| dc.description.abstract | The aim of this study is to describe and analyze the linguistic attitudes and the ethnic affirmation and belonging among Ecuadorian, Colombian and Argentine immigrants in Madrid, and to explore how these two concepts relate to each other. This is a quantitative study where a questionnaire with 32 items was used to gain the data needed; 25 of these items concerned the linguistic attitudes of the immigrants, while 7 of the items intended to explore their ethnic affirmation and belonging. The questionnaire was distributed to 130 respondents, who were asked to mark their level of agreement on a five-point Likert scale. The results were analyzed with quantitative methods. The average and the mode were used as measures of the central tendency while the standard deviation was used as a measure of dispersion, the standard error and the confidence intervals were employed to assess information about the tendencies in the population and as a method for comparing different averages between groups, and the correlation was used as a means for finding relations between the different items. The data in this study suggests that the items concerning the linguistic attitudes of the immigrants represents the following four attitudinal dimensions; linguistic pride and identification, social mobility, linguistic accommodation and linguistic self-confidence. The results indicate that the Ecuadorian, Colombian and Argentine immigrants generally have positive attitudes towards their original dialect; most of the respondents seem proud of, and identified with their own variety, they have a high linguistic self-confidence, and are mostly negative towards questions regarding their will to accommodate their variant or to modify their dialect as a means of achieving economic, professional or social progress. The respondents also show a high level of ethnic affirmation and belonging; they seem quite aware of their ethnic roots, which in turn seem to provide them with a positive social identity. The correlation analysis detected the following; the ethnic affirmation and belonging of the immigrants seems to be related to their knowledge of their dialect as a symbol of their origin and their wish to maintain their original dialect; this means that the ones who have a positive ethnic identity (the majority), also tend to confirm being aware of their dialect as an identity mark and to have a desire to maintain their own dialect (and thus their distinction as a group). The general appreciation of the ethnic identity combined with the linguistic pride, loyalty identification and confidence among the immigrants, are taken as an indication that they feel quite integrated and accepted in the host country, and that they are concerned with expressing loyalty and solidarity with their ethnic group. | en_US |
