Engaging language and cultural spaces: Latin American parents ...

Engaging language and cultural spaces:
Latin American parents’ reflections on language
loss and maintenance in Vancouver
Martin Guardado
University of British Columbia
This qualitative study aims to explore the loss and maintenance of Spanish in
Latin American children in Vancouver from the perspective of parents. It fo-
cuses on the experiences of children either developing bilingually (Spanish–
English) or monolingually (English). The participating families were from
Colombia, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and had children between the ages
of three and seventeen. Drawing on semi-structured interview data, the arti-
cle highlights the complexity of the issues affecting maintenance and loss of
L1 and points to the multifaceted nature of the attendant consequences. The
discussion mainly revolves around the issues of cultural identity, the role of
family, intergenerational communication and the size of the L1 community.
Cette étude qualitative explore la perspective de parents sur la perte et le
maintien de la langue espagnole chez des enfants hispanophones de Vancou-
ver. Cette étude se concentre en particulier sur les expériences de parents
latino-américains d’enfants bilingues (espagnol-anglais) ou unilingues (an-
glais). Les familles ayant participé à cette étude étaient originaires de Colom-
bie, du Guatemala et du Salvador et avaient des enfants âgés de trois à dix-sept
ans. À partir d’entrevues semi-dirigées, l’article met en évidence la com-
plexité des facteurs liés à la perte et/ou au maintien de la langue maternelle
et expose la nature multiple des conséquences qui en découlent. La discus-
sion touchera principalement aux questions d’identité culturelle, du rôle de
la famille, de la communication entre les générations, et de la taille de la
communauté latino-américaine.
Introduction
Immigrant parents usually concern themselves with their rapid integration into
the host country (Merino, 1983). This implies learning the dominant language
as quickly as possible as a means of securing employment, fulfilling their daily
needs and establishing themselves as members of the community. It also means
encouraging their children to learn the dominant language quickly and well in
order to succeed in school, and later, in society in general (Cummins, 2000).
Many parents and scholars believe that this is achieved rather effortlessly by
Address for correspondence: Martin Guardado, 2034 Lower Mall Annex E, University
of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2
E-mail: guardado@interchange.ubc.ca.
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9.1
children, as they are endowed with special language learning abilities (see e.g.,
Chomsky, 1995; Pinker, 2002), and gladly encourage them to learn the new
language quickly, often overlooking the effects on the first language (L1).
Such a perceived blessing — language acquisition ability — does not come
without a cost for many children. In the process of learning the dominant lan-
guage, often their L1 gradually erodes as the L1 loss process begins. If this
process gets underway, many “parents often feel that they are losing their chil-
dren” (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1999, p. 47) because they are no longer able to fully
reach them in the language in which they are most competent. Many children
tend to lose their L1 skills as the second language begins to prevail (Wong
Fillmore, 1991). Additionally, schools and society also put emphasis on the
dominant language (Hakuta, 1986; Portes and Hao, 1998), which causes the
children to lose features of their L1.
This article is based on data from interviews with four Latin American
families living in Vancouver, Canada. It seeks to address, from the parents’ per-
spectives, how Latin American families view their experiences with the issue
of L1 loss and how they strive to help their children maintain the home lan-
guage. It describes the many challenges that the families faced and highlights
the issues they felt were key to L1 maintenance and loss, what they perceived
were the consequences, and the strategies they used in order to promote lan-
guage and culture transmission. The article first provides a brief overview of
the relevant literature. It then describes the participants, discusses the findings,
and concludes with implications for research.
Causes and consequences of L1 maintenance and loss
A growing body of research indicates that the factors influencing the main-
tenance and loss of home languages are varied and complex. These include
language attitudes within and outside the home (Hakuta and D’Andrea, 1992;
Gibbons and Ramirez, 2004), cultural identity (Cummins, 1984; Schecter,
Sharken-Taboada and Bayley, 1996; Schecter and Bayley, 1997; Kouritzin,
1999; Guardado, 2002), social and psychological distance (Schumann, 1978),
the pressures and socializing role of schools (Wong Fillmore, 1991; Schecter
and Bayley, 1997; Kouritzin, 1999), the role of family (Thomas and Cao, 1999;
Tannenbaum and Howie, 2002; Guardado, 2005; Tannenbaum, 2005; Tannen-
baum and Berkovich, 2005), and the size and vitality of the ethnolinguistic
community (Kravin, 1992; Landry and Allard, 1994). The language and culture
attitudes that families espouse have an effect on the home language policies
that emerge and the home language practices that are implemented (Hakuta
and D’Andrea, 1992; Li, 1999; King, 2000; Guardado, 2005). These practices
also affect, and are affected by, the linguistic, cultural and social identities of
the family members.
