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Title: Sociolinguistic analysis of Mexican-American bilingualism: Spanglish as a sociocultural phenomenon

Sociolinguistic analysis of Mexican-American bilingualism: Spanglish as a sociocultural phenomenon

by Judyta Pawliszko (Author)
©2020 Monographs 282 Pages
Linguistics
Series: Studies in Linguistics, Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Volume 26

Summary

The main purpose of the book is to describe the two linguistic-cultural phenomena arising from mass emigration of Mexicans to Los Angeles: Spanish-English bilingualism and Spanglish. The main thesis of the research is the correlation between Spanish-English bilingualism and Spanglish. As public opinion deemed Spanglish as a blocker for linguistic advancement or degraded Spanish, it is actually a method of enhancing the linguistic system. That is why, not only does the research contest the use of such terms, but it also argues that bilingualism is a much more compound and adequate term as well as an analytic framework for the study of bilingual productions. Spanglish should be understood as a form of bilingualism, a hybrid enriching the linguistic system.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Dedication
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • Citability of the eBook
  • Contents
  • List of Abbreviations
  • Introduction
  • Rationale for the topic
  • Aims and scope
  • Methodology and subjects
  • Chapter 1 Bilingualism
  • Introduction
  • 1.1 First/primary language – second/other language
  • 1.2 The scholarly concept of bilingualism
  • 1.3 Typology of bilingualism
  • 1.4 Diglossia and bilingualism
  • 1.5 Research on bilingualism
  • 1.6 Two languages – two worlds?
  • Summary
  • Chapter 2 Bilingual Speech Characteristics
  • Introduction
  • 2.1 Interference
  • 2.2 Borrowings
  • 2.3 Code-switching
  • Summary
  • Chapter 3 Spanglish Development
  • Introduction
  • 3.1 Assumptions behind Spanglish
  • 3.2 Types of Spanglish
  • 3.3 The linguistic features of Spanglish
  • 3.4 Hybrid nature of Spanglish
  • 3.5 Promoting Spanglish
  • Summary
  • Chapter 4 Mexican Immigrants in Los Angeles
  • Introduction
  • 4.1 Historical panorama of Mexican immigration to the USA
  • 4.2 Geographical distribution
  • 4.3 Characteristic of the surveyed diaspora
  • 4.4 Linguistic situation of Mexicans in Los Angeles
  • 4.5 Ethnic identity and cultural situation of Mexicans in Los Angeles
  • 4.5.1 Research design
  • 4.5.2 Data analysis
  • Summary
  • Chapter 5 Data Analysis
  • Introduction
  • 5.1 Social view of bilingualism and Spanglish
  • 5.2 Individual bilingualism
  • 5.3 Mexican-American immigrants’ speech characteristics
  • 5.3.1 Interference
  • 5.3.2 Borrowings
  • 5.3.2.1 Thematic classification of borrowings
  • 5.3.2.2 Quotations
  • 5.3.2.3 Phonological adaptation
  • 5.3.2.4 Morphological adaptation
  • 5.3.3 Code-switching
  • Summary
  • Conclusions
  • Appendices
  • Appendix 1 Questionnaire for monolingual and bilingual speakers
  • Appendix 2 Questionnaire for bilingual immigrants
  • Appendix 3 A set of questions used in the examination of a case study
  • List of Figures
  • List of Tables
  • References

cover

Chapter 3 Spanglish Development

Introduction

The Mexican presence in the USA is obvious and so is Spanish speech. As the second most frequently spoken language of the United States, its alliance with English has created a very common scenario in a world shaped by words; namely, the amalgamation of two languages. The outcome of this relation is Spanglish.

The present section includes an analysis of this linguistic encounter phenomenon, yet it reaches further. Not only are the core linguistics elements of Spanglish examined, but the study also provides answers to the principal research questions involving Spanish-English amalgamation: What exactly is Spanglish? Does it have a hybrid character? While the aforementioned queries have somewhat convincing answers, the question of whether Spanglish is a triumph of globalisation, an evil by-product, or simply an abominable notion, is an emotionally charged issue and it is impossible to offer a satisfactory response.

In a society in which the lexicon either helps or hinders comprehension of reality, Spanglish is reviled as the jargon of poor, uneducated immigrants. According to many researchers, it is grouped under the derogatory umbrella as the bastard creation of verbal confusion “disowned by Father English and orphaned by Madre Espańol” (Maduro 1987:1). In stark contrast with such notions, others hail it as an absolutely “legitimate language in its early stages, the embryonic lingua franca of the future or the triumph of globalisation and multiculturalism” (Montes 2003:45; Parodi 1999:521; Walczuk-Beltrão 2008:192).

This chapter presents an analysis of the various incarnations of the Spanish-English variation and concludes with praise of realistic portrayals of language exchange in Los Angeles, whose only lasting legacy has been a contribution to an authenticity that deserves wider recognition.

3.1Assumptions behind Spanglish

Beardsmore (1986:14) has put forward a fair amount of argumentation in support of the notion that the phenomenon under consideration is the amalgamation of two distinct languages. To be sure, the platform on which this notion stands, that of juxtaposition of cultures, serves as the basis for the discussion of ←97 | 98→why so many people oppose it. Indeed, within a multicultural society, the elusiveness of this sociolinguistic phenomenon has always been a complex, emotionally laden issue that has carried a stigma among the general public (Abalos 2007:35).

