Puerto Rican adolescent ego identity development was studied within the frameworks of Erikson's psychosocial theory and Heller's conceptualization of familism. Ego identity was measured by the Revised Version of the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status-2, an instrument based on Erikson's theoretical formulations. The Heller's Familism Scale was utilized to measure familism. It was hypothesized that there is a relationship between familism and the four identity statuses: achievement, moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion. It was also hypothesized that familism, gender, age, parent's education and occupation, and number of years living in the United States mainland affect an individual's identity status. There were two sample groups; one living in Puerto Rico (n= 180), and one living in Florida (n= 107). Correlations and multiple regression analyses were utilized to test the hypotheses of this study. The regression analysis showed that the independent variables, age, parental level of education, familism, and, for the immigrant group, number of years living in the United States mainland help explain the variance in some of the statuses scores. Some of the variance in the achievement scores can be explained by the independent variables for immigrant male and female adolescents. The independent variables helped explain the variance in the moratorium scores of the male adolescents living in Puerto Rico, and both male and female immigrant adolescents. The variance in foreclosure scores could only be explained by the independent variables when the subjects were female immigrant adolescents. Finally, the independent variables helped explain the variance in the diffusion scores for the female subjects, regardless of sample group. An analysis of variance revealed a main effect for gender in achievement scores, and diffusion scores. ANOVA also revealed a Significant difference among the subject groups diffusion scores. ANOVA identified a significant interaction between gender and sample group for the foreclosure status. Furthermore, ANOVA revealed a significant difference between male and female foreclosure scores. Also, ANOVA revealed a significant difference between sample groups. Because the independent variables explain only a small percentage of the variance in the four ego identity status scores, caution should be exercised in arriving at conclusions about the relative importance of the independent variables on ego identity. / Ph. D.

La première partie de cette étude est consacrée au cadre institutionnel dans lequel s’élaborent les politiques linguistiques américaines ; la Constitution des États-Unis, ainsi que ses amendements, s’avèrent déterminants dans leur formulation. Depuis l’adoption de politiques linguistiques nationales dans les années 1960, l’influence de l’État fédéral se trouve encore accrue. Néanmoins, la politique linguistique des États-Unis demeure lacunaire. La politique linguistique de l’État de New York, étudiée dans le deuxième chapitre, complète en partie cette politique en intervenant principalement dans les domaines de l’éducation et du droit de vote. La politique linguistique de l’État du New York est déterminée, d’une part, par un antagonisme structurel Ville-État et, d’autre part, par la lutte des Portoricains pour le respect de leurs droits linguistiques. La dernière partie de cette étude consiste en une étude de cas ; quarante entretiens semi-dirigés menés auprès d’immigrants russophones révèlent l’importance de la reconversion professionnelle dans le processus d’intégration linguistique. / In a first part, this study analyzes the institutional framework in which American language policies are elaborated; the Constitution of the United States and its amendments appear to play a major role in their elaboration. Since the adoption of national language policies in the 1960’s, federal influence has grown further. However, the language policy of the United States remains incomplete. The language policy of the State of New York, which is studied in the second chapter, supplements it by intervening in the fields of education and voting rights mainly. The language policy of New York is determined by, on the one hand, a structural City-State antagonism, and on the other hand, by the activism of Puerto Ricans who mobilized to assert their language rights. The last chapter of this study consists of a case-study; forty semi- conducted interviews were carried out with Russian-speaking immigrants. As a whole, they stress the importance of retraining in the language acquisition process.

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