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ACHIEVING LINGUISTIC AND COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

 IN TWO SPEECH COMMUNITIES:

THE PUERTO RICAN RETURN MIGRANT STUDENT

 

[Published in Angela Carrasquillo and Richard Baecher  (eds.).(1994).  Educación bilingüe en Puerto Rico / Bilingual education in Puerto Rico.  Caguas: PR: Puerto Rican Association for Bilingual Education (PRABE), 51‑59.]

 

Dr. Alicia Pousada

English Department, College of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

 

This paper attempts to characterize the linguistic and sociolinguistic task faced by the return migrant student in Puerto Rico in attempting to negotiate a comfortable adaptation to a new speech community.  Included is a brief discussion of the different varieties spoken by many of these students:  non‑standard English, non‑standard Spanish, and frequent code‑switching between the two.  The discussion is utilized as a point of departure for an analysis of how schools in Puerto Rico may best address the special linguistic needs of the children in acquiring standard forms of their two languages.  Also included is a consideration of the attitudes held by the newly arrived students, their island‑raised peers,  and the teachers entrusted with their linguistic and cultural assimilation into the Puerto Rican mainstream.

                                                           

Introduction

 

The Puerto Rican people have been characterized as a "divided nation" due to the fact that almost as many Puerto Ricans live off the island as on it. The island's unique political and economic relationship with the United States has made migration between the two an expected part of the lives of many Puerto Ricans (see Bonilla and Colón Jordan 1979 and Colón Reyes 1984 for more details).

 

Return migrant students constitute a significant portion of the school population in Puerto Rico.   In 1984, Rivera Medina calculated that at least 10% of the public school enrollment had received instruction in the States.  The 1987 student census carried out by the Bilingual Education Program of the then‑Department of Public Instruction identified more than 13,000 students from the U.S. who had entered the Puerto Rican public schools during the previous three years alone. (I haven't seen the most recent figures, but I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers had grown due to the economic recession in the States.)

 

Process of acculturation

 

These youngsters have a difficult task before them.  With very little assistance from the school system, they are expected to develop the standard Spanish skills necessary to complete their formal education.  At the same time, they are expected to learn the myriad of cultural details required for a comfortable adaptation to the  norms of  the school  and their island‑born  peers.

 

In technical terms,  what they must do is simultaneously develop linguistic competence (i.e. the mastery of the phonological, grammatical, and semantic features of a linguistic code) and communicative competence (i.e. the ability to use the linguistic code appropriately in a given social setting).  The latter is critical because language is not merely a string of utterances.  It is a communication system that requires knowledge of socially shared meanings, cultural symbols and referents, plus comprehension of the world view of its speakers.

 

Both linguistic and communicative competence must be developed according to the norms of the new speech community in which they find themselves.  By  speech community, I mean the group of speakers who share a common linguistic code and the norms for its appropriate use.  In the U.S., these students were members of one speech community, and in Puerto Rico, they are attempting to become members of another speech community The linguistic code and norms of the two often conflict, and this conflict can cause a great deal of anguish for the students.

 

Return migrant students who were born on the Island and then moved to the U.S. have already survived the painful process of adjusting to the confusing demands of a new school system and society. Some received E.S.L. or bilingual education assistance; however, most tend to prefer English and may have under‑developed or fossilized language skills in academic Spanish.

 

Those born and raised in the States are invariably English dominant or possibly monolingual.  While exposed to Spanish in their homes and communities (if they lived in urban centers),  these students generally have  not participated in bilingual programs.  Unless their parents made a special effort to maintain Spanish in the home,  few have had the opportunity to acquire literate skills in Spanish.

 

To use Cummins' (1984) terminology,  the return migrant students may possess basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) but do not usually possess cognitive academic language proficiency  (CALP). And there lies the problem for the schools in Puerto Rico. BICS are acquired quickly within 1‑ 3 years with little or no formal schooling;  CALP may take as long as 5‑7 years to develop and generally takes place in school settings.

