LANGUAGE-SPECIFIC RESPONSE PATTERNS AND SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF HEALTH - A SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

It is a premise of many secondary statistical analyses of cross-sectio nal data that language choice acts as an adequate proxy to assess leve l of acculturation of Hispanic respondents. In this article, conclusio ns an analyzed that point to a tendency of Mexican Americans to make n egative subjective health assessments. A sociolinguistic analysis is p roposed, one that examines code switching as a communicative option th at is available to the members of a bilingual speech community. From t his perspective cultural change provides an individual with additional linguistic and symbolic categories for expressing distress. It is dis cussed how a Mexican American's choice to speak Spanish at the time of the interview may not indicate that he or she is prone to exaggerate somatic complaints or that he or she is less acculturated but rather t hat the mother tongue is the language of choice to communicate psychic demoralization and somatic distress in the context of health-related interview schedules.