Mother's social network and family language maintenance

Abstract

This article reports the results of a social network analysis (SNA) performed on the mother's primary network of interaction in 15 Mexican American families in the city of El Paso, Texas, the neighbourhood of La Villita, in Chicago, and the city of Lincoln, Nebraska. The goal of this study was to examine potential opportunities for Spanish use by her children as well as sources of information and influence that might shape her views about the benefits and drawbacks of linguistic maintenance in her family. The network features of primary language of exchange, density, strength of ties, level of integration to local, regional and transnational networks and gender segregation were examined. Results suggest that in these families Spanish transmission is influenced by mother's perception of benefit/cost, mother's participation in networks where Spanish is vested with social capital, and mother's linguistic competence.

Keywords:

• Spanish
• language maintenance
• Mexican American families
• social networks

Notes

1. Children's SNs, which are not the subject of the present discussion, are an equally important source of influence on household language dynamics, specially as children grow up and develop their own networks of interaction outside of the family.

2. The fathers in these households participated in child-rearing duties to varying degrees. The mothers, however, were the primary caregivers, and were implicitly or explicitly responsible for making most decisions about household language use, and about their children's interaction with peers and adults beyond the home. Other family arrangements are of course possible.

3. Socioeconomic status was determined by homeownership, parents’ type of work and median income in the census tract where each family lived.

4. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number.

5. Illustrative of this is the situation of El Paso respondents R1 and R4, whose networks had moved with them when they relocated from Ciudad Juárez. Only the families of the two second-generation speakers lived exclusively on the US side of the border. The other three El Paso respondents had family members of up to three generations living on either side.