 

Non‑standard varieties

 

To complicate the issue even further, most of the return migrant students utilize non‑standard language varieties which are frowned upon in the schools, both in the U.S. and in Puerto Rico. Let us examine these briefly.

 

 The English spoken by most return migrant students is heavily influenced by the vernacular of U.S.  Blacks and working‑class whites.  Typical structural features can be seen in section A on your handouts (see appendix):

 

1. Deletion of  final /t/  /d/

2. Pronunciation of voiced th as d

3. Deletion and hypercorrect insertion of /s/ on verbs and nouns

4. Use of invariant be for continuous action

5. Deletion of be as main verb

6. Variable subject/verb agreement

7. Use of resumptive pronouns

8. Multiple negation

9. Non‑standard lexical choices

 

The Spanish of these students, on the other hand, is typically that of the working‑class of Puerto Rico, and it may sound like the speech of a generation or two back. (This is typical of immigrant communities, where the original forms are preserved long after the speech community of origin has changed its ways of speaking.)  Section B on  your handouts (see appendix) outlines the most striking structural features:

 

1. Variable deletion, aspiration, or nasalization  of syllable‑final /s/ and /n/ in nouns and verbs

2. Alternation of / r/ and /l/ in consonant clusters and after vowels

3. Velarization of /r/ in initial position.

4. Redundant marking of subject pronouns

5. Number agreement of haber and hacer in impersonal constructions

 

These features should not surprise anyone here, since they are common in the speech of many Island‑born students.  However, they may present problems in the acquisition of standard, written Spanish.

 

In addition, the Spanish of return migrant students is characterized by features more closely associated with their reality as  learners in a new speech community:

 

1.  Invariant use of tú in addressing  speakers

2. Incomplete mastery of the subjunctive

3. Limited academic vocabulary

4. Immature syntactic structure

5. Partial mastery of non‑verbal communication system (Nine‑Curt 1976)

6. Extensive use of English loanwords  or code‑switches into  English

 

This last characteristic merits further discussion.  Loanwords are what people usually think of when they refer to "Spanglish" (see section D on your handouts).  They consist primarily of nouns (although it is also possible to borrow verbs or adjectives) from one language which have been completely or partially integrated into the phonology and morphology of another language.  Loanwords are common features of many languages in the world.  In fact, the English language owes much of its huge vocabulary to the importation of foreign words.

 

Code‑switching, on the other hand,  is more complicated.  It represents the juxtaposition of elements from one language variety with elements of another within the same stretch of discourse.  Unlike loanwords, code‑switches preserve the structural integrity of the two languages, with switches occurring in places where they do not disturb the syntactic flow. Code‑switching is extremely common in Puerto Rican communities in the U.S. and is accepted there by many speakers as a normal means of communication, although teachers there (as well as here) may voice opinions to the contrary.

 

Traditionally, code‑switching was viewed as evidence of imperfect learning, but recent work indicates that the most frequent and prolific code‑switchers are indeed those individuals who possess greatest skills in both languages (see Poplack 1980, Zentella 1981). Some educational program planners like Rodolfo Jacobson (1990) even advocate the deliberate use of code‑switching in instruction.

 

Code‑switches can be divided into several types (see section E on the handouts).  These are:

1. Single noun switches

2. Tag switches

3. Intra‑sentential code‑switches

4. Sentential code‑switches

 

Children typically begin with tag and single noun switches and develop proficiency in the more complex types as they grow older and gain more experience with the communicative norms of their community and the structural elements of the two codes.  Adults who are nearly monolingual and wish to demonstrate ethnic solidarity or show off growing proficiency in their second language utilize the same types since these are in keeping with their still limited linguistic resources in the second language.  The most proficient bilinguals utilize all four types and excel particularly in intra‑sentential switches.  Thus, switching can be diagnostic of increasing proficiency rather than a sign of deficiency as many teachers have been taught to think.

