Linguistic Acculturation and Context on Self-Esteem: Hispanic Youth Between Cultures

Abstract

Immigrant adolescents must negotiate two cultures: the host culture and their native culture. This study explored how self-esteem is moderated by the effect of linguistic acculturation and context. An ordinary least-squares regression model, controlling for fixed effects, produced results supporting the hypothesis that linguistic acculturation moderates the effect of context on self-esteem. The self-esteem of Hispanic adolescents who were less linguistically acculturated was found to be more favorable when with family than with friends and the reverse was found for the more linguistically acculturated participants. Adolescents in the middle of the linguistic acculturation process had the widest variance in self-esteem between times they were with their families and times in other contexts; they experienced more positive self-esteem with anyone but family. Findings underscore the need to better understand the complex process of linguistic acculturation and its effects on self-esteem. This research also demonstrates the practical utility of a fixed-effects model for reducing bias in cross-cultural research.