Resumen de Ethnic identification, language, and values: The case of Polish emigrés
Howard Giles, Peter Ball, Barbara Gasiorek, Margaret Korytkowska, Louis Young
Ethnic values have been studied as a function of group membership, the latter's criteria invariably being objective and external. Negligible attention, however, has been paid empirically to the effects of subjective definitions of ethnic group memberships on value expression. To such an end, this study in Britain examined the values of 90 Polish emigres by means of the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS). Informants were divided into three levels of Polish cultural identification and administered the RVS in either Polish or English. A principal components analysis yielded a five‐factor solution and subsequent 3×2 ANOVAs on the factor scores showed predictable differences between the three subgroups on the first two factors, labelled ‘spirituality’ and ‘traditional/conservative responsibility’. Language of testing interacted in complex, but interpretable, ways with cultural identification on the first factor and fifth (viz. ’self‐satisfaction'). A follow‐up study in Tasmania yielded both similarities and dissimilarities in value structure with the foregoing, as well as a different relationship between values and language. It was argued that existing conceptualisations of ethnic values‐language relationships cannot cope adequately with the present data and various proposals for future programmatic research were engendered.