 

Attitudes

 

While language is far from being the only problem facing these youths in their adjustment to the Island (see Ramos Perea 1972), it is clearly an important factor. It is through language that we understand, are understood, and establish social networks.  Knowing the language of a place is indispensable in the process of coping and adjusting to that place.

 

 Unfortunately, teachers are often unaware of the  complex nature of the task involved in learning to be linguistically and communicatively competent in a new speech community.  They may inadvertently pass judgment on students, have unrealistic expectations of their progress,  or outrightly reject them as not being "real" Puerto Ricans. Kavetsky (1978) found that Puerto Rican teachers had stereotyped return migrants as low‑achieving, trouble‑making, aggressive, undisciplined, disrespectful, lacking identity, and not knowing either English or Spanish.  One would hope that 15 years later these attitudes would have changed, but my sources among the U.P.R. return migrant population tell me that these accusations are still altogether too common.

 

The students are very sensitive to such treatment.  Since they also come to the situation with their own attitudes toward Island culture and toward the Spanish language,  matters can quickly degenerate.  Return migrant students often complain that they were treated like "spics" in the States and then arrived in Puerto Rico only to find themselves categorized as "gringos".  They feel, as Carrasquillo and Carrasquillo (1979) put it, "unwelcomed in two worlds."

 

Since they were usually not consulted before being forced to leave the U.S., the return migrant students are often resentful.  They compare the school facilities to those they enjoyed in the States and often conclude that the Puerto Rican schools are inferior, old‑fashioned, or at best limited in offerings.  They see their Island‑born peers (or "regulares", as they term them)  as "hicky" and unsophisticated. They hate wearing uniforms.  Spanish class is often a torture for them,  matched only by English class where they are often bored because they are more fluent in English than their teachers,  or frustrated because their teacher insists on standard English forms which are not part of their verbal repertoire. They report having to prepare more for class, feeling ill at ease, and having difficulty paying attention (Curran 1984).

 

The picture is not all grim, however.  As Academic Counselor for the English Department in Humanities at the U.P.R. in Río Piedras,  I have the opportunity to speak with return migrant students every semester.  (Many of them become English majors precisely because they feel more comfortable with English .) They  report that often an individual teacher would go out of his or her way to make them feel at home and to help them figure out the Puerto Rican system.  Usually this was an English teacher, but many times, an understanding Spanish teacher or content area teacher would take the time to give special tutoring or treat them with compassion. Teachers with migratory experience themselves are frequently signaled by students as being particularly open and approachable.

 

What can the schools do?

 

Obviously, we cannot require that every teacher in the system have personal experience in the migratory process in order to deal successfully with return migrant students. Nor can we rely on bilingual schools here in Puerto Rico to take care of the problem, given that for the most part, they are now defunct.

 

 However, there are understandings that can be incorporated into educational plans and reforms to improve the overall situation for these young people in regular schools, via workshops, in‑service training, and curricular modification.

 

 Perhaps the most important lesson for educators is the understanding that before arriving in Puerto Rico, these children had already developed the linguistic and communicative competence necessary for survival in their particular speech communities in the U.S.  What is needed now is not to deplore what they bring with them, but rather to add to it and build upon it.

 

This means providing classes or tutoring sessions for Native Speakers of English in which bidialectalism becomes a goal, rather than outright rejection of non‑standard features. It means preserving the English proficiency of these students which is a valuable resource for them and for the Island. It also means celebrating the linguistic heterogeneity created by the presence of return migrant students in the class, rather than imposing total conformity.

 

By the same token,  such an outlook requires the provision of classes or tutoring in Spanish as a Second Language so that return migrants can develop or resuscitate Spanish skills in a low pressure environment without fear of being laughed at by their Island‑raised peers.

