Lexical availability of Redwood City's Hispanic students, California

Abstract

This study of a Spanish-speaking community in contact with English had as its main objective the research and catalog the lexical availability of twelfth grade Hispanic students in general education in the city of Redwood City, California. This research adheres to the Panhispanic Lexical Availability Project led by Humberto López Morales. It allows an examination of aspects of "geographical variations" and "sociolinguistics" of Spanish in this part of the world. Among the contributions of this study are novel aspects in the methodology with the use of new independent variables and the use statistical procedures. The results derived from this research analyze the lexical available to the Hispanic community in Redwood City. They make possible practical applications to the teaching of mother tongue and foreign language. At the same time they allow for comparisons with other communities previously studied.