance, a Mr. Diaz and the author became quite friendly. It was explained to Mr. Diaz that the latter was compiling a lexicon of Rio Grande Spanish and wondered if he could help translate (and verify) entries. Mr. Diaz was exceptionally gracious in his willingness to assist. However, it soon became apparent that he was giving erroneous translations because, as it turned out, he simply did not know many of the meanings of the words. Yet instead of admitting his ignorance, he continued in his gracious way to provide inaccurate information and, it may be assumed, thereby strengthened the bonds of friendship between himself and the author. It would have been either rude of him or embarrassing not to respond to the authors inquiries. The author, by the process of verification with other sources, was finally able to establish the dubious quality of Mr. Diaz's translations and make the proper corrections. Case 2: In the course of his work in the area of El Paso, Texas, the author had collected several entries, but had not had time to seek assistance in translating them. In the meantime he found it necessary to spend several weeks in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Once there, the author spoke with several informants, all of whom were unable to provide translations of the words used in El Paso. Unlike Mr. Diaz in Case 1, the informants in Albuquerque admitted their inability to explain the meanings of the words. Finally, one informant introduced the author to a friend from El Paso who was able to make the translations. The Hostile Informant As is true of the open informant, the hostile type may be sub-divided into two categories: the hostile overt (HO) and the hostile covert (HC). In all kinds of interviewing, researchers will almost inevitably run across informants who are reluctant to provide data. This is not simply a unique characteristic of crosscultural survey work. However, in cross-cultural investigation the motivation for and expression of hostility can be quite different than in what might be labeled "intra-cultural" research. First, the cultural conflicts that exist between citizens of different nations may be carried into the relationships between researcher and informant. Second, this type of conflict also exists within nations. Thus the anglo researcher who is trying to elicit information from the chicano, for example, may run into a cultural impasse. This is reinforced in contemporary America by the political and ideological differences which have arisen among cultures, especially among more militant sectors of the national

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minorities who are trying to maintain their cultural (and linguistic) integrity while at the same demanding that their rights as citizens be respected and guaranteed. A third problem is that of the researcher who unwillingly engenders the hostility of an informant by committing a cultural error, thereby violating a serious taboo or norm. Such situations again underscore the need for the field investigator either to familiarize himself with the culture of the people he is studying or interviewing or to use bi-cultural workers who can function successfully in that cultural setting. The Hostile-Overt Type: This type of potential informant is usually immediately identifiable. For numerous reasons he will express his resentment and may flatly refuse to be interviewed or provide any kind of information. Others, after making known their attitudes of hostility will consent to interviews and will furnish data. But this is generally done in an uncomfortable environment and accompanied by a great deal of ideological rhetoric which can severely detract from and even undermine the original purpose of the interview. This is especially the case where cultural differences are accented by, and even expressed in political tones. Here the investigator must be cautious and able to filter out sociopolitical biases which may be injected into the data and feedback he is receiving. At times the interviewer is held a captive audience by the informant who will use the interview as a forum either to engage the researcher in polemic or to deliver an impromptu ideological discourse. However, if the informant is supplying the requisite information, it may well be worth the investigator's time to continue the interview. This kind of hostile situation is not always so difficult to overcome. Frequently it takes patience on the part of the investigator and, if possible, an ability to persuade the informant that the data sought are not to be used in a manner he would perceive as negative. An empathy and knowledge of the informant's culture sometimes is helpful in allaying his fears, dispelling his suspicions, and neutralizing his animosities. At times, this is not sufficient. Unfortunately, it is impossible to outline with accuracy which course to pursue even given specific conditions. So often the success or failure of an interview depends directly upon the personalities of the individuals involved. Of course, the more knowledgeable the researcher is about the culture of the informant, and the more aware he is about its norms and taboos, the greater the possibility for success. The following case examples may provide the reader with some insights into the problems found in encounters with the HO type. Case 1: Mr. Zamora was an exceedingly articulate and well-informed individual who is a leader of one of the more militant Raza movements. He is bilingual

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in English and Spanish and gave the impression of having achieved a very high degree of bi-culturalism, although he was at pains to express openly and vividly his Indo-Spanish heritage. The author and Mr. Zamora met at a conference which they were both attending. During the course of informal conversation, the author spoke of the lexical compilation he was undertaking. The remarks were occasioned by Mr. Zamora's use of several localisms in his conversation which the author did not understand. Mr. Zamora's immediate reply was that this was in his opinion simply one more example oianglo exploiting chicano and he would not be a part of it. He continued, saying that while the author's motives might be free from "conscious cultural imperialism", nonetheless the use of chicano informants without remuneration was a form of profiteering. In the end Mr. Zamora, after he was able to express his feelings without encountering a defensive attitude on the part of the author, did concede to explain the meanings of the colloquialisms he was using. Mr. Zamora's comments call for a pause at this juncture and consideration of some vital issues on the part of concerned scholars. While there are those who could dispute Mr. Zamora's opinions and attribute them to sheer militancy, this is too easy a pretext for dismissing his views. Rather it would appear to be the case that researchers have an obligation to recognize the crucial and indispensable role played by informants. And it is not unreasonable to suggest that researchers budget enough resources with which to remunerate respondents for their information if that is at all possible. After all, the informants are not the ones who profit - either in terms of pecuniary gain, prestige, or both — from the free disclosure of information. Finally, informant remuneration should not be considered to be a form of mere bribery but rather a contractual agreement based upon clear knowledge on the part of the informant as to his part in the research. Much depends upon the attitudes of the individual researcher working in the field. He should never lose sight of the fact that he is dealing with human beings — not objects. Researchers who tend to treat informants in a casual and even cavalier manner are certainly susceptible to moral criticism. Yet in a purely practical sense, the researcher who approaches potential informants openly, honestly, and even with a modicum of humility will maximize his opportunities for acquiring data. It should not be forgotten — at least in the context of this discussion — that informants provide data voluntarily. Case 2: A situation similar to the one in which the author and Mr. Zamora confronted each other arose at another conference. A Dr. Pacheco, an educator somewhat renowned for his militancy, was approached by the author and asked to translate several words he had used in the course of a speech he had just delivered in Spanish. Dr. Pacheco inquired for what

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purpose. The reply was a brief explanation of the lexical research the latter was conducting. Dr. Pacheco simply refused to accede to the request and walked away. In this case there was just nothing left to do except approach friendly informants and seek the information. The Hostile-Covert Type: If the difficulties encountered in interviews with the OH type are great, they are even more problematic in contact with the hostile-covert (HC) informant, because it is frequently impossible to identify him. Often the resentment of the HC type stems from the same reasons as that of the HO type. The researcher, however, may be alerted to the HC type simply by the fact that as a member of a different culture, the informant may possibly be covertly hostile. This is especially so when the informant and investigator are members of cultures who have had a history of conflict. Essentially the HC type presents much the same problem as does the OU type. Neither openly indicates to the researcher that the information he is giving is false or misleading. The motives are what separate the two. Thus the HC type will deliberately lead the investigator astray because of a desire to impede his work as the result of cultural clash. Little can be done to correct this situation because the HC type intentionally hides his actions and attitudes. There are two ways in which the researcher can possibly guard himself against the HC type. He can look for cues during the interview which would uncover the hostility of the informant or in some instances he may be able to discover from another source the attitudes of the HC type and thereby alert himself to the possibility of receiving deliberately biased information. In any event, the investigator is left with the problem of filtering out the erroneous and misleading data and selecting the correct information. Perhaps the only way this can be achieved is by verifying his findings with other sources wherever possible. As with the other types, some case examples can help to illustrate the general points which have been outlined above. Case 1: During the course of work in El Paso with anti-poverty projects, the author met frequently with Mr. Baca, a deputy director of one of the programs. Mr. Baca was older than most of the staff, including the director, and prior to his current position had been a teacher in the local school system for a number of years. Mr. Baca spoke English quite well, although with a distinct accent. He preferred to speak in English with the author, and only when in the company of someone who could speak or understand no English would he converse in Spanish. On several of these occasions Mr. Baca used words which the author did not recognize. When asked their meanings in English, Mr. Baca would consistently, as subsequent verification confirmed, give false translations.

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Quite by accident, some time after the author had stopped approaching Mr. Baca as an informant, he discovered that Mr. Baca was well-known within militant chicano circles as an individual who strongly resented anglos, although he normally concealed these feelings behind an impassive facade in his dealings with them. Case 2: A similar situation developed when the author, still working in El Paso with anti-poverty programs, went into the barrios with a chicano field worker, Mr. Herrera. At first there was no indication of hostility on the part of Mr. Herrera, and when the author would inquire about the usage and meanings of words which were unfamiliar to him, Mr. Herrera would willingly reply. During these initial visits to the barrios, however, Mr. Herrera exhibited a certain aloofness in his relationships with the author, something which had not been encountered under similar circumstances with other chicano outreach staff. Taking this as a possible indication that Mr. Herrera was covertly hostile, the author made inquires among several mutual acquaintances and soon discovered that Mr. Herrera was convinced of the need for separation of ethnic groups within the national society and that he mistrusted anglos and looked upon them as cultural imperialists. Then, too, the translations of the words and phrases made by Mr. Herrera proved to be erroneous. The Culture-Bound Informant In the course of cross-cultural investigation, serious researchers are well aware of many of the difficulties that can be encountered. Not only are linguistic and language obstacles frequently present, but there are more subtle forms of interference which are less easy to identify. This is especially so where the processes of encoding and decoding information are hampered by cultural misunderstandings between the investigator and the informant. For example, it is not unusual for many chicanos and Latin Americans to respond to the question "How many children do you have?" by answering only for those who are currently living in the same domicile as well as including in the number those progeny who may have died. The culture-bound (CB) type is selfexplanatory in a generic sense; that is, he is the type whose ability to communicate is constrained by the cultural patterns to which he adheres. But there is a problem also of the culture-bound investigator. If he cannot put himself into the cultural context of the informant, both in his conduct as an individual and in the phrasing of his inquires, he is doomed to failure. It is consequently imperative for the researcher to familiarize himself as much as possible with the configurations, norms, and values of the informants' cultural system. If he suspects that he will not be able to function in that system, then it is advisable to avail himself of bi-cultural individuals who can

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elicit the desired information. This, needless to say, would be especially necessary where the language problem is insurmountable. The CB type, then, is one who is, or may be, willing to provide information but cannot completely do so because of the cultural barriers that arise in the course of the attempt to communicate accurately. By the same token, the culture-bound investigator is the one who cannot elicit the data he desires because in his ignorance of the informant's culture, he either violates a norm and incurs hostility or ridicule, or he misinterprets feedback. Finally, a word about personalities is in order. Survey research requires direct association with individuals (except where the task is accomplished by mailing questionnaires). Much of the literature dealing with this kind of methodology frequently ignores the obvious but critical dimension of personality conflict. Granted, investigators cannot be expected to alter radically their personalities to accommodate their research needs. However, they should be conscious of their conduct and attempt to conform to changing research environments. An awareness of the kinds or types of informants that may be encountered in the field should prove useful. It is hoped that this brief paper has presented some insights into problems confronted in research requiring the use of informants in cross-cultural settings. Doubtless, many investigators have met with similar dilemmas and experiences. Certainly those recorded herein are not unique. What is rare, however, is the existence of an ample and incisive corpus of literature devoted to the practicalities of field work. Here and there the scholar discovers a lucid accounting of the matters discussed above. But a great deal of the literature is oriented so strongly toward generalities that it frequently fails to identify crucial specifics: what types of informants may be encountered, what kinds of cultural interference may be anticipated, how to avoid or at least deal successfully with communication and cultural barriers.