 

Judgments regarding "lack of language" or "lack of cultural identity" are not productive and only serve to inflame conflicts.  They have no place in our schools. The sensitive teacher accepts the student as an individual  who (like all of us) possesses specific skills and deficiencies.  The teacher's goal is to help the student gain access to the full continuum of bilingual abilities and also develop a sense of when it is appropriate to use  specific features or varieties to accomplish particular communicative tasks. This means gently explaining the rules of the new cultural environment  and how "to play the game" successfully.  It means providing students with a sociolinguistic "wardrobe" whose "garments"  can be put on and taken off as required.

 

Finally, the wall between "los de allá" and "los de aquí" has to be chipped away so that it does not continue to poison relationships within and without the school.  This means developing a consciousness of "puertorriqueñidad" that goes beyond geographic frontiers and admits variable manifestations of cultural identity that may not necessarily be bound to a single language.  It also means seeing the presence of return migrant students in our schools as an enriching experience for all involved.

I am certain that from gatherings such as this one today, these understandings can be transformed into reality. 

 

 

REFERENCES

 

Bonilla, F. and H. Colón Jordan. 1979. Puerto Rican return migration in the 70's.  Migration Today 7:2, 1‑6.

 

Carrasquillo, A. and C. Carrasquillo. 1979.  The Neorican: Unwelcomed in two worlds.  New York: Ediciones Puerto Rico de Autores Nuevos.

 

Colón Reyes, Linda. 1984. La inmigración o el regreso de migrantes a    Puerto Rico.  Centro de Investigaciones Sociales.  Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.

 

Cummins, J . 1984. Wanted: A theoretical framework for relating language proficiency to academic achievement among bilingual students.  In C. Rivera (ed.).Language proficiency and academic achievement.  Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

 

Curran, M. 1984.  Towards understanding interactions in high school classrooms containing return migrant students in Puerto Rico. Ed.D. thesis, Teachers College, Columbia University.

 

Jacobson, R. 1990. Allocating two languages as a key feature of a bilingual methodology. In R. Jacobson and C. Faltis (eds.). Language distribution issues in bilingual schooling. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters, 3‑17.

 

Kavetsky, J. 1978.  The return migrant student: Questions and answers.  El Sol 22:2 (April), 54‑58.

 

Nine Curt, C. J. 1976. Non‑verbal communication.  Cambridge, MA: National Assessment and Dissemination Center for Bilingual/Bicultural Education.

 

Poplack, 1980. "Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish Y TERMINO EN ESPAÑOL: Toward a typology of code‑switching.  Linguistics 18, 581‑618.

 

Prewitt‑Díaz, J. 1981. The conflicts in in‑school cultural behaviors of the Puerto Rican migrant children on the mainland.  Education 48 (May), 68‑81.

 

Ramos Perea, I. 1972. The school adjustment of return migrant students in Puerto Rican junior high schools.  Ph.D. thesis, University of Missouri.

 

Rivera Medina, E. 1984. The Puerto Rican return migrant student. Education Research Quarterly 8:4, 82‑91.

 

Zentella, A.C.  1981. "Hablamos los dos.  We speak both.": Growing up bilingual in El Barrio.  Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania.

 

ACHIEVING LINGUISTIC AND COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

 IN TWO SPEECH COMMUNITIES:

THE PUERTO RICAN RETURN MIGRANT STUDENT

 

[Published in Angela Carrasquillo and Richard Baecher  (eds.).(1994).  Educación bilingüe en Puerto Rico / Bilingual education in Puerto Rico.  Caguas: PR: Puerto Rican Association for Bilingual Education (PRABE), 51‑59.]

 

Dr. Alicia Pousada

English Department, College of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

 

This paper attempts to characterize the linguistic and sociolinguistic task faced by the return migrant student in Puerto Rico in attempting to negotiate a comfortable adaptation to a new speech community.  Included is a brief discussion of the different varieties spoken by many of these students:  non‑standard English, non‑standard Spanish, and frequent code‑switching between the two.  The discussion is utilized as a point of departure for an analysis of how schools in Puerto Rico may best address the special linguistic needs of the children in acquiring standard forms of their two languages.  Also included is a consideration of the attitudes held by the newly arrived students, their island‑raised peers,  and the teachers entrusted with their linguistic and cultural assimilation into the Puerto Rican mainstream.

