So, I've started my extraction and coding for my final project (so I can do tables like Rena Torres Cacoullos), and to do so I have to read through every line of the NMCOSS looking for verbs conjugated in the tu or usted forms. However, I did't realize until I started doing this that I could learn so much about language attitudes just from reading these interviews. Pretty cool. It's interesting to hear the different reasons people have for using or not using Spanish with their kids, or for not watching TV in English or vice versa. None of the language shift reasons seem to be because they think Spanish is inferior; it seems like most of them attribute language shift to the school system and also to the abundance of entertainment in English. However, code-switching seems to be just fine and quite prevalent. I didn't mean to be studying code-switching in my second-person singular research, but I am getting quite frustrated looking for examples of the tu or usted forms and whenever there is a perfect opportunity for the interviewee to address the interviewer they switch to English to call them 'you'! Ahhh! I need those tokens! I am now wondering if there is no vos here (for many reasons) but one of them being because the English 'you,' especially in metalinguistic commentary or discourse markers is taking over some of the spots where a Spanish prefab would be? Hmmm... But, one thing is for sure. The sociolinguistic interview is not the place to study 2s address forms, conversation is. I can now see why so many sociolinguists in the past found 2s usage to be strongly correlated with the 'dynamics of power and solidarity,' and not as much priming and prefabs. Because an interview is such a formal setting, I feel like the interviewers are sticking to one form or the other, because it's not as natural as conversation.
Eh, anyways. I figured I'd share my thoughts on this in case anybody was wondering where they could get some attitudes about both languages and their uses --> NMCOSS.
Oh yes!! I have read through pretty much all of the NMCOSS interviews as well. I go through and create activities for SHL classes for Damián while using the NMCOSS interviews as the bulk of the activity. I have found some great interviews about language attitudes as well. I haven't used any of the activities in the classroom yet since a lot of them are not quite finished or polished, but I am excited to see how well SHL students enjoy authentic NM and southern CO material in the classroom! Or if they don't... haha It is a very creative way to teach them grammar and vocab and stimulate discussions on NM Spanish and language attitudes all at the same time.
ResponderBorrarNMCOSS is such a great read! Makes it hard to code sometimes.
ResponderBorrar