Notes 1 Robert T. Holt and John E. Turner, Jr., eds., The Methodology of Comparative Research (New York: The Free Press, 1970), Chapters I and II. 2 For a comprehensive discussion on the many aspects of research in the social sciences, see Julian L. Simon, Basic Research Methods in Social Science: The Art of Empirical Investigation (New York: Random House, 1969). 3 A debt of gratitude is due to C. Davis Huff whose help in furnishing the author with lexical entries has been of inestimable value. 4 See, for example, Richard L. Merritt, Systematic Approaches to Comparative Politics (Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1971).

JERRY R. CRADDOCK

The Southwest Spanish Lexicon

I would like to take up three aspects of the topic announced in the title of this paper: (1) what has been done; (2) what I am now doing; and (3) what remains to be done. 1 (1) No general lexicon of Southwest Spanish exists. We do have numerous lists of words that struck field workers as curious, odd, or aberrant; exceptions are rare, the most notable example that comes to mind is Donald Bowen's 1952 dissertation on the Spanish of San Antonito, New Mexico, 2 where an admirable effort is made to present a balanced picture of the lexicon of that community. More typical is the compilation of Gilberto Cerda and his collaborators, 3 who, under the influence of their mentor Romera-Navarro, followed two mechanical procedures that vastly reduced the value of their otherwise very useful work: (a) they excluded all words coincident in form and meaning with those occurring in the dictionary of the Spanish Academy, and (b) they included, from dialect dictionaries of every sort and description, all meanings differing from the academic one, no matter how irrelevant to the Texas Spanish form they were describing. Nowadays one would hardly feel the need to point out the utter absurdity of excluding, on the one hand, what our informants do in fact say, and including, on the other, what they have never heard of in their entire lives, were it not the case that this discredited method is still occasionally followed even in the decade of the seventies. These and similar shortcomings in substance are compounded by a practical difficulty ; perhaps four-fifths of the material dealing with Southwest Spanish exists in the form of unpublished master's theses and doctoral dissertations. They are often not easy to come by, and what is worse, it is anybody's guess as to just how many of these unheralded works lie mouldering in the stacks of the many campuses of the Southwest, completely unknown even to assiduous researchers. 4 Certain universities, in their perhaps exaggerated concern for the author's copyright, throw up additional obstacles by refusing to copy theses and dissertations (UC Berkeley) or by allowing individual purchase of films

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and photocopies only (Stanford), so that penurious scholars like myself must spend out of pocket rather than acquiring the items concerned through our research grants. It should be clear from the foregoing that one of the first steps that must be taken is to gather a reasonably exhaustive bibliography of published and unpublished work on Southwest Spanish. This bibliography should be published with succinct résumés of the format and content of each item and some comment on its reliability; at two-year intervals supplements should be brought out to keep it up to date. Concurrently, several centers or institutions should strive to put together a library of this material so that future scholars will not have to lose so much time in elementary bibliographical groundwork before getting to what interests them, the language itself. In contrast to linguistic studies, published folkloric texts are more abundant, though a great deal remains unprinted. Unfortunately, they have been the motive for astonishingly few linguistic studies ; s I know of only one lexically oriented survey that exploits Southwest Spanish folklore: S. M. Gross compiled a lexical index of Espinosa Sr.'s works including his publications in folklore.6 In this area, a practically virgin field awaits the explorer. (2) Sociolinguistics has a natural interest in the Southwest Spanish lexicon, which can serve as an index both to language maintenance and to linguistic interference. In my work on the Sociolinguistic Studies on Southwest Bilingualism (SSSB) corpus, 7 1 have attempted to keep both aspects in view. First of all, I seek out words and phrases that can be considered dialectal and check them against numerous Southwest and Mexican lexical sources. Secondly, I categorize the sorts of English interference evident in the utterances of the subjects. Finally, I take note of aberrancies that do not seem due to immediate English influence. I asked a native speaker from Mexico City to read each utterance token and to provide her reaction to it, i.e., whether it was acceptable Spanish, or colloquial, or regional, or, if unacceptable, to devise a grammatically correct Spanish equivalent. The information she provided served a dual purpose: first, to authenticate words and phrases, especially neologisms, that I was unable to document elsewhere; secondly, to supply a frame of reference by which to judge the precise character of interference and aberrance phenomena. My specific task is to prepare an analytical lexicon of the SSSB corpus; for the present, my method still involves word lists, but with some significant differences. The most important, I believe, is the inclusion of contextual references, that is, I transcribe a reasonable portion of the text in which the word in question occurs. Very few field workers and lexicographers have realized the importance of this step;8 how much more useful to linguists would dialect lexica be if only they provided utterance contexts for each

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entry! In no other way can the reader gain any insight into the use of a form as opposed to its phonetic shape and general meaning. Each informant is identified by a code that includes a rough estimate of the quality of his written Spanish, ranging from 1 for 'rudimentary' to 5 for 'native'. A correlation doubtless exists between the level of linguistic competence and the types of dialect traits and linguistic interference observed. More importantly, this code will permit other researchers to consult the elaborate sociological data that the Cross-Cultural Southwest Ethnic Study Center is putting together on each informant, with at least the possibility that social and linguistic variables may be established. Each entry will also carry references to literature in the field whenever relevant; the practice of noting in each case where an item does not occur seems inefficient 9 ; it should suffice to provide at the beginning of the lexicon a list of sources systematically exploited, which the reader is asked to assume were checked. In my research paper, I adopted the following tentative taxonomy: dialectalisms, divided into general Mexican, colloquial, and regional; the second category is a sort of catch-all for words and expressions I felt might be avoided in polite or somewhat formal conversations. Some instances may be no more than recent neologisms that are simply unknown to me and hence belong in the first category. The last is the most difficult category to establish with any assurance, in view of the almost complete lack of reliable information concerning the dialect geography of the Southwest and Mexico. With regard to interference patterns I follow the traditional division into loanwords, loanblends, and loanshifts, renaming them, as linguists are wont to do, assimilation, blending, and semantic displacement. These are subdivided by two cross-categorizations: first, whether the form at issue is integrated or interferential, that is, whether or not it belongs to the language of the community; and second, whether or not formal similarity is involved in the process of adaptation. Both require judgments that must be regarded as entirely exploratory. To round out the picture, I should point out that unassimilated borrowings are frequent, and that numerous aberrancies seem to defy explanation as cases of English interference, but rather must be attributed to the subjects' limited competence in Spanish. Time allows for only the merest sampling of dialectalisms and interference patterns; for fuller data let me again refer the reader to the paper mentioned in footnote 7. A: Colloquial dialectalisms. GENIOSO adj. 'de mal genio' / 'ill-tempered': unas [monjas] eran muy dulce otras pocas geniosas (AC-32.1 [3—4]).10 Acad 1970: 831 provides

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Jeiry R. Craddock

malgenioso 'de mal genio', designated as American; Santamaría 1959: 557, 1942: 2.26, Morínigo 1966: 283. Derived from genio in the meaning 'temper'; for other Am. Sp. derivatives in -oso, see Kany 1960a: 119ff. PONER EN ONDA verb phr. 'entusiasmar' / Coll. Eng. 'to turn on': Ernest Hemingway tiene una manera de escribir que me pone en honda (AC-12.3 [3—4]). Recognized by Mexican informant as a (for her) recent and popular colloquial idiom; she also volunteered the expression ¿Qué onda traes? 'What are you up to? '. Possibly similar to Eng. 'to get good vibes'. No independent attestations. B: Assimilation involving formally similar words in the two languages — interferential. PRINCIPALES n.m. pi.: mis parientes me enseñaron los principales de Religión (AC-21.2 [ 3 - 4 ] ) . Cf. Phillips 1967: 628, 702. The homonymy and frequent confusion of Eng. principle and principal are at the root of this substitution. Mexican informant observes that preceptos would be more appropriate to the context. 11 C: Blend - interferential. POSESAMOS/POSESIDO vb.tr.: todos somos humanos que posesamos todos los derechos humanos (AC-33.3 [3]); otro pensamiento que he posesido por un periodo de tiempo (ibid.). Derivatives may have been influential here: poses-ivo, -ión, etc. Is San Antonito posyador 'inhabitant' (Bowen 1952: 271) formed on the stem of poseerl D: Semantic displacement - interferential. HAGER vb. tr.: ella hace su clase muy intersante [sic] (AC-22.3 [3]); informant suggests: da una clase... Quiro [sic] conseguir una mujer que haga una buena esposa (AC-23.3 [3]), cf. Eng. she makes a good wife; mientras mi madre hace cena, yo veo la televisión (AC-23.1) < Eng. to make supper, mi objectivo es usar esta educion [sic] para hacer más dinero (AC-10.2 [1—2]) < Eng. to make money. E: Semantic deviation — integrated. POCO for un poco: le cuesta a una persona que trabajé poquito más duro (AC-10.2 [1—2]); unas [monjas] eran muy dulce otras pocas geniosas (AC-32.1 [3—4]); éste deporte es poco deficil porque tiene muchas reglas (AC-32.2 [3—4]); algunos días si tengo tiempo, veo poca televisión (AC-35.1 [3—4]);