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Guardado
Studies have found that linguistic minorities’ ability to successfully main-
tain the home language in a dominant language environment gives them a
stronger identity and sense of self (Schecter et al., 1996; Schecter and Bay-
ley, 1997; Kouritzin, 1999; Guardado, 2002). Pacini-Ketchabaw, Bernhard and
Freire (2001), for instance, reported that participating Latin American families
saw L1 maintenance as a way to foster Latino identity, as well as family unity
and future professional advancement. Likewise, Sakamoto (2001) suggests that
cultural awareness and the connection of L1 maintenance and identity are im-
portant factors in this process. Schecter and Bayley (1997) found that the L1
was seen by their participating families as “a necessary social resource for
maintaining cultural tradition and ethnic identity” (Schecter and Bayley, 2002,
p. 79). It could also be hypothesized that a strong L1 identity is one of the
most critical factors conducive to L1 maintenance (Guardado, 2005). How-
ever, Pease-Alvarez (2002) reported that for some of the parents in her study
with a population similar to that of Schecter and Bayley, this was not the case.
It appears, then, that cultural identity and L1 maintenance are definitely con-
nected. However, although the degree of attachment to the home culture — and
the development of a solid cultural identity — may play an important role in
the maintenance of L1 in a dominant language context, the issue is much more
complex and the findings are still inconclusive.
Another issue connected to children’s perceived language learning abil-
ity arises from their school experiences. When linguistic minority children
enter school, very often their L1 quickly starts declining, causing their perfor-
mance on tests of language proficiency to show a bleak picture. At some point
during the L2 development, the students’ mastery of both languages may be
incomplete and teachers often comment that some bilingual minority language
children cannot speak either language properly (McLaughlin, Gesi Blanchard
and Osanai, 1995). This can lead to linguistic minority children being placed in
categories such as semilingualism, also referred to as subtractive bilingualism
(Lambert, 1981). Semilingualism, originally used by Hansegard (1975) and
popularized more recently by Cummins (1981, 1994) and others (e.g., Pacheco,
1983), refers to deficiency in both first and second languages.
Semilingualism has been subject to much criticism for several reasons
(e.g., MacSwan, 2000). First of all, it contains negative connotations because
it is based on a deficit model of bilingualism. As such, it highlights failure and
underachievement. Additionally, it is a well-known fact in the area of bilingual-
ism that a bilingual is not two monolinguals put together, and that people vary
in the way they use languages in different contexts and for different purposes.
Consequently, some scholars suggest it may be more useful to limit the notion
of semilingualism to extreme cases where severe social, linguistic and commu-
nicative deprivation occurs, and view other cases of perceived semilingualism
as only temporary phases in the development of languages in bilingual children
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RCLA • CJAL
9.1
(McLaughlin et al., 1995). This understanding may contribute to developing
a more positive view of bilingualism and L1 maintenance among minorities.
In that vein, Schecter and Bayley (2002) call for a restructuring of the terms
of debate, away from those based on a deficit model of bilingualism, and to-
ward those that include a focus on the additive potential of multilingualism and
cultural pluralism, thus acknowledging the positive consequences of minority
language maintenance as experienced by individuals (Guardado, 2003).
Studies have reported advantages related to future employability as im-
portant benefits of being bilingual (Schecter et al., 1996; Schecter and Bayley,
1997; Kouritzin, 1999; Winsler, Diaz, Espinosa and Rodriguez, 1999; Sakamo-
to, 2001; Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2001; Guardado, 2002; Schecter and Bayley,
2002); however, it is within the family domain where most of the benefits
seem to have the most important impact, as the development and use of fam-
ily languages enable members to participate in intergenerational communica-
tion, strengthen family ties and facilitate access to family history. Families do
play an important role in the development of children’s home languages (Li,
1999; Thomas and Cao, 1999; Garcia, 2003). Likewise, families are directly
affected by the maintenance or loss of L1s (Wong Fillmore, 1991; Ng and
He, 2004). The language use choices that parents and children make have im-
mense consequences for their future ability to communicate well, especially
at more complex levels. Thus, L1 loss and maintenance is always destined to
have intergenerational communication consequences (Wong Fillmore, 1991;
Kouritzin, 1999; Thomas and Cao, 1999; Schecter and Bayley, 2002; Garcia,
2003), most often between children and extended family members, especially
grandparents.
