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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of New Mexico University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Linguistics ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-1-2014 TWO DIFFERENT SPEECH COMMUNITIES IN PUERTO RICO: A QUALITATIVE STUDY ABOUT SOCIAL CLASS AND CHILDREN LEARNING ENGLISH IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS OF THE ISLAND Jannette Hermina Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ling_etds Recommended Citation Hermina, Jannette. "TWO DIFFERENT SPEECH COMMUNITIES IN PUERTO RICO: A QUALITATIVE STUDY ABOUT SOCIAL CLASS AND CHILDREN LEARNING ENGLISH IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS OF THE ISLAND." (2014). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ling_etds/16 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Linguistics ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Jannette Hermina Candidate Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Lois Meyer, Chairperson Melissa Axelrod Tryphenia Peele-Eady Rebecca Blum-Martinez Kevin Carroll i TWO DIFFERENT SPEECH COMMUNITIES IN PUERTO RICO: A QUALITATIVE STUDY ABOUT SOCIAL CLASS AND CHILDREN LEARNING ENGLISH IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS OF THE ISLAND BY JANNETTE HERMINA B.A., English Linguistics, University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez Campus, 2003 M.A., English Education, University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez Campus, 2007 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Educational Linguistics The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico May, 2014 ii ©2014, Jannette Hermina iii DEDICATION In memory of my elementary school English teacher, Lydia E. Rosario. You taught me well. I want to dedicate this dissertation to my high school English teacher, Mrs. Ivette Quijano who continues to inspire and mentor students and young teachers like me. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to express my appreciation to the people who helped me to complete my dissertation. Especially, I thank and acknowledge my dissertation chair Dr. Lois Meyer, who encouraged me through her teaching and the years of writing and rewriting my dissertation chapters. Her insights and expertise will stay with me in my professional life. Dr. Lois Meyer was my mentor in this journey in New Mexico. Thanks for teaching me the fundamentals of academia and how to better develop my research skills. Next, I would like to thank Dr. Melissa Axelrod for her recommendations and encouragement to always do my best. Her extensive linguistic knowledge helped me to develop a stronger dissertation. Thanks for being accessible and being there for me when I needed you the most. I am extremely grateful for your advice about how to organize this dissertation. I would also like to thank Dr. Rebecca Blum-Martinez for pushing me to develop a better analysis for this dissertation. Her keen advice and suggestions were imperative to the successful completion of this dissertation research. I also thank Dr. Tryphenia Peele-Eady for her wise advice and accurate comments. Her valuable feedback helped me to improve and make the content of this dissertation stronger. I thank Dr. Kevin Carroll, for his invaluable support and advice while I was collecting my data in Puerto Rico. I appreciate his willingness and accessibility to talk to me about my research. I will always be grateful to Dr. Carroll for traveling to attend my defense in New Mexico. To my dear sister Melissa Hermina, who was a vital part in gathering information about public schools in Puerto Rico. Without her help and support most parts of this dissertation would not be complete. Her input as a public school teacher in Puerto Rico helped me to develop and design the methodology of this dissertation. And finally, thanks to my mother, Aida, and father Angel: Your love and support is a blessing in my life. v TWO DIFFERENT SPEECH COMMUNITIES IN PUERTO RICO: A QUALITATIVE STUDY ABOUT SOCIAL CLASS AND CHILDREN LEARNING ENGLISH IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS OF THE ISLAND BY JANNETTE HERMINA B.A., English Linguistics, University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez Campus, 2003 M.A., English Education, University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez Campus, 2007 ABSTRACT This dissertation describes a qualitative study related to the learning of English in a public school and a private school in two small towns on the northern coast of Puerto Rico. The families and the children in this study are referred to as two speech communities. The research examines the social interaction of elementary school students in the English classroom of the two schools, as well as, during different extracurricular activities, educational and social resources that families use to increase the learning of English by their children. This study aims to illustrate that the access to and successful management of English and extracurricular activities as cultural capital is an asset in the learning of English in Puerto Rico. The research describes how children and parents see English as a tool for social mobility. The main research question is: Are there two different speech communities in Puerto Rico? If so, who are they? What are the linguistic and social differences in these two speech communities? The methodology included classroom observations, two sociolinguistic interviews with focal parents, a sociolinguistic questionnaire, and two brief vi interviews with focal children. Finally, the qualitative analysis focuses on general aspects of the parents’ perception of bilingualism, activation of cultural capital, children’s social interactions in the English classroom, and uses of English in their daily lives. The conclusions bring a clearer picture of how English is perceived by these speech communities and what the advantages are of learning English to move higher in the social class strata of Puerto Rico. This qualitative research is one of few that compare access to English as a cultural capital tool between public and private school students in Puerto Rico. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures....................................................................................................................... xiii List of Tables ........................................................................................................................ xiv Chapter 1 ................................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction............................................................................................................................. 1 Research Questions............................................................................................................. 3 Speech Communities and Macroacquisition .................................................................... 4 Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................................... 12 Theoretical Framework........................................................................................................ 12 Colonial history of Puerto Rico and the English language ........................................... 12 Sociocultural language situation in public and private schools.................................... 16 Classification of English in Puerto Rico ......................................................................... 18 Puerto Rican National Identity: Between Spanish and English................................... 20 Empathy and Resistance to English................................................................................ 23 Functions of English and Spanish in Puerto Rico (Diglossia)....................................... 25 Extracurricular activities ................................................................................................. 28 Research Gap .................................................................................................................... 30 Cultural Capital Overview............................................................................................... 31 Cultural Capital and minority and socially marginalized groups ............................... 32 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 3 ............................................................................................................................... 36 Methods.................................................................................................................................. 36 Methodological Approach................................................................................................ 36 Participants........................................................................................................................ 38 Criteria for selection of the focal participants ............................................................... 38 Positionality of the researcher ......................................................................................... 39 Setting ................................................................................................................................ 40 Ocean View Private