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mi gusta poqueto El Paso (YC-14.1 [1—2]); en la primera clase todavía estoy poco dormido (YC-10.1 [4]) = in the first class I'm still half asleep (YC-10.3 [4]); cf. Phillips 1967: 579.12 (3) What I have outlined so far constitutes only the merest beginning. Several large-scale efforts must be made before really significant results can be expected. These projects may be rather visionary at this stage, but it helps not at all to assume in advance that certain things cannot be done; such assumptions tend to be self-fulfilling. First, a computer concordance of the SSSB corpus would greatly facilitate not only lexical, but phonological and syntactic research as well. The concordance at some stage in its elaboration, should be left open-ended, so that additions could be made from time to time. Rather than publishing it, the scholars concerned should seek out other means to make it available, perhaps simply by distributing to a few well-chosen centers copies of the print-out. The corpus as it now stands should be augmented by systematic interviewing of socio-economic groups not well represented in the corpus as it now exists, and similar corpora should be compiled for as many points as possible of the entire Southwest. Second, we need a computerized index to all published and unpublished work on the Spanish of the Southwest, so that the investigator concerned with a given form could have at his fingertips all available documentation. This index should be published, perhaps together with the bibliography mentioned above. The third type of computer project that would assist efforts like my own would involve the production of usage repertories based on well-known authors, the press, and just about any sort of publication. Over and over again I felt hampered by the lack of concrete information concerning admissible syntactic environments. Some small help is provided by dictionaries of quotations and usage, but rather than 15 or 20 illustrations of usage (which almost always fail to illuminate the particular point I am interested in) I would like to peruse, without having to gather them myself, in the neighborhood of 100 to 500 examples and even more, especially when dealing with common verbs like tomar. To determine the degree and extent of English influence on a given subject's Spanish, I need to know exactly which syntactic environments are acceptable for tomar (e.g., according to Moliner13 tomar un baño is perfectly proper Spanish, and not, as I at first thought, a case of interference14) and which are not (e.g., the same source does not give tomar un curso, while tomar un viaje is condemned by Alfaro 1964). Of course, I need such information for English, as well. In the ideal entry for each case of alleged interference, I want to be able to say that word or phrase X replicates word or phrase Y in English, and that the standard Mexican Spanish version would be Z (or, if more than one possibility exists, Zu Z2, Z 3 ,

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etc.). I realize that informants can be a great deal of help in this task, but it strikes me as unwise to rely exclusively on a single person's linguistic background, or even on that of several. Finally, I would like to envisage the development of what I shall call a "competence metric." Abstractly, I assume that a negative correlation exists between competence and interference. The more competent the speaker, the less interference will be evident in his speech. When working with written texts, it might be possible to make use of frequency criteria as one measure of the lexical competence of a subject. In theory, it would seem to be the case that the use of authentic words and phrases that do not match or would not be suggested by anything in English and that belong to the lower ranges of frequency (as established by Juilland and Chang-Rodriguez ls ) might also correlate negatively with the degree of interference, that is, would also be an indication of competence. But surely the most significant criterion of skill in a language is the facility with which a speaker manipulates the syntactic rules; perhaps for the first time, generative grammar has established a framework sufficiently specific to make the kind of measurement possible which I have in mind. In the long run, I feel that without such a parameter to evaluate the degree and type of interference, the work now in progress must remain largely anecdotal. This is no doubt the best moment to point out that our Austin colleague, Professor Fritz Hensey, is making great strides in this direction, and, I hope will provide the key which my own work so urgently needs. In conclusion, let me express my gratitude to the organizer of this extremely useful workshop, Professor Jacob Ornstein, whose drive and perseverence promise great things for the future of ethnic studies in the Southwest.

Notes 1 Part 1 will be veiy sketchy; for fuller treatment, see my survey "Spanish in North America," Current Trends in Linguistics, X (1972), 305-339. 1 The Spanish of San Antonito, New Mexico. Unpubl. Ph.D. Diss., University of New Mexico, 1952. 3 Vocabulario español de Texas. University of Texas Hispanic Studies, 5. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1953. 4 Useful in this regard is J. R. Chatham and E. Ruiz-Fornells, Dissertations in Hispanic Languages and Literatures, Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1970. s The exception that most readily comes to mind is J. B. Rael, A Study of the Phonology and Morphology of New Mexican Spanish Based on a Collection of 410 Folktales. 7 vols. Unpubl. Ph.D. Diss., Stanford University, 1937. 6 A Vocabulary of New Mexican Spanish. Unpubl. M.A. Thesis, Stanford University, 1935. 'The material of part 2 is abstracted from my research paper "Lexical Analysis of the SSSB Bilingual Corpus: Dialectal Traits and Chief Interference Patterns," completed

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March 30,1972. For availability of xerox copies, contact The Cross-Cultural Southwest Ethnic Study Center, Box 13, El Paso, Texas 79968. For a description of the corpus, see p. 3ff. "The compilers of the first Academic dictionary of Castilian (1726-39) decided to illustrate each word with quotations from the best authors of the previous centuries. The result was the finest Spanish dictionary of all time; to this day nothing equals it. Beginning with the second edition, the Academy eliminated what was good, that is, the quotations, and retained what was questionable and often bad, that is, the definitions and the etymologies. 'As, for instance, in Lurline Coltharp's The Tongue of the Tiritones: A Linguistic Study of a Criminal Argot. Alabama Linguistic and Philological Series, 7. University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1965. 10 The code translates as follows: 'AC series, informant 32, page 1 of his theme; his competence ranges from 3 (mediocre) to 4 (good). For the references and other conventions used in the entries, I must refer the reader to my paper mentioned in footnote 7. 11 One might also consider principales 'preceptos' a semantic displacement (loanshift) of the Spanish adjective principal, or indeed a blend of principios and principles. My judgment is based on the belief that semantic displacements refer to extensions of the meaning of forms that already share semantic properties with a counterpart in the interfering language, not to the use of a form with an entirely unrelated meaning, in which case I feel we simply have a case of assimilation (loanword). As for the possibility that we are dealing with a blend, I would need some evidence that a subject with a 3—4 rating is likely to know the word principio in the meaning 'principle'. " T h e variety of informants and levels of competence lead me to conclude that this usage belongs to the language of at least some segment of the Spanish speaking community of El Paso; it is interesting to note that Eng. a little should have reinforced the use of the indefinite article in the Spanish counterpart. 13 Diccionario del uso del español. 2 vols. Madrid: Gredos, 1966-67. "Theoretically the appearance of tomar un baño in a particular case could arise from English interference, but since the result is good Spanish, there is nothing more to say about it. 15 Frequency Dictionary of Spanish Words. The Hague: Mouton, 1964.

CARINA RAMÍREZ

Lexical Usage of, and Attitude toward, Southwest Spanish in the Ysleta, Texas Area

Introduction The purpose of this study is to attempt to determine the extent of the use of Tirilongo in the Ysleta area of El Paso, Texas. The area begins just east of the Hidden Valley section and extends on to the Ysleta eastern city limits, 6—10 miles from Second Ward, the southern section of El Paso, where the use of Tirilongo is wide-spread. The South El Paso and Ysleta communities have very little in common, other than the fact that the majority of their inhabitants speak Spanish. South El Paso is a typical ghetto area and is the first (and often the last) stop in the United States for Mexican immigrants; Ysleta, now incorporated into the city of El Paso, remains a rural farming community whose residents, in general, have lived there for generations. South El Paso residents who relocate in the Ysleta area settle, for the most part, around the Hidden Valley section which is a transitional area between El Paso proper and Ysleta. Generally, they have left South El Paso as a result of their desire to improve themselves, and along with the change in living conditions comes a change in language usage. In her well-known study of 1965,1 Coltharp states that the Tirilones are an economically deprived Latin-American people who have settled in the southern section of El Paso, many of whom speak, in addition to English and Spanish, a third "language" which is referred to as cald. In this article, the third "language" will be referred to as Tirilongo, a term used by many acquaintances from South El Paso. Some trace much of the "language" to a type of jargon from the World War I era; others credit it to the criminal element. As a criminal argot, Tirilongo is said to serve as a cover for illegal activities and as protection from police reprisal and from betrayal. Because of its usefulness, the "language" has spread to other sections of El Paso and other areas as far away as Los Angeles and even Mexico City.

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It is, however, no longer limited to the criminal element. Perhaps as a "fad," it has been used in part by the youth and has now become an integral part of the common linguistic pattern of the area. On the jacket of The Tongue of the Tiribnes, it is stated that the "language has always been a male one and that no respectable female would admit that she understood a word of it." This is no longer true of many of the lexical terms used five years or so ago. Many of these terms are now well-known to youth and adults alike, and are fairly widely used by a large number of them, both male and female. Even in Ysleta, a more isolated, rustic area, these lexical items are quite well-known.

