Language choices in surveys: how switching language of interview highlights both identity and acculturation

Recent public opinion work in an increasingly diverse United States has relied on bilingual surveys, administered by bilingual respondents, where the national or dominant language is one of the languages and the second language is the traditional language for the particular group in focus. Due to transnationalism and a globalization of media, bilingual competence has increased among immigrant-based communities. In the United States, Latinos are often linked through their heritage language, Spanish. This paper shows that answering a survey in Spanish can be as much a symbolic choice as it is instrumental. Using the LNS2006 and LNS-New England, I explore respondents who switched language during the interview. This unique feature of the dataset documents the language respondents started in and if they switched throughout the interview. The impact of language on survey responses dictates the need to gain more precision in learning the language in which questions are asked throughout surveys.