Language shift and assimilation patterns of the Hispanic ethnicity in the United States

Area 10 – Scienze dell'antichità, filologico-letterarie e storico-artistiche

This study treats assimilation patterns and intra- and intergenerational language shift from Spanish monolingualism to English monolingualism, pertinent to the third generation of Hispanic immigrants in the United States. It is the prime objective of this work to counter such stereotypical misconceptions which can be regarded as a myth today. Thus, this book shows that assimilation of Hispanics is occurring, by examining Latinos from multiple perspectives, such as their attitudes in a political ambit, in which they mainly support the Democrats. The final part of this study focuses on language, prevalently on Spanish lexical impositions in American English word–stock. It contains both lexicographic investigations, by using two on–line dictionaries, “Merriam Webster’s Dictionary” and the “American Heritage Dictionary”. Moreover, corpus analyses were undertaken, by consulting the on–line version of the “American English Contemporary Corpus” (COCA).

SINTESI