Methodology The informants were chosen indiscriminately from various sections of Ysleta and from Ysleta High School; they volunteered their help and were referred by one another to the interviewer. Their occupations cover a wide range from student to housewife to auto-parts warehouseman to physician. They were, however, divided into three age-groups: under 20 years of age, between 20 and 40 years of age, and over 40 years of age. This was done in order to determine any differences in language usage and in language attitude between the age groups. The twenty-five Tirilongo terms used were chosen at random from The Tongue of the Tiritones, and to each "slang"2 term was added others of similar meaning; these were then matched to "proper" terms. Twenty-five sentences were then composed which could terminate in each of these Tirilongo terms. These sentences were translated from English into Spanish by ten additional informants, and interference is noted in the translations. "With the darkest skin" was consistently translated con el piel más oscuro, rather than de la piel más oscura', "to learn how to teach" was translated aprender como enseñar, rather than aprender a enseñar. Another instance of English interference is noted in such phrases as "an illiterate," "a job," "a truck driver," "a wino," "a flatterer," "a liar," and "a prostitute" which were translated un analfabeto, un trabajo, un camionero, un vinatero, un adulador, un embustero, and una prostituta. The translations were used without attempting to standardize them; lexical choices also appear exactly as they were given. The interviewer read the sentences orally and the informant completed each sentence with the first term that came to his mind. The informant was then asked a set of questions concerning his choices, i.e., with whom would he use these terms and under what circumstances. He was asked if he had or would use any other terms, with whom, and under what circumstances. He

Lexical Usage of Southwest Spanish in the Ysleta, Texas Area

45

was asked to recall having heard any other terms and, again, who used them, with whom were they used, and under what circumstances. Those items chosen first, those also used, and those heard by each informant were charted according to age groups. Percentages and attitudes were figured for the three groups, both individually and in a comparative study. Results The following twenty-five sentences were used to elicit lexical usage from the informants. All choices are written in parentheses, with standard terms first and non-standard terms, along with those which do not quite belong, second. Terms found in The Tongue of the Tiritones are set in bold face italic. The informants' first choices, along with attitudes toward their personal lexicon, are noted after each sentence. All other terms used or heard by them were classified in all three attitude categories, unless otherwise stated. 1. Voy al baile. Van a tener buen orquestra [sic] y tengo ganas de (bailer / borlotear, chanclear, dar vueltas, tirar chancla, tirar chanclas, zapatear). It is interesting to note that the first choice of all informants was bailar which was considered "proper." Borlotear, dar vueltas, and chanclear had been used and were considered "acceptable," while all other terms which were used or heard were considered "slang." 2. Las personas con el piel más oscuro son (negro's / alemanes, chugas, chuguitas, de color, Uantones, mallates, morenos, negritos, prietos, tintos, tiraches). Negros, which was considered "proper," was the choice of all informants under 20 years of age. Negros was also the choice of many other informants who also considered it to be "proper." Other choices were mallates which was considered "slang," and morenos which was considered "proper." One informant offered the opinion that negros were called chugas because they called everyone "sugah." 3. Un hombre del campo que no tiene mucha educación ni cultura es un (analfabeto, humilde, ignorante, iliterato, ineducado, inculto / bracero, chivero3, erreje, granadero, jinete, labrador, menso, mogrero, mojado, pendejo, peón, ranchero, surrumato, tapado, tonto). Ignorante was a first choice in all three age groups and was considered "proper." Other choices were ineducado, ranchero, humilde, mogrero, and peón, all of which were considered "proper," and menso and surrumato which were considered "acceptable." Bracero and chivero were considered "slang." 4. Necesito ganar dinero, y por eso, tengo que buscar un (empleo, trabajo / camallar,4 chamba, jale, puesto).

46

Carina Ramírez

Trabajo and empleo were first choices which were considered "proper," and jale was considered "slang." 5. Un hombre que carga mercancía o ganado en un vehículo grande se llama un (camionero, cargador, chofer / chofero, maestro, manejador, troquero). First choices which were considered "proper" were chofer, manejador, and camionero; troquero was considered in all three attitude categories. Other terms used and heard were all considered "proper." 6. El viejo no quiere compartir su dinero porque es muy (ávaro, mísero / agarrado, apretado, chinchi, chipe, codo, invidioso, raspa, rind, tacaño). First choices which were considered "proper" were misero, tocaño, invidioso, and rind. Other first choices were agarrado and codo which were classified in all three attitude categories. Chinchi was a first choice which was considered "slang." 7. Las personas cuyas padres vinieron de México se llaman (Méxicoamericanos ¡ chícanos, españoles, hispanos, indios-españos, la raza, la raza mexicana, mexicanos, mojados, pochos). Españoles and mexicanos were first choices which were considered "proper." Another first choice was chícanos which was considered both "acceptable" and "slang." Pochos was a first choice which was considered "slang." 8. Una muchacha que tiene mucho miedo es muy (cobarde, miedosa, nerviosa, temerosa, tímida / asustona, chiva, escama, escamada, escandalosa, reservada). "Proper" first choices were cobarde, miedosa, nerviosa, and tímida. Escamada was a first choice which was considered "slang." 9. El marido que quiere salir solo del hogar tiene que tener el permiso de la (esposa / controla, jaina,5 jefa,5 marida, mujer, ruca, señora, vieja). Esposa was a first choice which was considered "proper." First choices considered "slang" were jefa and ruca. 10. El hombre adicto al vino se llama un (vinatero / alcohólico, vicioso, borrachento, borracho, güainero, guaiño,6pisto,'' tomador). Alcohólico and tomador were first choices which were considered "proper." Borracho, another first choice, was considered both "proper" and "acceptable." A first choice which was considered both "acceptable" and "slang" was guaiño. Borrachento and güainero were considered "slang." 11 .La persona que anda chismeando de casa a casa se llama (cuentista, murmurador / chirinolera, chismosa, chivinolera, comadrera, cotera, embustera, jacalero, meticha). Cotera and cuentista were considered "proper." Chismosa was considered both "proper" and "acceptable." Chirinolera fell in the category of all three attitudes. Of the terms used and heard, meticha was considered "acceptable." Chivinolera, found in Dr. Coltharp's book, was completely unknown.

Lexical Usage of Southwest Spanish in the Ysleta, Texas Area

47

12. Uno que agradece a su jefe, para elevarse, es un (adulador, lisonjero, zalamero / agradecido, bàrbero, chucho, falso, labioso, lambero, lambiache, lambiche, lambichero, lambión, larribishi, lambista). "Proper" choices were adulador, agradecido, and falso. Lambión was considered both "proper" and "acceptable." Lambero, lambiche, lambichero, lambishi, and lambista were considered "slang." Zalamero was unknown to informants below 40 years of age. 13. Cuando tiene hambre al mediodía, sale del trabajo para (almorzar, comer / la pastura, lonchar, refinar, tragar). Almorzar and comer were considered "proper." It is interesting to note, however, that only one informant chose almorzar, in this area there seems to be some confusion in semantics, and almorzar is used as "to eat breakfast." 14. La persona que cuenta mentiras es un (embustero, engañador, mentiroso / hablador, maderista). Embustero was considered "proper." Mentiroso was considered both "proper" and "acceptable." 15. Las personas que viven en Tejas se llaman (pásenos / pachucos, paisanos, pochos,8 son de El Paso, vatos del Chuco). "Proper" choices were paisanos, paseños and vatos del Chuco. Son de El Paso was considered "acceptable." Approximately one fourth of the informants made no response. All of the informants had heard pachucos, but all agreed that it has a different connotation. 16 .La mujer que vende el amor se llama una (cortesana, mujer de la calle, prostituta, puta, ramera / baja, chutea, cualquiera, degenerada, pey, piluja, piruja, pluma, sin vergüenza, vieja de la calle). The choice which was considered "proper" was prostituta. Puta was considered both "proper" and "acceptable." Pluma was considered in all three attitude categories. Vieja de la calle was considered "acceptable," while chutea and pey were considered "slang." Only two informants over 40 years of age had ever heard ramera, which was considered "proper." 17. Con unas puertas tiene que jalar; con otras tiene que (empujar / empuchar, puchar, pushar). Empujar was considered "proper." Empuchar was considered "acceptable," while puchar fell in all three attitude categories. Pushar was considered "slang." 18 .En la guerra de Vietnam ya se mataron muchos (soldados / sardinas, sardos). Soldados was the only choice, and it was considered "proper." Informants below 20 years of age had never heard sardos. 19. El maestro estudió en la universidad para aprender como (enseñar, educar / profesorar, fichar). Enseñar and profesorar were considered "proper." Tichar was considered

48

Carina Ramúez

"acceptable," although informants below 20 years of age had never heard of it. 20. La muchacha que tiene novio y que sale con otro, sin que el novio lo sepa, le está'(engañando / chanceando, escondiendo, haciendo tonto, madereando, manjeando, quemando, sunchando, sancheando, traisonando). Engañando and traisonando were considered "proper." Haciendo tonto, escondiendo, and sunchando were considered "acceptable." but chanceando and quemando were considered "slang." 21. Quiero fumar; dáme un (cigarillo, cigarro / frcqo, leño, pitillo). Choices which were considered "proper" were cigarillo and cigarro. Frajo was considered both "acceptable" and "slang," while pitillo was considered "slang." Leño had been used in this situation, although it supposedly refers to a marijuana cigarette. 22. En la zona delante de la corte que está pintada de rojo, no puede (estacionarse / parar,9 pararse, parquear, parquearse). Estacionarse, parar, and parquear were all considered "proper" whereas parquearse was considered both "acceptable" and "slang." 23. Ya, como tengo empleo, tengo que levantarme a las cinco, que es muy temprano de la (mañana / baraña, madrugada). Both madrugada and mañana were considered "proper." No informant under 20 years of age had heard baraña. 24. Los artículos que se pone en los pies antes de ponerse los zapatos son (calcetas, calcetines / sacatines, tubos). Calcetines was considered both "acceptable" and "proper." No informant below 40 years of age had heard of tubos. 25. Cuando uno le pregunta algo, y usted está de acuerdo, contestará (si / nacho, simón, sirola10). All informants chose sí which was considered "proper." This, of course, is not a report of the complete study. Anyone interested in the complete study with percentages and attitudes of all lexical items chosen, used, and heard for each age group may refer to the copy in the library at the University of Texas at El Paso. Conclusion All languages, whether standard or non-standard, are subject to constant change, and along with semantic and lexical changes come changes in norms and attitudes. These changes can easily occur under normal circumstances in a unilingual community which is influenced only from within. In a bilingual area influences are much greater. Community and personal beliefs, along with personal and group values and practices, determine language usage in a