The above issues have been studied extensively in the United States con-
text in relation to Latin American immigrants. In Canada, however, there is
only minimal work focusing specifically on language socialization and Span-
ish maintenance. Despite what are arguably many general similarities between
Canada and the United States, L1 maintenance and loss issues with Spanish-
speakers are perceived by immigrants to be different in the Canadian context
(Guardado, 2005). This study attempts to address that gap by examining Latin
American parents’ perspectives on home language maintenance and loss in
Vancouver.
The Study
The present article is based on data from an exploratory interview study ex-
amining parents’ perceptions of causes of Spanish language loss among Latin
American children, factors facilitating the maintenance of Spanish, and par-
ents’ feelings about their children’s loss or maintenance of Spanish. The analy-
sis herein only focuses on factors that are pervasive within each of the families
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Spanish language in Vancouver
Guardado
and attempts to use those family themes as a way of raising questions about the
language loss and maintenance issue for Latin Americans in Vancouver. The
following guiding question is used: How do the participating families view
their experiences with the issue of home language loss and maintenance?
The participants
The criteria for selecting the study participants were for two of the families
to have at least one child over the age of six fluent in English and showing
considerable deficiency in Spanish and/or being reluctant to speak it. The other
two families needed to have at least one child in the same age range that was
fluent in both languages. The rationale was to ensure obtaining both L1 loss
and maintenance perspectives. Also, based on previous reports that L1 loss
tends to begin around the time when children enter the school system (see e.g.,
Wong Fillmore, 1991), the minimum age of six was chosen, once children have
had some school experiences. Based on self-assessments, for the purposes of
this article the families are classified as L1 loss families and L1 maintenance
families.
The four participating families were selected through a combination of
purposive and snowball sampling (Palys, 2003). Three of the participating fam-
ilies were selected using the former technique. The fourth participant, Lisa,
was recruited through snowball sampling, having been referred by one of the
other participants. All the participants were asked to select a pseudonym to
protect their privacy. In order to help readers better understand the results of
this study, a detailed account of the participants’ backgrounds, special char-
acteristics and their contexts is provided (see Table 1). The participants were
interviewed between July and August, 2001.
The first research participant interviewed, Anthony, was a 43-year-old
businessman from El Salvador who had moved to California in 1980 and to
Vancouver in 1984. Some years after arriving in Vancouver he had met and
married Valeria, also from El Salvador, a financial consultant who spoke Span-
ish, English and French. At the time of the interview, the family owned a house
in a middle class neighbourhood. Both had attended Salvadorian universities
prior to immigrating, although neither one had completed their degrees. Their
only son, Ricky, was 8 years old and was attending a private school.
The second participant interviewed was Carmen, a 45-year-old immigrant
from Colombia who had first moved to Vancouver in 1983. Her daughter, Fay,
was born in 1984. They returned to Colombia the same year after Carmen’s re-
lationship with Fay’s Austrian father ended, but had moved back to Vancouver
in 1989 when Fay was 5 years old. Fay had attended private and public ele-
mentary schools and, at the time of the study, she seemed to be quite popular
in her affluent neighbourhood public secondary school.
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RCLA • CJAL
9.1
The third participants were Joel and Silvia, a middle-aged couple from
Guatemala. Joel had been an elementary school teacher in Guatemala and
Silvia was a homemaker. At the time of their interview, they were receiving
support from BC Benefits (the provincial welfare agency) while Joel attended
English classes in the morning and Silvia cared for their three children, aged
3, 8 and 11. This family had moved back and forth between Canada and
Guatemala several times during an 11-year period. At the time of the interview,
they had been back in Canada for three years. Their children were in English
as a Second Language (ESL) classes and preferred English to Spanish, despite
having had frequent contact with their home culture.
