Language Maintenance Among the Children of Immigrants: A Comparison of Border States with Other Regions of the U.S (Report‪)‬

ABSTRACT. The impact of diatopia, geographic location, on the maintenance and loss of non-English languages in the U.S. represents one area that has received scant study in the literature. However, striking demographic changes in certain minority language groups raise questions on language loss and maintenance relating to geographic region. Hispanos represent significant segments of the populations in the states that form the southern border of the U.S. As this group continues to grow in both numbers and economic presence, the question arises as to what impact these factors have on language shift. Thus, a major goal of the present research is to examine current language use patterns across the nation and along the southern border, using an innovative analytical approach, the SYNTHETIC COHORT, with data from the 2000-2003 PUBLIC USE MICRODATA SAMPLES OF THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY (PUMS ACS). The authors focus on children in particular, given their central importance in language maintenance, to compare geographic variation in an attempt to better understand the impact of region on language shift. * INTRODUCTION. The impact of diatopia, geographic location, on the maintenance and loss of non-English languages in the U.S. represents one area that has received scant study in the literature. Bills, Hernandez Chavez, and Hudson (1995) do discuss distance from the U.S.-Mexico border as a factor in language loss among Spanish speakers in the Southwest, but beyond that study the issue has largely been ignored. However, striking demographic changes in certain minority language groups raise questions of language loss and maintenance relating to geographic region. As has been widely reported, those of Spanish speaking origin, a group that defies any single label, now form the largest minority group in the U.S. (http://www.census.gov). Spanish is the most widely spoken non-English language in this nation; as noted in Villa (2000), the U.S. is one of the principal Spanish-speaking nations in the world with regard to both number of speakers and their economic presence. However, the distribution of Spanish speakers throughout the nation is not homogeneous. In 2000, for example, only 1.7 percent of Alabama's population self-reported as being of 'Hispanic or Latino' origin, with the national average at that time consisting of 12.5 percent (http://www.census.gov).