Lexical Usage of Southwest Spanish in the Ysleta, Texas Area

49

unilingual area; in a bilingual area each culture and each language influence the other. In the El Paso area English may not necessarily be the majority language, but it is the dominant one. English is used in the schools, in the courts and, with the exception of South El Paso, in business. In El Paso proper, church services are conducted in English, although Spanish services are conducted in South El Paso and in the outlying areas of Canutillo and Ysleta. In general, Spanish is spoken by Mexican Americans in the home with members of the family and outside the home with friends. It may be presumed, then, that English is regarded as a formal language and that Spanish is regarded as an informal language. As the dominant, English exerts a very strong influence over changes in or additions to the local Spanish dialect. Such words as chipe, giiaino, lortchar, parquear, puchar, and tichar reflect the English counterparts "cheap," "wino," "to have lunch," "to park," "to push," and "to teach." Thus, the South El Paso dialect is subject to change not only from within, but also from without. Attitudes of Spanish speakers toward the South El Paso dialect vary from one age group to another. Those informants over 40 years of age, with little or no education, feel that their lexicon is non-standard; those with some education vehemently reject any term which they consider non-standard, and rejection of the lexicon seems to be accompanied by rejection of the group that uses it. Attitudes of informants between 20 and 40 years of age differ greatly from those of the older group. Having had, for the most part, little or no academic training in Spanish, they generally tend to feel that their lexicon is "acceptable,'' if not standard or "proper." However, those with some education showed great animosity and agitation at the mention of terms which they considered to be non-standard or "slang." It seems to be characteristic of the two groups over 20 years of age that they actually do not know which lexicon is truly standard and which is non-standard, according to academic "authorities." Informants below 20 years of age are apparently better educated and more broadminded than the older groups. Informants in this age group have, in general, had academic training in Spanish and are well aware of standard or "proper" lexical items. Due to their education, they tended to choose, during the interview, lexical items which they knew to be standard. They identified most terms which they used informally as non-standard or "slang," since these terms are not used in the formal classroom. Most feel, however, that these terms are becoming more and more acceptable in the dialect of this area. It is interesting to note that terms they had heard used by their parents and relatives (generally belonging to the group above 40 years of age) were considered nonstandard or "slang" without reservation.

50

Carina Ramírez

Among the three age groups, very little agreement was found in usage of, and attitudes toward, Spanish lexical items, which further indicates change. Of the twenty-five items elicited, only bailar, calcetines, si, and soldados were the first choices of all three age groups. Comer was the first choice of those informants under 20 years and those over 40 years of age. (See Figure I) There is more agreement among the three age groups as to which lexical terms are standard or "proper." Bailar, cigarro, comer, enseñar, esposa, estacionarse, mañana, mexicanos, si, soldados, and trabajo were all considered standard. Among those informants below 20 years of age and those between 20 and 40 years of age, engañando was considered standard. Calcetines, chofer, and empleo were considered standard among those informants below 20 years of age and those over 40 years of age. Negros was the only term considered standard among those informants between 20 and 40 years of age and those over 40 years of age. (See Figure II) All three groups agreed that pachucos actually meant hoodlums. Alcohólico and almorzar had different connotations among those informants below 20 years of age and those over 40 years of age. All informants under 20 years of age agreed that frajo was non-standard. Among all three age groups, chivinolera was completely unknown. Among those informants below 20 years of age and those between 20 and 40 years of age, ramera, tubos, and zalamero were unknown. (See Figure III)

Fig. I

First Choice - 100% Agreement

Item

X

Y

Z

Bailar Calcetines Comer Esposa Estacionarse Mañana Mentiroso Mexicanos Miedosa Negros Sí Soldados Trabajo

X X X X X

Y Y

Z Z Z

Y Y

Z

Troquero

X X X X

Y Y Y Y

X - Informants under 20 years of age Y - Informants between 20 and 40 years of age Z - Informants over 40 years of age

Z Z Z

Lexical Usage of Southwest Spanish in the Ysleta, Texas Area Fig. II

51

Standard Lexical Items - 100% Agreement

Item Alcohólico Almorzar Bailar Calcetines Chofer Cigarro Comer Empleo Empujar Engañando Enseñar Esposa Estacionarse Ignorante Mañana Mentiroso Mexicanos Miedosa Negros Sí Soldados Tímida Trabajo

X

Y

Z

Y X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z

X - Informants under 20 years of age Y - Informants between 20 and 40 years of age Z - Informants over 40 years of age

The basic role of language has always been communication and, traditionally, the means of achieving fairly precise communication has been through standardization. When a lexicon is used by small numbers of people, this uniformity is not so necessary; but when large numbers of people begin to use a type of lexicon frequently, uniformity and standardization become very important. Lexical dialects are often used by small numbers of speakers who identify themselves with a particular group, and thus the dialect is relatively "closed." When, however, these lexical items come into use outside the small group, standardization and uniformity influence lexical usage quite naturally through necessity. Even "borrowings," in this case from English, become a natural part of the dialect, often taking on the grammatical forms and pronunciation of the second language. Standardization, therefore, has come about in the South El Paso Spanish dialect. Lexical items, once used only by a small group, are now used by, or are familiar to, large numbers of people. What was once termed non-standard is now relatively standard within the dialect, even though it is not recognized by the Real Academia Española.

52 Fig. Ill

Carina Ramírez Unknown Lexical Items

Item

X

Adulador Avaro Baraña - NS Chiva - NS Chivinokra - NS Controla - NS Lisonjero Llantones - NS Murmurador Ramera Sancheando - NS Sardos - NS Tichar - NS Tubos - NS Zalamero

X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Y

Z

Y

Z

Y Y Y Y Y

X - Informants under 20 years of age Y - Informants between 20 and 40 years of age Z - Informants over 40 years of age NS — Non-standard A change in attitudes has resulted from wider usage and standardization. Older Spanish speakers in the El Paso area tend to cling to their dialect as many persistently tend to cling to tradition, perhaps as a result of fear of new and different ways. They tend to feel that their lexical patterns are inferior but, as a minority group, it is all they have that truly belongs to them; thus they tenaciously keep it. The youth have a different reason. They are developing a fierce pride in their cultural heritage; they are Chicanos, and their use of the dialect identifies them with this attitude. Lexical items used in this dialect were perhaps once Tirilongo, but no more. They are now Chicanismo, the dialect of a new generation.

Notes ' Lurline H. Coltharp, The Tongue of the Tiritones (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1965). 2 It was decided to use these very unscientific terms on the basis of previous field examinations. It was found that the terms were most readily understood and used by all of the informants, so for the purpose of eliciting their true attitudes, their own labels were used. "proper" - a term that could be used in formal conversations and in literary situations, "acceptable" - a term that could be used in both formal and informal conversations, "slang" — a term that should only be used in informal situations among family and friends. 'Coltharp,p. 151. Chivero is cited, but meaning "a scaredy cat."

Lexical Usage of Southwest Spanish in the Ysleta, Texas Area 4

Ibid., 136. The form camellar is cited. Ibid, 204,209. Jaina and jefa are cited, but meaning "girl friend" and "mother" respectively. 6 Ibid., 198. The formguaino is cited. 1 Ibid, 241. Pisto is cited, but meaning "a drunkard." 'Ibid., 242. Pocho is cited, but meaning "a person from California who is of Mexican descent." ®Ibid., 233. Parar is cited, but meaning "to purchase." 10 Ibid258. The form sirol is cited. 5

53

PAUL WERSHUB GOODMAN and KATHRYN RENNER

Social Factors and Language

The study of sociology must necessarily involve itself with language since language is perhaps the most important distinguishing characteristic of personality, social class and culture. The lack of attention which has been given to the language factor by early sociologists is now being rectified by the great attention it is receiving today by modern sociologists. This paper will concern itself with a brief description of three early sociological studies of language and culminate with an original study of Mexican-American bilinguals completed recently on this (University of Texas at El Paso) campus. For our study, a sociolinguistic questionnaire was administered to a carefully selected stratified random sample of 148 Anglo and 153 Spanish surnamed students. We compared the socio-economic class of these two groups and then, limiting ourselves to only the Spanish surnamed students, tested certain hypotheses. Our hypothesis compared socio-economic class, the independent variable, with such factors as language usage, language loyalty, foreign (Mexican) parentage and assimilation as dependent variables. These findings are interesting and important for those who wish to work with MexicanAmerican bilinguals. While our study is concerned with social class and Mexican American college students, former studies have linked language to personality, personality problems, cultural class differences and delinquency prediction. The variety of studies here presented reaffirms the close relationship that probably exists between social factors and language. If language is the means of expressing personality, it is also the means by which personality is developed. There is evidence that suggests that without language, or some means of communication based upon language, no child can be properly socialized into society. We refer to the famous case of the two feral children discovered in, of all places, Pennsylvania and Chicago Both children were illegitimate and because of this were raised in an isolated room where they were periodically visited by their mothers. Both

56

Paul Wershub Goodman and Kathryn Renner

children were discovered by social workers and taken from their mothers to an institutional setting at about age six. One child learned language and became a normal child growing up in our society. The other did not and was an institutional case until she passed away at the age of nine. From this and from the story of Helen Keller it follows that Romulus and Remus, to say nothing of Tarzan, are truly fictional and could never have really happened. Language, or communication based upon language, seems to be essential for human socialization. Bossard, writing in the American Sociological Review in 19452 indicated some of the personality problems that bilingual children face growing up in our American society. Since language learning parallels personality development, the bilingual child's personality must be affected by the fact that he is faced with the difficulty of learning two languages simultaneously. Bossard relied on seventeen case histories of bilinguals for his findings. He discovered that all his subjects were aware of their language problem and this awareness caused them to be nervous about language as long as they remained at home. He also reports that the subjects resented their parents lack of knowledge of English, their inability to speak without an accent and their incapability of appreciating their children's language problem. Bossard theorizes that bilinguals of immigrant parentage have problems developing self-confidence since they may be teased by their peers because of having an accent and also because they speak at home what American society generally regards an inferior language. He recounts the agonizing work undertaken by many of his subjects so that they could speak meticulous English. Unfortunately none of his variables were tested in our own study. It should be noted in passing, though, that a foreign accent can be an advantage in the proper setting. One of his subjects was a University professor who had never been able to rid himself of his accent. He was received at the University as a distinguished foreign scholar and according to Bossard his accent helped him obtain higher rank and salary than he really deserved! Language is also significant to the sociologist because it not only reflects personality differences but also cultural, social class and sub-cultural differences. According to Pieris 3 static feudal societies develop intricate forms of address between classes so that one knows who is subordinate to whom at all times. He reports that in Ceylon there are eight different ways of saying thou or you depending on the class status of the people speaking to each other. Many other languages of Asia have different forms of address for subordinates, equals, and superordinates. Sometimes culture makes it impossible to translate from one language to another. M. West4 states that every time he asked his Bengali students to write the English sentence, "You know that I am thinking of his marrying

