Notions of Grammaticality among Teachers of Bilingual Pupils

Abstract

Teachers attending summer institutes were asked to react to different varieties of English and Spanish. The teachers participating in the ESL and Applied Sociolinguistics Institutes evaluated four varieties of English: (a) standard American English, (b) Hispanicized English, (c) ungrammatical English, and (d) English/Spanish code alternation. The teachers participating in the Bilingual Institute judged four varieties of Spanish: (a) standard Mexican Spanish, (b) local Spanish, (c) ungrammatical Spanish, and (d) English/Spanish code alternation. All three groups of teachers rated each variety in terms of its appropriateness for the classroom, degree of correctness, and the speaker's academic potential. The teachers ranked the English and Spanish varieties on a standard continuum. Teachers from the Bilingual Institute differentiated among the four Spanish varieties, while teachers in the ESL and Applied Sociolinguistics Institutes did not judge code switching less favorably than ungrammatical English. Some of the notions that teachers held about Spanish varieties were influenced by Spanish proficiency, ethnicity, and birthplace. Knowledge about language use in bilingual contexts did influence the teachers' level of tolerance toward marked English varieties, suggesting that some attitudes toward nonstandard speech styles are influenced by cognitive and motivational considerations.