ENGLISH AS AN INSTRUMENTAL LANGUAGE: LANGUAGE DISPLACEMENT IN THE ANGLO-ARGENTINE COMMUNITY

Abstract

Studies of language maintenance or shift deal with situations in which the lan guage enduring either of these processes is of a lower prestige. The immigrant community I have studied poses a unique perspective: that of English, a lan guage of international prestige and great instrumental value in the business community, which is currently confronting the same shift and maintenance dilemma typical of less prestigious languages?the loss of the home domain. In field work carried out in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1990, I asked Anglo Argentine community members to answer extensive questionnaires concerning language use and language attitudes toward both Spanish and English. Factor analysis and relative frequencies show that, in spite of its prestige, English is no longer maintained at home. Further statistical analyses show that the main de mographic factor affecting change is age, with younger members less likely to speak English than older ones. The process of shift is far more complex than has been previously described in the literature. Although the English language has lost ground in the homes of the younger members of this community, its prestige and instrumental value is maintained in the schools. This study maintains that there are covert forces at work in the community at large that call into question the loyalty of the immigrant community and make it very difficult to maintain English in the homes.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.