Social Factors and Language

57

one of them," they instead wrote "I am thinking of marrying one of my girls to him." Evidently individual choice of a marriage partner, to say nothing of women's lib, was not part of the Bengal culture. Culture is not alone in developing different forms of language expression. Social classes, sub-cultures, occupational groups, and interest groups all have different ways of expressing themselves through language. Lerman s calls the special language of a group "jargon" and illustrates it by baseball; who but a baseball fan would know what a " squeeze play" or "stretching a hit" is? Lerman defines argot as different from jargon because it is the language of a deviant group. Argot may thus be termed non-standard English of non-standard people. Lerman's sample was 557 boys and girls, aged 10-14, living in the east side of New York City. Lerman determined that a knowledge of criminal argot was very closely correlated with participation in illegal action. He measured illegal action by the self reports of the subjects on whether or not they were known to the police. In other words, Lerman, in this language study, was able to reach the highest level of scientific endeavor, prediction. He was able to predict juvenile delinquent behavior through the amount of criminal argot known to the subject. For our own study, several faculty members constructed a questionnaire 6 to retrieve data on demographic, social, linguistic and attitudinal variables among Mexican-American and Anglo college students. The questionnaire was administered to a stratified student population sample of the University of Texas at El Paso selected at random. This work is part of a project sponsored by the Spencer Foundation of Chicago designed to augment available information on Mexican-American university students. The University of Texas at El Paso is located in a metropolitan area lying along the United States—Mexican border. Approximately 50 percent of El Paso's population is Spanish-surnamed. The university also has a large percentage of students with Spanish surnames — 30.1 percent in 1969 when the questionnaire was administered. The university is also characterized by low tuition cost, fairly easy entrance requirements, and a student body who are largely native to the El Paso area. Whereas Bossard was interested in personality problems of bilinguals and Pieris was interested in the relation of spoken language forms to social class in static societies, we in our study were interested in discovering the relationship, if any, of social class to certain linguistic and attitudinal variables of Mexican-American students. Social class of the respondent was based upon the social class of the respondent's father since the category student is not a social class and the student like an adolescent depends upon his father for his social class position. The social class of the respondent's father was determined by a score for occupational position, as judged by Duncan's Socio-Economic

58

Paul Wershub Goodman and Kathryn Renner

Index (SEI), 7 and educational attainment, as measured by a modified Hollingshead scale.8 The combined scores of educational and occupational status were grouped into five social classes: lower-lower, upper-lower, lowermiddle, upper-middle and lower-upper classes. Although the relationship between social class of Mexican American students and other variables is the major concern of this paper, knowledge of social class distribution of the student population is also of interest to us. Table I presents the social class distribution of Mexican-American and Anglo students in the sample. For the purpose of this paper, Anglo refers to students who do not have a Spanish surname. From this table it is apparent that a vast social class difference exists between those students attending the University of Texas at El Paso from Mexican American homes. There are practically no lower-lower class Anglos (1 percent) while 24 percent of the Mexican-American students come from lower-lower class homes. Thirty-seven percent of the Mexican Americans come from homes classified as lower-middle while only 18 percent of the Anglos come from this socio-economic group. There were however, a higher percentage of Anglo students than Mexican American students who came from lowermiddle, upper-middle and lower-middle class homes, the respective percentages being 32 percent to 28 percent, 37 percent to 9 percent and 12 percent to 2 percent. The p stands for the probability of these numbers occurring this way by chance. A p of The subjects use English words, or translate them literally in the Arabic sentences, i.e., when interference occurs from English to Arabic. Grammatical rules are violated. ^There is complete silence.

subjects translate better when the message is given to them in Arabic. Since the two parts of the word translation test were given at different times, the same word was sometimes chosen as a message in both Arabic and English. The majority of the subjects were able to translate the word in English when hearing it in Arabic, but not when the situation was reversed. The subjects knew the meaning of the word in both languages but were unable to produce it in Arabic. Based on this test, the researcher classified the bilingual subjects as latent bilinguals who had competence in Arabic not reflected in their performance. Table 1 reflects an interesting aspect, the low average of correct translation of words related to school in both languages. The subjects use these words daily at school but do not know their equivalents in Arabic. For instance when the word 'principle' was given as message in English or Arabic, the majority of the subjects were unable to translate it in either Arabic or English. The results of this test give an indication of the type of conversations held in the subjects' homes. Table 2 shows that the subjects' lowest performance in translating sentences was when the 'number-agreement' structure was stressed. It is in this part of the test that grammatical rules were mostly violated. Interference occurred mostly when 'verbal prepositions' were translated. The interference in the subjects' responses was as follows:

Elicitation Techniques for Research on Child Bilinguals

115

1. The translation of English items word for word. The result was a sentence that is Arabic in phonology but English in style. This aspect of interference occurred mostly when verbal prepositions were translated. 2. The modification of the item, so that it will fit the pattern of the recipient language. In this case interference occurred in both directions (Arabic to English and English to Arabic). For instance the bilingual would say 'yidayyit' or 'yibarrak' for the English expressions 'to have a date' or 'to park a car'. 3. The retaining of items without translation, a one way interference from English to Arabic. Words such as 'make up' or 'stove' were frequently used in the middle of Arabic sentences. In the material collected from the sentence translation test, the researcher did not encounter caiques from English in the word order of Arabic sentences. The subject sometimes could not remember the translation of an English word and he would thus use the English item without disturbing the Arabic pattern. An example would be the translation of the structure 'the smart boy — ' a s /?il walad ?il smart/ where the adjective follows and agrees with the noun it modifies, although 'smart' is a transferred English1 word. The researcher chose the syntactic structures, listed in Table 2, from the recorded biographical questionnaire and conversation that had collected. The subjects were more at ease than when the objective tests were offered. They were mixing rules that resulted in syntactic errors mainly due to the setting of the interview. The subjects knew that they shared with the researcher a common factor, bilingualism, which would help understand them. Haugen referred to this attitude as being the result of "the law of least effort," which led to a poor performance. Therefore the subjects were given the sentence translation test in order to evaluate, in a way, their level of competence in Arabic. From the results shown in Table 2, it can be said that the bilingual subjects knew the basic transformations in Arabic; thus their earlier performance was not a total manifestation of their competence. Table 3 (the translation from Arabic into English) shows that the subjects' responses in English were mostly grammatical. The arabicized responses were sentences where the subject literally translated Arabic idioms into English resulting in sentences such as 'he opens the TV' for 'he turns on the TV,' or 'she closes the light' for 'she turns off the light.' Table 4 indicates that the bilingual subjects recalled more words in English than in Arabic. If the test were administered to monolinguals (Arabs or Americans) the researcher would have been in a better position to examine the effect of bilingualism on the subjects' speed in producing words. 7 During the reaction time test, which measured the quantity rather than the quality of performance, some of the subjects did not differentiate between velarized (emphatic) and non-velarized (non-emphatic) phonemes in Arabic.

116

AleyaRouchdy

Table 3 Sentence Translation Test The average and standard deviation of responses to different Arabic sentences. Translation from Arabic to English. Number of Arabic sentences examined

Eleven grammatical structures where idioms were stressed

Grammatical response 2

Arabicized sentence^

Ungrammatical sentence 0

No response^

Avg. S.D.

Avg. S.D.

Avg. S.D.

Avg. S.D.

8.31

1.27

0.50

0.90

1.96

1.24

0.74

1.15

aOne of the grammatical rules has been violated. t>The subjects use Arabic words, or translate them literally in the English sentence, i.e., interference occurs from Arabic to English. Grammatical rules are violated. ¿There is complete silence. Table 4a Reaction Time Test The average and the standard deviation of the number of words, starting with a specific phoneme, produced by twenty-two students. Time allowed for each phoneme was one minute. Initial Phonemes Arabic

Id 1 hi M M M N hi /d/

Average and Standard Deviation of the Number of Arabic Words Avg.

S.D.

2.82 4.05 4.05 2.68 3.50 1.68 1.45 0.68

1.58 2.49 2.76 1.92 2.34 1.65 2.04 0.99

Initial Phonemes English

/d/ hi Ivl M /m/ M M m

Average and Standard Deviation of the Number of English Words Avg.

S.D.

8.32 10.14 9.27 4.86 9.22 7.09 8.54 9.64

3.01 3.90 4.39 2.54 2.55 3.21 4.49 3.99

a

The phonemes /p/ and /v/ were left out of the column of Arabic phonemes since they are non-existent in the Arabic phonological system. Eleven out of the twenty-two informants asked to give Arabic words starting with /p/ or /v/ answered that there were no such sounds in Arabic. The other eleven either remained silent, trying to remember words with /p/ or /v/, or they gave words where /b/ -• [pita: 9i]. As for /v/, they responded that there was no such sound in Arabic.

The words /4arb/ and /?u:t/ were given as having initial /d/ and /s/ (in such a case they were not computed at all). The researcher was interested in finding out if the phonemic opposition emphatic/non-emphatic had merged in the subjects' underlying representation. She gave each subject a list of English words

Elicitation Techniques for Reseaich on Child Bilinguals

117

to translate into Arabic. The Arabic translation of the words on this list had Is/ and /§/ or /d/ and /4/ occurring initially, medially, or finally. Fifty percent of the subjects gave the correct pronounciation, differentiating properly between the emphatic/non-emphatic sounds. Two-thirds of the remaining fifty percent confused the two sounds and could not hear the difference when the researcher pronounced it for them. The other one-third remained silent and did not respond to this part of the test. The second fifty percent are thus classified by the researcher as naive bilinguals, since they applied particular rules of one language, English, while speaking another language, Arabic, and since they were also unable to correct their errors when they were pointed out to them. Epilogue The four tests that were given to the subjects did measure their proficiency in the areas of expression and translation. In all of the tests, the subjects' average score in English performance was higher than it was in Arabic; however the qualitative and the quantitative evaluations of the bilinguals also depend on the four factors which were mentioned by Weinreich.8 Firstly, the order of learning. In all of the cases the subjects learned Arabic before English at home. Secondly, the mode of use. This includes visual reinforcement and oral use of the language. Among the subjects under study the visual enforcement is stronger in English. Thirdly, the usefulness of communication. English is more useful to the subjects at school and outside their community. Finally, the emotional involvement. The subjects are involved in both languages, English being the language of the country and Arabic being the dominant language of the community. 9 Following Weinreich's model on language dominance, Table 5 shows the rating of the language for certain parameters. Two aspects are equally important to the bilingual subjects in using English or Arabic: oral use and usefulness in communication.