                                                           

Introduction

 

The Puerto Rican people have been characterized as a "divided nation" due to the fact that almost as many Puerto Ricans live off the island as on it. The island's unique political and economic relationship with the United States has made migration between the two an expected part of the lives of many Puerto Ricans (see Bonilla and Colón Jordan 1979 and Colón Reyes 1984 for more details).

 

Return migrant students constitute a significant portion of the school population in Puerto Rico.   In 1984, Rivera Medina calculated that at least 10% of the public school enrollment had received instruction in the States.  The 1987 student census carried out by the Bilingual Education Program of the then‑Department of Public Instruction identified more than 13,000 students from the U.S. who had entered the Puerto Rican public schools during the previous three years alone. (I haven't seen the most recent figures, but I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers had grown due to the economic recession in the States.)

 

Process of acculturation

 

These youngsters have a difficult task before them.  With very little assistance from the school system, they are expected to develop the standard Spanish skills necessary to complete their formal education.  At the same time, they are expected to learn the myriad of cultural details required for a comfortable adaptation to the  norms of  the school  and their island‑born  peers.

 

In technical terms,  what they must do is simultaneously develop linguistic competence (i.e. the mastery of the phonological, grammatical, and semantic features of a linguistic code) and communicative competence (i.e. the ability to use the linguistic code appropriately in a given social setting).  The latter is critical because language is not merely a string of utterances.  It is a communication system that requires knowledge of socially shared meanings, cultural symbols and referents, plus comprehension of the world view of its speakers.

 

Both linguistic and communicative competence must be developed according to the norms of the new speech community in which they find themselves.  By  speech community, I mean the group of speakers who share a common linguistic code and the norms for its appropriate use.  In the U.S., these students were members of one speech community, and in Puerto Rico, they are attempting to become members of another speech community The linguistic code and norms of the two often conflict, and this conflict can cause a great deal of anguish for the students.

 

Return migrant students who were born on the Island and then moved to the U.S. have already survived the painful process of adjusting to the confusing demands of a new school system and society. Some received E.S.L. or bilingual education assistance; however, most tend to prefer English and may have under‑developed or fossilized language skills in academic Spanish.

 

Those born and raised in the States are invariably English dominant or possibly monolingual.  While exposed to Spanish in their homes and communities (if they lived in urban centers),  these students generally have  not participated in bilingual programs.  Unless their parents made a special effort to maintain Spanish in the home,  few have had the opportunity to acquire literate skills in Spanish.

 

To use Cummins' (1984) terminology,  the return migrant students may possess basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) but do not usually possess cognitive academic language proficiency  (CALP). And there lies the problem for the schools in Puerto Rico. BICS are acquired quickly within 1‑ 3 years with little or no formal schooling;  CALP may take as long as 5‑7 years to develop and generally takes place in school settings.

 

Non‑standard varieties

 

To complicate the issue even further, most of the return migrant students utilize non‑standard language varieties which are frowned upon in the schools, both in the U.S. and in Puerto Rico. Let us examine these briefly.

 

 The English spoken by most return migrant students is heavily influenced by the vernacular of U.S.  Blacks and working‑class whites.  Typical structural features can be seen in section A on your handouts (see appendix):

 

1. Deletion of  final /t/  /d/

2. Pronunciation of voiced th as d

3. Deletion and hypercorrect insertion of /s/ on verbs and nouns

4. Use of invariant be for continuous action

5. Deletion of be as main verb

6. Variable subject/verb agreement

7. Use of resumptive pronouns

8. Multiple negation

9. Non‑standard lexical choices

 

The Spanish of these students, on the other hand, is typically that of the working‑class of Puerto Rico, and it may sound like the speech of a generation or two back. (This is typical of immigrant communities, where the original forms are preserved long after the speech community of origin has changed its ways of speaking.)  Section B on  your handouts (see appendix) outlines the most striking structural features:

