Framing the diaspora and the homeland

Language ideologies in the Cuban diaspora

Bibliographic Data

ID4178100
AuthorsGabriela G Alfaraz (Michigan State University , East Lansing , MI , USA, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume2018
Issue254
Pages49-69
Publication date2018-10-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of the Sociology of Language (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0165-2516 • E-ISSN: 1613-3668
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ijsl-2018-0033
OpenAlexW2898898824
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited18

This article discusses language ideologies in relation to political ideologies in the Cuban diaspora in the United States. The findings of three longitudinal attitude studies, two conducted using the methods of perceptual dialectology, and a third with the matched-guise method, indicated that the diaspora's political beliefs have a robust effect on its beliefs about Cuban Spanish in the diaspora and in the homeland. The perceptions studies showed that the national variety has a high degree of prestige in the diaspora, and that it has very low prestige in Cuba. The results of the matched-guise test showed that participants were unable to differentiate voices recorded in the 1960s and the 1990s, and that social information about residence in Cuba or the diaspora was more important to judgments of correctness than the presence of nonstandard variants. It is argued that the diaspora's language ideology is maintained through erasure and essentialization: social and linguistic facts are erased, and the homeland is racially essentialized. It is suggested that through its language ideology, the Cuban diaspora claims authenticity and legitimacy vis-à-vis the homeland

Diaspora · Homeland · Ideology · Language ideology · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Prestige · Sociology · Anthropology · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy

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