By: Juan O., Gina L., Omar G., Aurora M., Kai G.

Abstract:

The power of language has had a substantial effect on everyday society. From lingua francas used for international business purposes to professional translators, language unites us in ways that convey empathy and understanding. The topic that our group is focusing on revolves around the idea that language has a key role in bringing together families and communities. Speaking the same language allows for the smoothest flow of conversations and ideas from person to person, and ideal communication between people is what creates emotional and constructive understanding, therefore bringing people closer together. It is important to maintain families united as studies have indicated a linkage towards positive health outcomes, but what have people said or written on the subject as to avoid this cultural assimilation and preserve this positive familial unity among Latino communities? Throughout this article, the power of family unity through language will be emphasized and characterized by viewing what past research has said on the matter as well as present interviews that were conducted to view this didactic theme.

Literature Review

Throughout the years, past research has indicated a connection between the usage of Spanish in family households and the rise of family interconnections between the Latino society. According to research conducted by the Social Science Quarterly journal, “language and family context strongly influence Spanish usage and proficiency for Latino children, regardless of generational status” (Arriaganda, 2005). Arriaganda, a professor of sociology from Ohio State University, states here that many Latino families that are trying to preserve their culture end up having a greater family interconnectivity. Because of this, it can be deduced that the Hispanic community has a greater emphasis on preserving family values and keeping everyone connected instead of the common isolation that can be seen within many American households. For example, take into account the leaving of students from their households to head off to college. Many American parents are waiting for this day to arrive, thinking that their children will become more responsible and mature due to their independence from their parents. Nonetheless, the responsibility and maturity of one that stays with their family even after high school can be advocated for by the students taking care of their family through their work while still attending a higher institution. Of course, if a university is far away from the parents’ household, it is hard for students to try and preserve this family unity, but it can still be done through constant communication and visiting them as much as possible. For example, if a student is attending a university out of state, visiting family on holidays and as much as economically obtainable will yield proper familial relationships instead of common American customs of trying to avoid parents as much as possible that students will leave home even if the university is within a drivable distance. This is proven according to a New York Times article called “What’s Ripping American Families Apart” by stating that Americans have an “individualistic culture” that leads to more of a “personal fulfillment” of the individual rather than a mutual family understanding. By emphasizing that Americans want a “personal fulfillment” ideology, less emphasis on family is placed leading to the university example described above. While “past research has consistently supported the view that non-English-language use rarely lasts past the third generation” according to Arriagada, many Latino parents, specifically mothers, are still trying to encompass this cultural theme into the lives of their children by making sure the language that everyone speaks in the household is Spanish. However, the maintenance of the language as children grow should be pointed out.

 

As noted by past research, “home language ultimately becomes a compromise between children’s language preferences and parents’ perceptions of benefits and risks associated with different linguistic options” (Lutz, 2008). In the study conducted, it was found that there are two rationales for their ideal bilingualism, “1) Bilingualism enhances the maintenance of a family and ethnic culture and 2) bilingualism can offer their children an advantage in the labor market” (Lutz, 2008). The first point is linked to the importance of family and maintaining that connection with one’s culture; it allows them to value their history. The second point takes into consideration how most companies are more inclined to hire someone that is bilingual to accommodate those who do not speak English. It is highly believed amongst Hispanic families that if you’re able to speak two languages, you have more potential to succeed in this society. However, maintaining a second language becomes a greater difficulty once the child enters school. At this time, due to the environment and the peers the child is surrounded by, the use of English is reinforced. As a consequence, the parents have less of an influence on language. Alongside having less language influence, many parents have chosen to not enforce Spanish at home because they would rather have the children attain “high-level English proficiency” with an outcome of “limited Spanish proficiency” (Lutz, 2008). It was found that there is a common theme as to why parents would rather emphasize English at home, which is a fear that the children will not be able to be successful unless they’re English proficient. Which goes against the 2nd point made about parents reasoning for bilingualism. The importance of bilingualism differs between families but there continues to be an emphasis on the connection to family.

