So, how did the experiments work?
First, we used written words in Spanish and English. We saw how quickly people could match positive attributes with those words. What you get is a score that tells you how fast and accurately people can make a compatible pairing. In other words, is it easier or harder for folks to match positive attributes with words in English or words in Spanish?
In the second experiment, we wondered what would happen if they listened to words, since so much of language in Miami is about what people hear, not what they read. My colleague had the brilliant idea to use U.S. cities that can be pronounced in Spanish and English like Los Angeles, Tucson, and San Antonio.
And in the third, we used ‘nonce’ words in both languages. That’s a made-up word that doesn’t exist but looks like it belongs in the language. For example, in English that could be: splinted, snickly, throcket, skalled. Or in Spanish: frila, prenta, prespa, culfa.
And what did you find?
In all three experiments, we found that basically no one had an automatic preference for Spanish.
Maybe three or four people out of the more than 80 participants had an automatic preference for Spanish. But the overwhelming majority of folks had a nonconscious bias or automatic preference for English.
I want to emphasize we had statistically significant difference in our study group — in terms of where people were born, how long they’d been in the U.S., and so forth. But it all came down to the degree or strength to which they preferred English, not whether they had biases toward Spanish or English. For example, about 40% of study participants had a “strong preference” for English at the nonconscious level. If we look at moderate preferences, we found only 14% of participants to have “slight” or “moderate” automatic preferences for Spanish, but 65% demonstrated a “slight” or “moderate” preference for English.
We found that country of birth was a predictor of bias (being born in the U.S. vs. Latin America.) Being born in the U.S. meant people had a stronger preference for English. However, being born in Latin America did not predict a preference for Spanish — just a less strong preference for English than being born in the U.S.
What was most interesting to you as a social scientist?
I think the thing that stood out to us was that for the immigrant folks — the people who moved here from Latin America — we found that the longer they live in Miami, the stronger their automatic preference became for English.
Again, that suggests people have internalized a view in which English is dominant and essential and that gets stronger the longer you’re here. That’s so interesting to us because it calls into question so many of the narratives we hear about language and immigration.
I hope the results from this study invite us to add some complexity to the way we think of language and the place we live.
We often talk about Spanish and English in Miami in very black and white terms, but in reality, there’s so much complexity to our linguistic situation that it’s rarely either/or and almost always both/and. Yes, Spanish is everywhere. It’s very much around us. And at the same time, so is English, and English predominates in our local institutions. And those narratives about English and value of English get internalized. And that’s precisely what the study shows.