 

1. Variable deletion, aspiration, or nasalization  of syllable‑final /s/ and /n/ in nouns and verbs

2. Alternation of / r/ and /l/ in consonant clusters and after vowels

3. Velarization of /r/ in initial position.

4. Redundant marking of subject pronouns

5. Number agreement of haber and hacer in impersonal constructions

 

These features should not surprise anyone here, since they are common in the speech of many Island‑born students.  However, they may present problems in the acquisition of standard, written Spanish.

 

In addition, the Spanish of return migrant students is characterized by features more closely associated with their reality as  learners in a new speech community:

 

1.  Invariant use of tú in addressing  speakers

2. Incomplete mastery of the subjunctive

3. Limited academic vocabulary

4. Immature syntactic structure

5. Partial mastery of non‑verbal communication system (Nine‑Curt 1976)

6. Extensive use of English loanwords  or code‑switches into  English

 

This last characteristic merits further discussion.  Loanwords are what people usually think of when they refer to "Spanglish" (see section D on your handouts).  They consist primarily of nouns (although it is also possible to borrow verbs or adjectives) from one language which have been completely or partially integrated into the phonology and morphology of another language.  Loanwords are common features of many languages in the world.  In fact, the English language owes much of its huge vocabulary to the importation of foreign words.

 

Code‑switching, on the other hand,  is more complicated.  It represents the juxtaposition of elements from one language variety with elements of another within the same stretch of discourse.  Unlike loanwords, code‑switches preserve the structural integrity of the two languages, with switches occurring in places where they do not disturb the syntactic flow. Code‑switching is extremely common in Puerto Rican communities in the U.S. and is accepted there by many speakers as a normal means of communication, although teachers there (as well as here) may voice opinions to the contrary.

 

Traditionally, code‑switching was viewed as evidence of imperfect learning, but recent work indicates that the most frequent and prolific code‑switchers are indeed those individuals who possess greatest skills in both languages (see Poplack 1980, Zentella 1981). Some educational program planners like Rodolfo Jacobson (1990) even advocate the deliberate use of code‑switching in instruction.

 

Code‑switches can be divided into several types (see section E on the handouts).  These are:

1. Single noun switches

2. Tag switches

3. Intra‑sentential code‑switches

4. Sentential code‑switches

 

Children typically begin with tag and single noun switches and develop proficiency in the more complex types as they grow older and gain more experience with the communicative norms of their community and the structural elements of the two codes.  Adults who are nearly monolingual and wish to demonstrate ethnic solidarity or show off growing proficiency in their second language utilize the same types since these are in keeping with their still limited linguistic resources in the second language.  The most proficient bilinguals utilize all four types and excel particularly in intra‑sentential switches.  Thus, switching can be diagnostic of increasing proficiency rather than a sign of deficiency as many teachers have been taught to think.

 

Attitudes

 

While language is far from being the only problem facing these youths in their adjustment to the Island (see Ramos Perea 1972), it is clearly an important factor. It is through language that we understand, are understood, and establish social networks.  Knowing the language of a place is indispensable in the process of coping and adjusting to that place.

 

 Unfortunately, teachers are often unaware of the  complex nature of the task involved in learning to be linguistically and communicatively competent in a new speech community.  They may inadvertently pass judgment on students, have unrealistic expectations of their progress,  or outrightly reject them as not being "real" Puerto Ricans. Kavetsky (1978) found that Puerto Rican teachers had stereotyped return migrants as low‑achieving, trouble‑making, aggressive, undisciplined, disrespectful, lacking identity, and not knowing either English or Spanish.  One would hope that 15 years later these attitudes would have changed, but my sources among the U.P.R. return migrant population tell me that these accusations are still altogether too common.

 

The students are very sensitive to such treatment.  Since they also come to the situation with their own attitudes toward