Parent’s Past & Children’s Future

A common reason that the interconnectivity between families is broken between Hispanic communities revolves around the idea that parents want a “better” future for their children. Therefore, this means teaching them English and making sure they have resources, so they won’t suffer like they did. Frankly speaking, this is a major mentality problem from parents that needs to be solved. First of all, teaching a child English first in the United States is an ignorant thing to do. The child will learn English regardless of the first language they are taught as they will be hearing it and reading it everywhere they go. Spanish, nonetheless, will not be emphasized at the same level as English, so parents should place a priority in teaching their children Spanish and speaking this language at home to not lose the language culture that brings about the family unity between Latino societies. It is common sense that if a child knows only English with parents that don’t know English, miscommunication and a loss of family unity will emerge from there. It all starts from the first language that parents decide to teach. Likewise, not letting one’s children go through the struggles of life places them in a fantasy mentality where everything they want will be given to them. Parents should allow their children to go through some similar hardships that they themselves went through to establish responsibility, maturity, and a better understanding of life for themselves. All of this revolves around the idea of family unity through language. By establishing the main problems and common ways that parents accidentally reduce their children’s Hispanic culture, a decay of family unity and an assimilation of American cultures and customs is established. Language and hardships build character by a young age, so parents implementing this within a child’s life is essential towards their cultural bilateralism and success to help preserve family unity. A great diagram that establishes and illustrates many of these problems can also be seen in figure 2. Figure 2 illustrates the various ways many Hispanic families, Mexican families specifically in this case, adapt towards coming into the United States and apply towards their children. Simple things like eating alone instead of talking to parents after school about academic progress or how the day went are ways that this family unity is lost, apart from the common loss of the Spanish language.

Methods To Obtain Interviews

In the following section, the methods used to conduct the interviews where the didactic theme of family unity through language was observed are stated. First, CITI training provided from the school was necessary in order to be properly educated on the matter to conduct proper interviews and be licensed by St. Edward’s University. After CITI certification was given and St. Edward’s University gave us the authority to perform the interviews, paperwork was prepared. All people that were interviewed were adults of Hispanic/Latino origin and are from the Austin/San Marcos area. Before the interviews were conducted, everyone who was interviewed was given a consent form to read and sign to be in accordance with us interviewing them. The person interviewed and the interviewer kept a copy of this consent form for filing purposes. After consent forms were handed out and signed, a demographic questionnaire about the person interviewed and the interviewer was assessed to see certain demographic characteristics about these certain people. Next, the interviews were performed which consisted of questions about their personal life, the Hispanic community, and the US-Mexico border. Each interview ranged from 30-45 minutes and questions were adjusted in accordance with the flow of the conversation. Finally, the atmosphere of the interviews were recorded in field notes and the interviews were transcribed and cleaned with the help of Google Colab and Microsoft Word. All of the documents were uploaded into the BOX website found in the Canvas school platform.

Interview Findings

While conducting interviews on a wide variety of people with different cultural experiences, something that was a clear focus was the usage of language and its connection towards family unity. For example, participant 212, the interviewee, being a woman and mother, emphasized the significance of speaking correct Spanish at home and how this contributes to preserving one’s past identity instead of just assimilating towards other cultures. Participant 212 stated in Spanish that “many people try to speak Spanglish which is the combination of both languages to form a new one, but I honestly think this is a ridiculous idea. Instead of keeping your Spanish culture you are being taken into a different culture that is neither American nor Hispanic. At this point, you are destroying both the English and Spanish language.” Participant 212 had strong negative connotations towards speaking Spanglish and believes that actual Spanish instead of the mere Spanglish substitution is essential to preserving cultures. Moreover, she stated that by establishing the correct Spanish language at home, one maintains the family united as everyone can understand each other to express empathy. “It is foolish to see kids that don’t know how to speak Spanish well when their parents don’t know how to speak English well,” participant 212 stated once more. Another example that shares the same beliefs as participant 212 would be participant 216. Participant 216 is also female and a mother, who strongly discourages the use of Spanglish. She believes the use of Spanglish is more common in first generation children, she states “these parents are not willing to correct or teach them proper Spanish”. She believes the reason parents are not willing to correct children is because they’re wanting for the kids to learn English in order to help them (the parents) translate. She finds it ridiculous when kids can’t speak Spanish properly to their Spanish speaking parents (as participant 212 stated as well). As a result, she believes that it’s making it more difficult to identify within a certain culture or to feel accepted within the Hispanic community.

Contrary to these, participant 227 is a member of someone who was raised as participants 212 and 216 state a child with Spanish speaking parents should be. When asked about their opinions on Spanglish, they stated that they prefer to only speak one language when talking to someone who knows both, but that Spanglish in itself is not a bad thing. “It’s something that I am not accustomed to because my conversations with my parents have only been in Spanish,” participant 227 expresses. However, they explain that those who speak Spanish, at least in central Texas, are at least trying; even if it’s not perfect. Though they do not get to practice speaking Spanish now that they are away from their parents, they are proud of their parents’ hard work given that it allowed them to pursue an education. It is evident that, in spite of these participants having contrasting beliefs on language use, family is still a common theme.

