Spanish heritage speakers’ perception of use and socio-geographical distribution of Spanish in public spaces of San Diego county

ABSTRACT

This study investigated how comfortable and secure heritage Spanish speakers feel about communicating in Spanish in public spaces of San Diego County, as well as the geographic distribution of Spanish use there. The goal was to determine the prevalence of Spanish use in the public sphere. Adult heritage Spanish speakers completed a survey about their language use in various public places, which were then mapped to determine the distribution of Spanish use. The results showed that participants felt Spanish was more welcomed in the south region of the county, close to the Mexican border, and less accepted in wealthy locales and in government institutions. Finally, the sociolinguistic distribution of Spanish in the county was analyzed to identify which areas and public spaces can be considered bilingual.

KEYWORDS:

• Spanish in the US
• Spanish as heritage language
• bilingualism
• ethnolinguistic minorities
• language and place

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Centro Cultural de la Raza is a community space for Latinxs located in Balboa Park.