See no Spanish: language, local context, and attitudes toward immigration

Abstract

Explanations of Americans' attitudes toward immigration emphasize threats to national identity and culture. However, we do not know the specific sources of cultural threat or whether they operate locally. Native-born residents commonly voice concerns about the prevalence of Spanish, suggesting that foreign languages might be one such source of threat. This article uses survey experiments to provide one of the first causal tests of the impact of written Spanish on Americans' immigration attitudes. One experiment (N = 351) was conducted online with a nationally representative sample, while a second was embedded in an exit poll (N = 902). The experiments show that Spanish has differential impacts depending on Americans' prior contact with it. Among those who hear Spanish frequently in day-to-day life, seeing written Spanish induces anti-immigration attitudes. These findings suggest that language can foster cultural threat, and they highlight a mechanism through which local encounters can be threatening.