Acculturation through Code-Switching Linguistic Analysis in Three Short-Stories“Invierno”, “Nilda” and “The Pura Principle” (Díaz 2012)

  1. María Jesús Sánchez 1
  2. Elisa Pérez-García 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Salamanca
    info

    Universidad de Salamanca

    Salamanca, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02f40zc51

Zeitschrift:
Miscelánea: A journal of english and american studies

ISSN: 1137-6368

Datum der Publikation: 2020

Titel der Ausgabe: Language and Linguistics

Nummer: 61

Seiten: 59-79

Art: Artikel

DOI: 10.26754/OJS_MISC/MJ.20205139 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

Andere Publikationen in: Miscelánea: A journal of english and american studies

Zusammenfassung

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether Yunior, a character and narrator in the three short stories under study, “Invierno”, “The Pura Principle”, and “Nilda”, becomes absorbed into American culture or obtains a positive relationship with this culture without losing his Dominican identity. Quantitative analyses of the vocabulary in the L1 code-switches (Spanish) and of the L2 (English) vocabulary used by Yunior in the stories were carried out to appraise his linguistic progression. Code-switching was analyzed because it gives insights into how situation and context influences language use and why the characters use the language they do. The results obtained, by means of three common lexical measures used in foreign language research (lexical density, age of acquisition and lexical sophistication), allowed us to assess Yunior’s change of identity. According to the acculturation model, Yunior becomes acculturated in the host country, showing progression and integration with many cultural aspects of American life and the English language due to his formal education and early age of acquisition of L2.

Informationen zur Finanzierung

This research was supported by La Junta de Castilla y León under Grant SA150G18, and Universidad de Salamanca/Grupo Santander under Grant Ayudas para la Formación de Personal Investigador.

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