Conclusion The goal of this research was threefold: firstly, as a linguist, the writer is interested in bilingualism as a medium of the language change occurring in the speech of first generation Arab-Americans; this includes the interference occurring in their Arabic as well as English. Based on the results of the four objective tests, one can conclude that interference from English into Arabic is higher than from Arabic into English. Thus, bilingualism did affect the subject's performance in Arabic. Secondly, the writer was not only interested in examining interference

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Aleya Rouchdy

Table 5

Language Use and Language Dominance

Relative proficiency rating 1. understanding 2. expression Mode of use rating 1. visual 2. oral First training rating Emotional involvement rating 1. friendship 2. patriotic attachment Usefulness in communication rating

English

Arabic

*

+

+ + +

* +

+ + +

+ * +

+ + +

+indicates positive rating of a language at a certain point. * indicates that the rating of one language is higher. that occurs in the speech o f the bilingual informants, but also in using the bilingual's performance as an indicator of competence, that is, the underlying system of rules that the bilingual knows but does not necessarily use, and to demonstrate that bilingualism belongs to both competence and performance.

Notes 1 Charles Osgood and Thomas A. Sebeok, eds., Psycholinguistics: A Survey of Theory and Research Problems (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), p. 141. 1 The sign ( - ) implies some use of the language, but less than that shown by (+). 'Noam Chomsky, citing Wilhelm von Humboldt, Cartesian Linguistics (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 21. 4 The writer in her previous research (see Note 6) differentiated between objective and subjective tests. The objective tests are mechanical tests that require quick responses from the subject. The subjective tests were designed to allow the subject to use his own vocabulary and syntax, such as describing a picture to the examiner. 5 John Macnamara, "The Bilingual's Linguistic Performance: A Psychological Overview," Journal of Social Issues, 23, (1967), 5 8 - 7 7 . 6 Aleya Rouchdy, "A Case of Bilingualism: An Investigation in the Area of Lexical and Syntactic Interference in the Performance of a Bilingual Child," presented to the MLA in Chicago, 1971. 'This test will be conducted in the future, the results to be compared with those of the bilingual subjects. 8 Uriel Weinreich, Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems (New York: Linguistic Circle of New York, 1953). * This community consists of two homogenous Arab ethnic groups who migrated to the United States during the last few decades and came to live in the area known as the Dix section, which is adjacent to the Ford Motors industrial complex (Rouge Plant). At the present time, this ethnic community is challenging in the. federal courts the decision of the city government of Dearborn to evict its members from their homes under the pretext of urban renewal This collective response reflects the strength of the community's solidarity, something which is apparent in the frequent use of the Arabic language, as noticed by visitors to the community. (For further information see New York Times, February 21, 1973, p. 37 and 51.)

GLENN G. GILBERT

Origin and Present-Day Location of German Speakers in Texas

Abstract The areas in Texas shown in Jordan's map of 1970 to be predominantly ethnic German were found independently by means of demographic and linguistic studies to still contain considerable numbers of German speakers, some representing the fifth and sixth generations in Texas. Based on the United States Censuses of Population for 1850,1860, and 1870, tabulations of the immigrants' origins within Germany indicated a strong preponderance of North and Middle Germany over South Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. This information supports the findings of various linguistic studies of German in Texas which have revealed a merger of most saliant southern dialect characteristics (as well as Low German dialects) into a koiné more closely approaching the Middle-Northern-based standard language.1

1. Present-day Location of German Speakers in Texas 1.1. The ethnic enclave map of Texas (Jordan 1970). The most complete and accurate study to date of the location of rural ethnic populations in Texas is the remarkable map prepared by Terry G. Jordan, now chairman of the department of geography at Southern Methodist University. The data for this map was obtained from a variety of sources: 1) the United States Census, 2) locations of ethnic church congregations, 3) locations of ethnic clubs and brotherhoods, 4) ethnic histories of the state of Texas, 5) county and local histories, 6) counts of names on gravestones and mailboxes, and 7) informal interviews with members of ethnic minorities. In addition, hundreds of letters with sketch maps enclosed were sent to ministers and priests in folk islands and to editors of county newspapers. "To merit a place on the map, the population in question had to have the feeling of belonging to a particular group ('I am a German-American') and live in close enough proximity to other members of the group to result in the

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Glenn G. Gilbert

presence of a community, usually centered about a church or lodge hall in the case of the minorities. In areas where the population is ethnically or racially mixed, cartographic preference was given to the largest group present." (Jordan 1970). In addition to German ethnic enclaves the map shows areas settled predominately by old stock Anglo-Americans (in East Texas counties, further broken down by major state of origin: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee), old stock Afro-Americans, persons of Spanish surname, American Indians, Wends (also called Sorbs or Lusatians), Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and Italians. Missing are the Acadian French in southeast Texas. Also there is no indication of the complicated ethnic make-up of such urban areas as Houston, San Antonio, and El Paso. The decision to give cartographic preference to the largest group present, thus producing a kind of patchwork quilt, is visually somewhat misleading. The landscape looks as if it were carved up into a series of juxtaposed ethnic enclaves. Percentage indications or hatching techniques would have been preferable for multi-ethnic areas. 1.2. Surviving rural enclaves where German is still used. The areas marked in the Linguistic Atlas of Texas German (Gilbert 1972) as still containing appreciable numbers of German speakers, are in moderately close accord with Jordan's map of 1970. The LATG clearly delimits Jordan's western area, "Germans on the rim of the desert" (Jordan 1966: 118—191), and the eastern area, "Germans in the cotton kingdom" (Jordan 1966: 60—117). Also in evidence is the medium sized enclave in northwest Harris County (now practically merged with the northwest suburbs of Houston) and smaller enclaves in Fort Bend, DeWitt, and Goliad Counties. Outside the LATG base map, Jordan shows other small German areas in Falls County, in Hamilton County, in the intersection of Runnels, Tom Green, and Concho Counties, and in smaller settlements to the north and west. There are also small secondary settlement areas south of DeWitt County. The extent to which German survives in these places is unknown. Closely associated with the Germans are speakers of Czech (mainly Moravian dialects) who are often numerous enough to exceed fifty percent of the ethnic mix and are thus assigned by Jordan to separate Czech enclaves. There are also large Sorbian islands associated with the German areas, especially in Lee and Fayette Counties and in smaller numbers in Williamson, Milam, and Nueces Counties. In a few areas Polish speakers from the Prussian occupied part of Poland predominate. Together with the Germans, these populations make up what could be called a Central European cultural area, dominated at the time

Origin and Present-Day Location of German Speakers in Texas

121

of settlement by Germany (Prussia) and Austria. Most of the Sorbs knew German well, before leaving Europe, and probably many of the Czechs ("Bohemians," "Moravians," "Austrians") were conversant with the language also. The Central Area of Texas as represented by the base map of the LATG contains the oldest and often most isolated ethnic enclaves in the state. The majority of the Central European enclaves to the south, north, and northwest of of this area were either secondary settlements launched from the Central Area or were settled secondarily from the Midwest (Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and other states). A number of them also represent new immigration funneled through New Orleans or Galveston or coming by way of the northern states. In many parts of the Central Area there was relatively little reinforcement in numbers of German speakers after the Civil War. The relative isolation and longevity of the language in this area provides a valuable opportunity to observe rapid changes in a well known, world language subjected to extreme social and linguistic pressures. As is well known, the United States Censuses of Population provide only scanty and uneven data on the ethnic composition and mother tongue of that part of the American population descended from Europeans. And with the exception of the mother tongue data provided in the United States Census of 1940 (published unfortunately by state and not by county) the coverage worsened as the twentieth century progressed. In compiling his map of 1970, Jordan remarks: 'The starting point of the investigation was the United States Census. Unfortunately, while the census does provide detailed information on Negroes and persons of Spanish surname, it contains only scanty data on other groups. The most obvious fault of the census is that figures are listed by counties only for foreign-born and first generation native-born [and only in some years that much]. For this reason, older censuses proved more valuable than recent ones, especially the census of 1910, which was the first to enumerate the nativeborn children of immigrants on a county basis, and that for 1930." This gradual neglect of ethnic differentiation by county in the successive censuses reflects, at least for Texas, the crystallization of a tri-level caste system (European, Latin, African) and the generally rapid assimilation of the European ethnic groups into the Anglo or white caste. A consequence of full fledged assimilation was almost inevitably a loss of bilingualism. Where bilingualism lingers on among a European ethnic population, the caste structure takes on a more complicated aspect. Up to now, the state has found it highly desirable to hasten assimilation of all Europeans, thus effecting the demise of bilingualism while maintaining or hardening the white/brown/black caste lines (see Kloss 1963). Given this tendency, it is remarkable that German, Czech, and Polish have survived for five generations and more in Texas (cf. Gilbert 1969, with calculations of retention indices).

122

Glenn G. Gilbert

2. Origin of the European immigrant population in selected counties of the Central Area of Texas, as compiled from a hand count of the United States Censuses of Population for 1850,1860, and 1870 "Immigrant population" is defined as persons who were bom in Europe or were born in the United States but were still living at home with their immigrant parent(s). See below. Also shown are the number of persons indicating German as their mother tongue from the United States Census of Population for 1940. The counties are divided according to geographic region and are ordered from west to east and from north to south (see Gilbert 1972: Map IV; and Jordan 1966). Complete tabulations for twenty-five counties2 are available in Gilbert 1973 (see note 1 of this paper). Examples of these materials for Gillespie and Medina Counties are given in Tables 1 and 2.