The idea of possessing better opportunities in the United States and its benefit to one’s family was also a common theme, commencing from the perspective of the parent. For instance, participant 224 expressed how their children have better opportunities in the U.S than their home country of Mexico, and hope they are able to graduate and practice a career. They were only able to attend school up to middle school, and had to work in the fields until coming to the U.S. Despite living in the U.S for about 25 years, learning English has been difficult for them and have only survived by asking for help from other people. They state that they continue the same job of being a housekeeper since they have no other options but to endure many difficulties. However, they don’t regret their choices or job because they see a better future with their children. Connecting this back to participant 227, they revealed that their dad received $25 a week to take care of some farm animals, verbalizing that their boss pays him a pittance as if he doesn’t need to eat. Regardless, “their struggles in life, all the things they had faced was not worth nothing. […] Me continuing my education is a thank you to my parents” states participant 227. From the standpoint of participant 224 who knows only Spanish and participant 227 who knows both Spanish and English, the two reflect a prime example of family obligations and expectations while having a different language ability proficiency. On a similar matter, this information can be displayed analytically by cultural analysis.

Cultural Analysis

Term-Frequency Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF)

Tf-IDF was utilized to reflect the importance of certain words in each interview. For this analysis, participants were separated into two groups by the language in which they were conducted. Words such as English, Spanish, family, children, education, and opportunity were explored.

Table 1. (Top) TF-IDF analysis of interviews conducted in Spanish. (Bottom) TF-IDF analysis of interviews conducted in English. Note: Both analyses were run by examining the same words.

In this case, the red dots indicate that the words that were inspected were found in the interviews. Darker blue sections are topics that were emphasized more while the lighter green sections illustrate topics that were not dealt with in detail. Based on these findings, ‘Spanish’ was a very important word in both Spanish and English interviews given their abundant frequency in the tables above. ‘English’ was also a frequent word; however, its prevalence and importance varies as it ranges in both ranking and frequency. However, ‘children’ and ‘family’ were not as common. Further cultural analysis was conducted to evaluate if there is any relationship between topics considered important from what was found.

 

Topic Modeling Analysis

By looking at key words emphasized throughout the interviews, a better grasp for the positive and negative ambience of the interviews was established. In both the Spanish and English interviews conducted, some of the common themes presented were family, child, education, celebration and language.  Although, in the Spanish interviews conducted there was an additional theme that was not present during the English interviews which was opportunity. This shows us that being bilingual means differently to individuals based on demographic backgrounds. For the Spanish interviews, the most talked about theme was familia which is in relation to prior research results. For bilingual families, language is important to keep their history and connect their family. In the English interviews, the most talked about theme was language. It correlates with the individual having an objective judgment on the topic.

Figure 3. Scatter output of relationships between different themes analyzed. (Right) Spanish interviews. (Left) English interviews.

Sentiment Analysis

The results of sentiment analysis show that the most common words used while answering the questions such as “what is the importance of being bilingual to you” and “what are your thoughts on Spanglish?” The most common words used were “familia”, “hijo”, and “lenguaje”. The study we conducted emphasized the importance language is to keep family connected.

Figure 4. Representative image of sentiment analysis from participant 330. Note: Interview was conducted in English.

For example, one participant revealed these sentiments on the importance of language and family, discussing an emphasis on passing the language down through the generations (Figure 4). The sentiment analysis data suggests that these ideas are associated with higher peaks with positive trending values when discussing this aspect of family. These results for this particular participant are reflected upon the general trends of many of the other interviews as well. The positive correlation between language and family through sentiment analysis indicates that further study upon this subject is warranted to fully hash out these relationships.

Retrospect

It is important to recognize and understand the importance of language and its connection towards preserving Hispsanic cultures and ideologies through family unity. As a society, we must reflect in ways that our cultures are being erased and assimilated and place a stop to it. By recognizing these problems and showing Hispanic parents that family unity and the Spanish language are of significance in their household, the promotion of bilingualism, bilateralism, and a greater understanding of perspectives is created. The virtue of language is the mutual bondage of society. We can talk, we can feel, we can recognize, but to truly do something, we must act!

WORKS CITED

• Arriagada, P. A. (2005). Family Context and Spanish-Language Use: A Study of Latino Children in the United States*. Social Science Quarterly, 86(3), 599–619. doi.org/10.1111/j.0038-4941.2005.00320.x
• Bacallao, M. L., & Smokowski, P. R. (2007). The Costs of Getting Ahead: Mexican Family System Changes After Immigration. Family Relations, 56(1), 52–66. doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2007.00439.x
• Brooks, D. (2021, July 29). Opinion | What’s Ripping American Families Apart? The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/opinion/estranged-american-families.html
• ‌Lutz, A. (2008). Negotiating Home Language: Spanish Maintenance and Loss in Negotiating Home Language: Spanish Maintenance and Loss in Latino Families Latino Families. surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=soc.
• ‌Romero, A., Robinson, T., Haydel, F., Mendoza, F., & Killen, J. (2004). Associations Among Familism, Language Preference, and Education in Mexican-American Mothers and Their Children. Behavioral Pediatrics, 25(1). journals.lww.com/ jrnldbp/fulltext/ 2004/02000/associations_among_familism. ‌