▼ Since 1950 the face of the United States population has changed dramatically due to increased immigration from Latin America. Dictatorships, revolutions, economic crises, and recessions in developing Latin American states in addition to proximity and opportunity can begin to account for the tremendous rise in Latinos across the fifty states. As a result, the United States is now the second largest Spanish speaking country in the world after Mexico with 46.9 million speakers according to the 2010 National Abstract of Statistics (“Table 10,” 2008). In the US, the term Spanish speaking includes native Spanish speakers, bilingual speakers, and Hispanic heritage speakers. This work investigates how the growth of the Latino population and the increasing number of Spanish speakers in the US has affected Spanish foreign language enrollments and offerings in the United States since 1950 and the extent to which the national trends and impacts are reflected in a local school system and community. Advisors/Committee Members: Rees-Miller, Janie.

▼ This study examines the treatment of syllable-final /s/ in the Spanish spoken in Viña del Mar and Valparaíso, Chile and its relationship to the sociolinguistic factors of age, gender and socioeconomic status. The study analyzes 99 tokens that were obtained from 99 informants using an overhearing method, and examines the statistical significance of the aforementioned sociolinguistic factors in treatment of syllable-final /s/ by the informants. A chi-square analysis of the data revealed that socioeconomic status impacts /s/ treatment while age and gender do not. Advisors/Committee Members: Danford, Richard.