Abstract
The aim of our study is to investigate possible relevant relationships between declared attitudes toward Spanish borrowing and actual language use among speakers of Nahuatl in the Huasteca Potosina in Mexico. The main source of our quantitative data was a survey collected from 121 speakers, which included questions on attitudes toward borrowing, self-assessed language proficiency, and demographic background, as well as a section inviting respondents to choose between more puristic and more Hispanicised sentence options. Twenty participants of the survey also took part in a visual stimuli-based language proficiency assessment experiment in which we tested for the presence of Spanish loanwords. The results of the quantitative study were confronted with qualitative data involving interviews and participant observation. The analysis of the quantitative data revealed strong negative attitudes toward Spanish borrowing in Nahuatl and a correlation between declared purism, i.e. negative attitudes to borrowing, and preference for puristic sentence options. However, declared purism had little reflection in actual language use in the proficiency assessment experiment. This study demonstrates that use of a variety of materials and careful methodology are needed in order to make advances in this topic.
Funding source: Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej
Award Identifier / Grant number: POIR.04.04.00-00-3DBF/16-00
Funding source: European Research Council
Award Identifier / Grant number: 101002696
Funding source: European Regional Development Fund
Award Identifier / Grant number: POIR.04.04.00-00-3DBF/16-00
Funding source: European Research Council
Award Identifier / Grant number: 101002696
Funding source: Foundation for Polish Science (Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej)
Award Identifier / Grant number: POIR.04.04.00-00-3DBF/16-00
Funding source: European Regional Development Fund
Award Identifier / Grant number: POIR.04.04.00-00-3DBF/16-00
Acknowledgments
This work has been developed within the project “Multilingual worlds – neglected histories. Uncovering their emergence, continuity and loss in past and present societies (MULTILING-HIST)” in 2023 and 2024, including fieldwork in the Huasteca Potosina as well as data analysis and interpretation. We would like to express our gratitude to the LCure team members involved in the preparation and implementation of the questionnaire as well as data revision and in particular to Justyna Olko, Joanna Maryniak, Bartłomiej Chromik, Gregory Haimovich and Justyna Majerska-Sznajder. We also appreciate the help from Szymon Gruda who performed the LPAE analysis with Voyant and from Justyna Olko for her revision and valuable comments on the draft version of this paper. We would like to thank Nahua community members who took part in the survey and in other parts of our long-term research in the Huasteca, and particularly to Pedro Ríos Cervantes and Noé Félix Aguilar for their help with data collection, and to Beatriz Benito Cruz and the academic staff at the Universidad Intercultural de San Luis Potosí in Matlapa for facilitating the study with the students of their college.
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Research ethics: The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of ˮArtes Liberalesˮ at the University of Warsaw, as well as by representatives of the participating communities and institutions. The MULTILING-HIST project also received ethics clearance from the European Research Council. The participants of the study gave informed consent for taking part in the study.
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Research funding: This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 101002696). Quantitative data were collected earlier in the broader survey carried out in 2019-2020 within the project “Language as a cure: linguistic vitality as a tool for psychological well-being, health, and economic sustainability” supported by the Team Program of the Foundation for Polish Science and co-financed by the European Union under the European Regional Development Fund (grant agreement No. POIR.04.04.00-00-3DBF/16-00).
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Supplementary Material
This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2024-0138).
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- Frontmatter
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