The fourth participant was Lisa, a 33-year-old Salvadorian house-cleaner
and mother of three children, Dolores aged 7, Tony aged 9 and Francisco aged
13. She had obtained some university education in El Salvador, where she
had worked to support herself from the time she was a teenager. Lisa’s fam-
ily had lived in Vancouver since 1991. Her Guatemalan husband had not had
any contact with the children since the couple had separated two years prior
to participating in the study. There was no indication that their children had
been involved in any extracurricular activities at the time, and in my frequent
visits I noticed that they tended to rely heavily on television and video games
for entertainment. They spoke English all the time, to Lisa and to one another.
Data collection
Data were collected mainly through semi-structured interviews lasting about
one hour with each informant in Spanish and then transcribed and translated
into English. Additionally, notes were taken during and after the interviews
as well as during the data analysis stages. Subsequently, the interviews were
analyzed using standard procedures for analyzing qualitative data, namely in-
ductive approaches, in which the themes and categories emerge from the data
rather than being imposed on them prior to collection (Ryan and Bernard,
2003a, 2003b). Three of the interviews were conducted in the families’ homes
and one in the family business. Except for one, the interviews were conducted
with only one parent present and in all cases no children were present. How-
ever, in all cases, there were many opportunities, both before and after the
interviews, to interact with the children. Almost always, at least one parent
was present during those interactions.
Findings
Of the four families, those of Carmen and Anthony were classified as L1 main-
tenance families, whose children were growing up bilingually, as reported by
the parents; those of Joel and Silvia and Lisa were classified as L1 loss fami-
lies, whose children were losing Spanish, also according to the parents.
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Spanish language in Vancouver
Guardado
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RCLA • CJAL
9.1
After analyzing the interview data from the four participating families,
unique themes and characteristics within each family were identified. In this
section I report on those themes and provide examples of those characteristics
through the voices of the participants. The four themes — (a) the father tongue,
(b) creating intimate spaces for cultural practice, (c) living in the spaces be-
tween, and (d) a lonely struggle — are reported on in the following section.
The Father Tongue
Anthony was the first parent to be interviewed. He was very passionate about
his parental role in general and particularly about his duty to pass on his
native tongue and culture to his Vancouver-born, 8-year-old son, Ricky. His
reflections revolved around many key issues surrounding the significance of
bilingualism for his son and drew from the experiences of acquaintances and
abstractions from hypothetical cases. Anthony began his story by addressing
his cultural identity, stating that he was very proud of his origin and wanted
his son to know where he came from. He also stated that his son, Ricky, was
interested in learning about his father’s cultural identity and often asked him
questions about his background. Anthony claimed that his son was very proud
of his cultural background. At one point in the course of the interview, he was
commenting generally on the situation of children who do not develop both
dominant and home languages. At this juncture, I asked him the following
question in order to probe the issue further: “What do you think are the conse-
quences of language loss when those children become adults?” The following
quote reflects his perspective on what is lost when a first language is lost:
The consequences that I see for children are that they lose opportunities.
Doors close on them. I believe that people who speak several languages
have lots of job and business opportunities. Loss of economic opportuni-
ties, but also a moral loss. An identity loss. I’m sure that there are a lot of
adults who regret that their parents didn’t help them maintain their own
languages. I’ve heard many comments. I don’t want to be one of those
parents. I believe that there’s an emotional loss. There are cases of chil-
dren who cannot communicate with their grandparents because they can’t
speak the language. That love that only grandparents can provide. That’s
something that remains in your subconscious mind for as long as you live.
That is priceless. Moral values. All that is lost. And that’s only an exam-
ple of what’s lost. The culture. The complete identity of the roots of the
parents, all that is lost, because of ignorance.
As the above quote shows, Anthony eloquently described why he thought
Spanish had to be transmitted, maintained and used, as well as what he thought
was usually lost when children do not enjoy the benefit of the continued use of
Spanish in the Vancouver context.
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Spanish language in Vancouver
Guardado
The main theme in his comments seemed to allude to a multifaceted loss.
