Speakers of Spanish in the United States are living perhaps the most interesting
linguistic experience in the entire Hispanic world. The present study deals with the theme of
the Spanish language in contact with English and the problems related with social
bilingualism.
The first part of Chapter I recounts the principal incidents in the history of Spanish
expansion, and outlines the route of the advance of the Spanish language throughout the
American continent. The second part of Chapter I presents statistical tables pertaining to
immigrants, and explains the geographic and demographic distribution of Hispanics in the
United States. Chapter II is a linguistic study of the varieties of Spanish found in the United
States, along with lexical examples from daily use, and grammatical characteristics. Chapter
III provides an academic classification according to the sociolinguistic and sociocultural
factors which affect the Spanish language. Chapter IV presents the linguistic deviations
produced by factors at the phonological, morphological, syntactical, lexical, semantic and
grammatical level. Chapter V concentrates on the bilingual element of U.S. society. Three
tables demonstrate the distribution of English and Spanish according to the sociolinguistic
context and the type of text involved. In addition, three studies are presented to deepen our
knowledge of bilingualism, as well as its causes and consequences.
The conclusion must take into account the fact that it will not be possible to
assimilate Hispanics as easily as has been done with people of other cultures in the United
States, since the group renews itself continuously through the presence of recently arrived
Hispanic immigrants, and those who have recently returned.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11879 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Sun, Wei |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | Other |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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