Attitude Update: Spanish on the South Texas Border

Abstract

This article revisits attitudes toward Spanish among students attending the University of Texas-Pan American in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Eighty-five percent of the undergraduate students at this institution consider themselves Hispanic. In part due to the presence of the university, this four-county area has continued to experience numerous social and economic changes over the past two decades. In 1982, data were collected among UT-Pan American students in an attempt to gauge their attitudes toward the Spanish language along four sociolinguistic attitudinal dimensions - communication, instrumental, sentimental, and value. The present article analyzes data similarly collected, eighteen years later, in 2000. Comparisons are made between the attitudes expressed and the demographic variables of gender, age, and generation. Conclusions regarding retention of Spanish are then drawn.