He mentioned missed future employment and business opportunities, but most
of all, he seemed to emphasize cultural and identity loss, as well as identity
contradiction or fragility (for a detailed account of L1 loss effects on identity,
see Rodríguez, 1982). He also assigned a vital role to home language main-
tenance in the transmission of values by stressing the emotional and moral
loss (Wong Fillmore, 1991) and other psychological consequences. In partic-
ular, he highlighted the crucial socializing role of extended family, especially
grandparents, and the unnecessary detrimental effects of missing those price-
less teachings. He maintained that the root cause of all this loss was ignorance.
Perhaps this was only a catch-all phrase. I have argued elsewhere, however
(Guardado, 2005), that cultural knowledge and awareness could play a role in
more successful home language transmission practices.
In actual fact, home language was hardly an appropriate term for the en-
vironment in which Ricky lived as Spanish was really not the family’s home
language, in the sense of the language typically used by family members when
they are all together with each other. Although both parents were from El
Salvador, a Spanish-speaking country, and both had immigrated to Canada
as adults and still struggled with the English language, Anthony’s wife had
shifted to English as the home language almost exclusively. The reasons for
such a shift are beyond the scope of this study, as Anthony’s wife, Valeria, had
not been interviewed, partly due to the initial objectives of the study. When
approached, Valeria had politely declined and stated that since the focus of the
investigation was on language loss and maintenance, her husband should be
the one to be interviewed, since he was the one responsible for their son’s de-
velopment and continued use of Spanish, an interesting point considering the
issue of loss was also an important focus of the study.
The following description in Anthony’s words refers to his parental in-
volvement with Ricky:
Ever since he was very little he has spoken English with his mom and
Spanish with me. He learned both languages simultaneously. From the
time he was in the womb, I would speak Spanish to him.
It has often been mentioned in the literature that the home is the last stronghold
of the heritage language; however, as Anthony’s story reveals, sometimes even
the home can become a site of struggle for language maintenance. For An-
thony, it was through the father tongue that his son was socialized into the
cultural practices that he himself had acquired as a child growing up in a much
richer L1 environment than Ricky had been exposed to. For this family, En-
glish was by and large the home language and it was through this language
that the main socialization of the family unit was taking place at this point in
their lives.
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RCLA • CJAL
9.1
Creating intimate spaces for cultural practice
Carmen was interviewed next and she was also passionate and articulate about
her Vancouver-born, 17-year-old daughter Fay’s first language and culture
maintenance. She connected the successful continuation of her daughter’s Latin
American roots and Spanish language with her affective domain and her social,
mental and moral development, in some ways evoking Anthony’s comments:
At the mental development level, you have the possibility of doing ana-
lyses through two cultures, through two different aspects, two different
visions, which I believe is very enriching for anyone. When children have
a second language, they are able to value other cultures and [value] other
kids who speak other languages, besides English.
Carmen seems to have reflected on her daughter’s maintenance of the language
and culture and identified advantages for speaking two languages, as frequently
noted by other scholars (Cummins, 1989; Wong Fillmore, 1991; Garcia, 1995;
Kouritzin, 1999). However, she also refers to the benefit of being able to func-
tion, think and conduct analyses through two cultural systems (Schecter and
Bayley, 2002), enriching the person’s worldview and increasing her meaning-
making capabilities.
Additionally, to Carmen, the lack of a larger ethnolinguistic community
was a big hurdle in transmitting the home language and culture: “In the last
12 years, I have been her main contact with Spanish.” She realized that the
opportunities for L1 practice provided by the home were limited, given that
she was the only parent, but also emphasized the need to take advantage of
the few opportunities that the home provides: “It has to be used widely in all
aspects of daily life, as if we lived in our own country.” She also remarked that
having Latin American friends did not provide any advantages in terms of L1
practice because all the children spoke English among themselves.
Despite the absence of a large L1 community in Vancouver, Fay had de-
veloped a high level of proficiency in Spanish. Carmen attributed Fay’s ac-
complishments to several factors. In part, she attributed her success to her
attachment to the culture through her frequent visits to places associated with
the Latin American culture (i.e., Montreal, where Carmen’s brother lived with
his family; Miami, where they had other relatives). As she stated:
The contact with my maternal family has been very important in main-
taining the language. Also the fact that we travel to Miami or other places
where there’s some kind of connection with Latin America, like a relative
that speaks Spanish, had an impact on her language. It was very natural
for her to maintain Spanish.
The family thus played a very key role in language maintenance for them. The
family had helped expose Fay to language and culture in an important way, and
60

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