3. Explanation of the tables 3.1. Geographic division of the Central Area The twenty-five counties for which tabulations are available were divided into a western area, settled chiefly by the efforts of the Adelsverein3 and an eastern and northern area which was largely settled by non-Verein colonists. Most of the counties are within the old settlement area, although some, e.g., Williamson, received most of their ethnic settlers after the Civil War, and others, such as Grimes and Goliad, were only peripheral to the main areas of ethnic settlement. In the continuous enclave running southeast to northwest adjacent to the Guadalupe River, an arbitrary cut-off was made between Guadalupe and Gonzales Counties, Guadalupe being placed with the western counties and Gonzales (as well as DeWitt and Goliad) with those in the east. The decision to cut at this point is based more on the ecology of the region than on its settlement history. Later cultural and economic ties bound Guadalupe more closely to Comal and the west, whereas the tiny German speaking area in Gonzales gradually disintegrated. Travis and Williamson Counties were placed with the eastern area because of their economic base and non-Verein settlement. In the west only Medina was not settled directly or indirectly through the Verein. For Medina, separate figures are given for "France." This rubric included mainly German speaking Alsatians but, apparently, also a number of French speakers from western Alsace. Medina County is exceptional in many respects — history of settlement, ecology, dialectology, and multilingual, multicultural human environment.

Origin and Present-Day Location of German Speakers in Texas Table 1

123

Gillespie County

1) Total Pop. 2) Blacks 3) Total Whites (incl. Ind & Mex.) Eur. 4) Ethnic Whites (excl. British Isles) 5) Unspec. Germany 6) North & Middle Germany 7) South Germany Switz., Austria 8) Other European

1850 % No.

1860 % No.

1870 % No.

1240

2736

3566

.40 (5) 99.60 (1235)

1.21 (33) 98.79 (2703)

2.16(77) 97.84 (3489)

74.83 (928)

83.90 (2296)

85.08 (3034)

74.51 (924)

0

.28 (10)

0

77.55 (2122)

78.83 (2811)

.08(1)

5.55 (152)

5.38(192)

.24 (3)

.80 (22)

.59 (21)

1940 Ger. Total Moth. Pop. Tongue No. No. 402

10670

3.2. Compilation of population figures The population tables, as illustrated for Gillespie and Medina, represent a summary and interpretation of the raw census data. The original hand count of census data was made as follows: Each immigrant was assigned to his place of origin by means of appropriate atlases and gazetteers. Children born in Texas of immigrant parents were assigned to the place of origin of their parents as long as both parents came from the same place. If the parents were of different European origins, or came from different provinces of Germany, or if one parent was European and the other American, children were assigned to "hyphenated" categories. If children listed under adults had different surnames, such dependents at age 10 or older were listed under their own birthplaces. In the case of dependents with the same surname continuing to live at home, such persons were listed

124

Glenn G. Gilbert

Table 2

Medina County

1860

1850 % No.

1870 % No.

1940

% No.

909

1838

2078

120

2) Blacks

3.08 (28)

5.76 (106)

4.42 (92)

3) Total Whites (incl. Ind. & Mex.)

96.91 (881)

94.23 (1732)

95.57 (1986)

4) Eur. Ethnic Whites (excL British Isles)

70.62(642)

59.18 (1088)

73.85 (1535)

5) Unspec. Germany

54.34 (494)

0

.38 (8)

6) North & Middle Germany

.22 (2)

20.89 (384)

26.46 (550)

3.08 (28)

8.21 (151)

15.88 (330)

1) Total Pop.

7) South Germany, Switz., Austria 8) Other European (except France) 9) France

.11 (1)

12.87(117)

.32 (6)

29.76 (547)

Ger. Total Moth. Pop. Tongue No. No. 16106

•19(4)

30.94 (643)

with the origin of their parents as long as they continued to live at home. Thus, the figures include not only the foreign born but part of what the census terms "foreign stock." Presumably, most or all of these persons were fluent speakers of an ethnic language. Under each county, entries are listed in descending order, according to the number of settlers from each entry. When there are the same number of settlers from two or more different categories, the entries are listed in alphabetical order. This applies to the hyphenated categories also, with the added rule that the compound is arranged so that a German city is placed in front of a German province, a German province before German-speaking countries, German-speaking countries before other European countries, all of which have

Origin and Present-Day Location of German Speakers in Texas

125

precedence over an American state. If the hyphenated compound consists of two entries of the same kind, e.g., two German provinces, they are arranged in alphabetical order. To illustrate this kind of tabulation, two examples are given: 1) Gillespie County, 1860: unspecified Prussia 615, Nassau 540, Hanover 286, Saxony 89, Brunswick 78, Württemberg 78, Hesse 73, Baden 17, Denmark 17, Bavaria 13, Mecklenburg 6, Belgium 3, Bremen 3, Austria 2, France 2, Waldeck 2, Holstein 1; Nassau-unspecified Prussia 63, Hanover-unspecified Prussia 56, Brunswick-Hanover 31, Hesse-unspecified Prussia 28, Nassau-unspecified Prussia 28, Hanover-Nassau 24, Brunswick-Nassau 23, Saxony-unspecified Prussia 22, Hesse-Nassau 19, Nassau-Wiirtemberg 18, Württemberg-unspecified Prussia 16, Hanover-Saxony 13, Brunswick-unspecified Prussia 12, BrunswickHesse 10, Bavaria-Nassau 9, Hesse-Saxony 9, Bremen-Hanover 8, HanoverDenmark 8, Bavaria-unspecified Prussia 7, Baden-Hanover 6, Baden-Saxony 6, Hanover-Hesse 6, Baden-Nassau 5, Hanover-Württemberg 5, Bavaria-Nassau 4, Bremen-Hesse 4, Hesse-Waldeck 4, Hesse-Württemberg 4, Nassau-Arkansas 4, Nassau-England 4, Belgium-Saxony 3, unspecified Prussia-Austria 3, Mecklenburg-Denmark 2, Mecklenburg-unspecified Prussia 2, Nassau-Mexico 2, Brunswick-Saxony 1, Nassau-Texas 1, Saxony-Württemberg 1. 2) Medina County, 1860: France 540, Hanover 148, unspecified Prussia 50, Württemberg 42, Hesse-Cassel 40, Saxony 34, Bavaria 31, Switzerland 18, Hesse-Darmstadt 16, Baden 12, Saxe-Weimar 12, Brunswick 9, Denmark 5, Saxe-Coburg 3, Hungary 1, Lippe 1, Lippe Detmold 1, Lose Messinger (?) 1, Nassau 1, Oldenburg 1, Rudolstadt 1; Baden-France 23, unspecified PrussiaFrance 19, Saxony-unspecified Prussia 10, Oldenburg-France 6, Bavaria-France 5, Saxe Coburg-France 5, Wiirttemberg-Switzerland 5, Baden-Hanover 4, Baden-Württemberg 4, Bavaria-Hesse Darmstadt 4, France-Hungary 4, HanoverHesse Cassel 4, France-North Carolina 3, Hanover-Württemberg 3, Hesse Casselunspecified Prussia 3, Hesse Cassel-Württemberg 3, Hesse Darmstadt-Switzerland 3, Bavaria-unspecified Prussia 2, Brunswick-France 2, Hanover-Hesse Darmstadt 2, Hesse Cassel-Saxe Weimar 2, Saxony-Switzerland 2, Bavaria-Switzerland 1, Hanover-France 1, Hesse Cassel-F ranee 1, Hesse Darmstadt-Saxe Weimar 1, Nassau-France 1. Such listings as these were then further condensed as follows (cf. Tables 1 and 2): Figures for total population, blacks, and total whites were taken directly from the census. Row 4 in Tables 1 and 2, "European ethnic whites," represents the sum of rows 4 through 8 (4 through 9, in the case of Medina County). Note that the British Isles (English, Irish, Welsh, and Scots) are excluded. Row 8, "other European," represents row 4 minus rows 5 , 6 , and 7, i.e., the sum of all non-German (non-Swiss, non-Austrian) Europeans, with the British Isles excluded. Most of them are from France, Bohemia, Moravia,

126

Glenn G. Gilbert

Poland, Denmark, and Sweden. In the case of hyphenated entries, if one term is a European ethnic white, the entry will be included there. An exception is when the other term is a North-Middle German or a South German (Swiss, Austrian), in which case the entry is included there. For example, DenmarkTexas and France-Sweden are included among "European ethnic whites," whereas Mecklenburg-Denmark is assigned to "North and Middle Germany" and Baden-France to "South Germany, Switzerland, Austria." The category "unspecified Germany" is used when the census is not more specific or when an obvious or suspected German place name cannot be located in an atlas or gazetteer. Also included are all hyphenated entries involving unspecified Germany, except where the other term is a localizable place in Germany (or Switzerland, Austria), in which case the item is assigned there. For example, unspecified Germany-Texas and unspecified Germany-Denmark would be included with "unspecified Germany," but unspecified Prussiaunspecified Germany would be assigned to "North and Middle Germany" and Bavaria-unspecified Germany to "South Germany, Switzerland, Austria." "North & Middle Germany" includes all localizable places in Germany (including unspecified Prussia) not in Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria. It also includes all hyphenated entries with North or Middle German places as one term, except where the other term is a South German (Swiss, Austrian) place, in which case fifty percent of such entries were assigned to "North & Middle Germany" and fifty percent to "South Germany, Switzerland, Austria." For example, if there were ten hyphenated entries Bavaria-unspecified Prussia, five would be assigned to the north and five to the south. "South Germany, Switzerland, Austria" is grouped together following the same procedure. It is assumed that most of the Swiss and Austrian entries were German speaking (there is no evidence to the contrary and the numbers involved are small). It is very likely that many of the "French" entries were German speaking Alsatians and that some of the Bohemian, Moravian, and Polish entries were likewise ethnic Germans. Nevertheless, because we have no information in the census on the native language of these persons, they are placed into the category of "other European." None of them are numerous except for the "French" in Medina County where a separate listing is given. This method of presenting the data highlights firstly the ethnic populations from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and secondly other Europeans. Evidently, instructions to census takers concerning enumeration of place of origin for the foreign born differed greatly from decade to decade. In 1850 unspecified Germany was the rule. In 1860 and 1870 a careful breakdown into province of origin (e.g., Prussia, Hanover, Holstein, Baden, Bavaria) was often provided, although certain enumerators were much more careful and exact than others. The difficulties that non-German enumerators had with

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