Spanish As World Language in the Field of Media Term Paper

Spanish as World Language in the Field of Media

There are approximately 400 million people who can speak Spanish by the end of the twentieth century; this makes Spanish the 4th most commonly used language in the world. The first three languages are Mandarin Chinese, English and Hindi. There are 21 countries in which Spanish is the official language and in most of them it is the only official language. Spanish is a language that is spoken not only as a mother tongue but in many places as a significant second language along with being a vehicular language or 'lingua franca'. Although the Spanish language is obviously associated with Spain, the country that it originated from, but majority of the people who speaks this language live in Latin America and as, the population is growing at a steady pace in that area so is the number of Spanish speakers (Stewart, 1999).

In U.S., the language is spreading in a very rapid manner as well. There are also a small number of people who speak this language in Asia, Africa as well as the Middle East. Here, we will be looking at the people who speak Spanish and the language itself as one of the important languages being spoken in the world today (Stewart, 1999).

The number of people who speak a language is only one factor which helps in judging the status that a language holds. There are many other factors as well, such as, the status that the language holds as a co-official, minority or official language, the cultural and economic potential of the countries in which the language holds an official status, the number of people by whom the language is being studied as a second or foreign language, the extent of the areas in which it can be made use of, the efforts being made in promoting the language, the presence of the language in the supranational forums, these are all the aspects that play an important part in defining the status of a language (Stewart, 1999).

Spanish, its use and norms

There are about 22 million people who are presently speaking Spanish in the U.S., from among these 22 million, about 60%, have Mexican origin and live mostly in the south west, Puerto Ricans who form 12% of the people who speak Spanish in U.S. incline to live in north east and New York whereas, Florida is favored by the Cubans who form 4% of the Spanish speaking population in U.S. (Stewart, 1999).

Currently the most quickly growing ethnic community of U.S. is of the Hispanics and it is being estimated that by 2050 their number will rise to 96.5 million (The Guardian, 16.07.98 as cited in Stewart, 1999). This can be very problematic for U.S. as, it has nowhere been mentioned in their legislation that the official language of the Union is English, in this matter they have always trusted the desire of the immigrants to want to speak English in order to get settled in the community more easily and to socialize with the people there (Stewart, 1999).

Now it is being noticed that a lot of friction seems to be taking place between the majority that speaks English and the communities which only speak Spanish. This problem is especially severe in the southern states as, they have a higher concentration of the Hispanic communities. In some of the major cities of the country like Los Angeles and San Antonio approximately one half of the population has a Hispanic background. One tenth of the total population in New York speaks Spanish. It has been since the 1990s that the Republicans have been wanting the English language to get an official status and they have been trying to restrict the use of Spanish language not only outside but also inside the homes and in order to achieve this goal, an 'English only' moment was promoted by them as well. They are especially very unhappy about the amount of budget which is being given to the maintenance programs for the mother tongue. But the Spanish speaking community has been actively opposing these ideas (Stewart, 1999).

It was in 1994 that in the state of Arizona a federal tribunal ruling turned down a state legislation according to which the state was prohibiting the employees to speak Spanish while on official duties. This legislation was turned down on the grounds that the first amendment of the Constitution was being infringed by it. By turning down this legislation the state administrators were able to deal with the Hispanic citizens in their own mother tongue such as, the administrators were able to hear the complaints of the people who were from Hispanic background and not very fluent in English in a better manner.It was in 1995 that a resolution was passed in San Antonio which is the 9th biggest city of the U.S. according to this resolution the city was proclaimed as bilingual. A significant setback was received by the Spanish language in the June of 1998 as the most populated state if U.S. voted for what was being called the Proposition 227. According to this proposition the bilingual education which was being given to the immigrant children for more than 20 years had to be ended. Although the purpose of doing this was said to be to prevent the ghettoization of the Hispanic children and to improve their English but it will be very fascinating to observe the effects of this proposition on the usage of Spanish language in the Hispanic community (Stewart, 1999).

Spanish language as a world language

Spanish language can definitely be called a world language considering not only the number of countries that it is being spoken in all over the world but also how it holds the status of an official language in so many countries and how so many people speak it as a prestige variety or as a first language (Stewart, 1999).

The center of gravity of the Spanish language lies in the Latin America where majority of speakers of the language live. With regards to the numbers of native speakers in Europe it comes after Russian, German, French and English. Even then it should be noted here that in Europe Spain is one of the most quickly developing economies (The Economist 1996:93-100). Spain is probably the most economically sound country as compared to the countries which also have Spanish as an official language. Spanish language is now being developed in such a manner that it can be used in basically all the fields of knowledge and now the users are able to use the Spanish language in the areas like information technology (Clyne, 1995). However, if we look at the Spanish language internationally we will be surprised to see that it is a lot less prominent than French language which has very few speakers as compared to Spanish language. Still the fact that French is an official language in a lot of countries can't be ignored (see Ball 1997:6). The credit for this popularity of the French language goes to a certain extent to France as well which has been promoting their language for a long time. In comparison it can be seen that the promotion of Spanish language is declining in European and international organizations due to the fact that there are economic constraints when it comes to the promotion of this language (Stewart, 1999).

Spanish language in the media as international language in contrast to being a pluricentric language

For a long time the Spanish language media has proven itself to be a very important way of reaching the Iberian or Latin American people in the U.S. The bilingual and English media that communicate with this population group are not the scope of this particular chapter. It is most recently that the new immigrants are making use of the Spanish media in the U.S. In fact, it has been noted that people belonging to other ethnic groups are getting attracted to the Spanish media as they want to improve their Spanish as well and learn more and more about the cultural of this increasing and influential segment of the population. According to the census that was conducted in 1940 the Latino and Hispanic population was at about 1.9 million whereas, by 1980 the number reached 14.6 million which made about 6.4% of the U.S. population and this number further increased to 35.3 million by 2000 which made the Hispanics to be 12.5% of the total U.S. population (Albarran, 2009).

According to the National Hispanic Consumer study which was done by Simmons Market Research Bureau (2003 as cited in Albarran, 2009) from among the Hispanic living in the U.S. 19% speak on the Spanish language, 9% speak only the English language, 17% can speak complete English and Spanish and are bilingual whereas, 55% have very limited proficiency in the English language. This continuous and steady growth of the Latino/Hispanic population can prove to be very troublesome for the U.S.….....