Chapter 5
Effects of social predictors
This chapter explores the social conditioning on the expressions of futurity, nominal possession and subject pronoun usage. These linguistic variables are under the conditioning effects of predictors that include, age, length of residence, and age of arrival in the US. Contrary to what occurs in Colombia, in New York City men have a conservative linguistic behavior. This role reversal in the sociolinguistic behavior of Colombian men and women in NYC results in sociolinguistic patterns similar to those of other NYC Hispanics while different from those prevalent in Colombia. The overall tendencies found suggest that the effects of contact with other varieties of Spanish impact the Spanish of Colombians in NYC more strongly than the effects of contact with English. That is, besides showing tendencies similar to those of New York City Puerto Ricans but different from those prevalent in Colombia, results help account for Colombians’ assimilation to their new sociolinguistic landscape.
Article outline
- 5.1Introduction
- 5.2Methodology
- 5.2.1Research questions and hypotheses
- 5.2.2Predictors explored
- Conversation conditions
- Educational attainment
-
Socioeconomic status
- Speaker’s age
- Gender
- Arrival age
- Length of US residency (LOR)
- Linguistic competence/repertoire
- 5.2.3The analysis
- 5.3The expression of futurity
- 5.3.1Gender
- 5.3.2Educational attainment
- 5.3.3Speaker’s age
- 5.3.4Length of U.S. residency (LOR)/arrival age
- 5.4The expression of nominal possession
- 5.4.1Gender
- 5.4.2Educational attainment
- 5.4.3Speaker’s age/socioeconomic status (SES)
- 5.4.4
Length of U.S. residence (LOR)
- 5.4.5Age of arrival in the US
- 5.5Social conditioning on subject pronoun expression (SPE)
- 5.5.1Conversation conditions
- 5.5.2Effects of gender/age on SPE
- 5.6Discussion
- 5.7Conclusion