Language Ideologies of Arizona Voters, Language Managers, and Teachers

Abstract

Arizona is the site of many explicit language policies as well as ongoing scholarly discussions of related language ideologies—beliefs about the role of language in society. This study adds a critical piece to the investigation of the role of ideologies in language policy processes by thoroughly documenting language ideologies expressed by a large sample of influential policy stakeholders (politically active voters, language managers, and teachers [N = 1,294]) while such policy processes were ongoing. The study uses survey methodology and statistical analysis, and for each language ideology identified, comparisons among levels of 10 demographic variables (e.g., party membership, age group, and years teaching) are reported. The findings include five language ideologies accounting for 53% of the total variance as well as significant differences related to several demographic variables. In particular, a dominant pro-monolingualism ideology and a complementary pro-multilingualism language ideology are confirmed.

Keywords:

• language ideologies
• language policy
• Arizona
• policy stakeholders
• monolingualism
• multilingualism

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank Mary McGroarty, Douglas Biber, Fredricka Stoller, Rich Fernandez, Stephen Doolan, and all collaborating institutions for their help with this study.

Notes

¹A language ideology identified by Hornberger (1988) in a study of Peruvian language policy.

²One hundred and four of these participants were included in the analysis for this study as well.

³For all participants, an “analyzable portion of the survey” was defined as completing all of the ideological language statement items in the first section of the survey.

⁴The group of state- and district-level language managers were not disaggregated for analysis in order to preserve the anonymity of participants in both subgroups.

⁵While regression-factor scores were used to compare group means using inferential statistics (RQ2), summed-factor scores were used to describe positive/negative orientations of groups to each ideology.

⁶This language ideology is known by many as language as a problem, introduced by Ruiz (1984). It was renamed in this study to reflect that what is problematic in this paradigm is the presence of multiple languages.

⁷The factor analysis procedure decisions proposed follow Tabachnick and Fidell (2007).