Prior to analysing the notion of Spanglish, it is crucial to note the widely ranging definitions found in the dictionaries, grammar sketches, references in popular culture and scholarly literature which aptly illustrate the elusiveness of this phenomenon. Indeed, in its most basic conception, Spanglish is perceived as a Spanish and English mixture, often described by authors as a mestizaje50, fusion, hybrid, collage and eclectic phenomenon.

In the following sections, three core themes will be analysed; namely, the terminology used to account for Spanish-English alternation, the nature of the study conducted within this field, and the challenges which still need to be addressed in investigating the complexity of the phenomenon.

The most traditional view is that Spanglish is solely a concern of the Spanish language. An example can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary which places the written attestation of this notion in a rather disapproving setting as “a type of Spanish contaminated by English words and forms of expression, spoken in Latin America” (Lipski 2007:201). Along the same lines, the term Spanglish has been defined by the “American Heritage Dictionary as Spanish characterised by numerous borrowings from” English (Otheguy and Stern 2011:90). Yet, the counter evidence presented in this dissertation will show that these definitions rest on both simplified and erroneous views that ignore the fact that Spanglish is hybrid, mestizaje, and a collage of English and Spanish.

Stavans, an internationally recognised forefather of scholarly investigation of Spanglish, describes this lingual conundrum as “the verbal encounter between Anglo and Hispano civilisations” (2000b:3). What the author further contends is that “[…] it’s not that it is impossible to define, but that people simply refuse to do it. And yet, nobody has the slightest doubt that it has arrived, que ya llegó […]”51 (2000b:4–5). By the same token, “Spanglish is a strange thing; like art […] you may not be able to describe it, but you know it when you see it”, declares Paternostro (2004:1).

The Spanish experience in the USA, resulting from linguistic contact, has also been widely documented in Morales’s (2002:91) equally examined work Living ←98 | 99→in Spanglish, which asserts that “Spanglish is Spanish adapting the crazy rhythms of English, and English inheriting the multicultural content of Latin America”.

Scholars’ thought also challenges the hybridity aspect of Spanglish. The aforementioned issue is examined even more profoundly by Lipski (2007:2), who has provided a descriptive account of Spanglish as a hybrid lingo spoken by second- and third-generation Latinos, being “the fluid vernacular that crosses between English and Spanish”.

Given these binary tendencies, between formal dictionary definitions of Spanglish, and informal, yet more insightful, scholarly classifications, one would expect the very crux of a comprehension of the phenomenon of Spanglish to exist in the realm of synergy, mutual approximation, as well as bilingual and bicultural interaction. Maduro (1987:1) contends:

“Instead of those at times vague classifications, the linguistic term Pidgin could be applied to Spanglish in the sense that it is [a contact] language usually created spontaneously out of a mixture of other languages as a means of communication between speakers of different languages, and is no-one’s native language.”

Adding another layer of complexity, data presented by Otheguy and Stern (2011:92–93) offer some abundant evidence as to how Spanglish is a culturally and an ethnically constructed category. Both authors address this issue by suggesting that “for the next generation of Hispanics […] Spanglish is an ethnic marker that identifies them”. A similar line of thought runs through Silva-Corvalán’s (1994:15) and Morales’s research (2002:99); they explicitly consider Spanglish as a notion stemming from the universal state of being52.

Moreover, by providing an in-depth analysis of the main linguistic features of Spanglish, code-switching has been defined to be a natural behaviour in any bilingual setting which is neither random, nor erratic. In addition, if Spanglish is taken to refer to borrowings, calques, and semantic extensions, then the Spanish-English variety in America is similar to any other variation of Spanish past and present. Given that linguistic encounters are natural processes, they are no different from other changes in the evolution of a language. Although all these features have been identified as idiosyncratic of Spanglish, and while it is true that bilingualism can either accelerate or encourage these changes, a threat to the integrity of both Spanish and English can be hardly observed.

←99 | 100→

Given the above, studies approaching Spanish-English language contact usually address two issues: (1) the lack of agreement on the subject of what type of linguistic phenomenon Spanish-English alternation constitutes, and (2) the linguistic classification of the mixed utterances. Nash’s (1970:205) data also support the study of language contact situations by providing a thorough description of the various phenomena observed, such as borrowings (labelled as Spanglish), calques, or syntactic idioms (also described as Spanglish).

Zentella (qtd in Hamberger 2009:32) continues research on the term Spanglish by referring to a range of Spanish-English language contact situations. According to the author, “disparaging labels reflect the despised mixture, e.g., Spanglish, Quechuanol, Catanol, etc.”.

Nonetheless, Zentella also admits that:

“Some bilinguals […] do claim labels like ‘Spanglish’ that reflect their combinations of languages and cultures with pride and, with poets and other wordsmiths in the vanguard, they adopt new labels to reflect their blended identities, e.g., Nuyorican, Dominican York.”

Undoubtedly, the array of data that come directly from the research discussed in the previous sections prove the situation of Spanglish to be comparable to other language contact settings in unequal bilingualism contexts, for instance Dutch in Pennsylvania. The main discrepancy between Spanish and other languages in America is the high number of Spanish speakers. Certainly, labels the Pidgin and Creole used to refer to the result of SpanishEnglish contact are incorrect. Also, while analysing Spanglish it is vital to address issues in the categorisation of mixed utterances as corresponding to specific well-studied phenomena of language contact.

As a starting point, Holm (qtd in Rodríguez-González and Parafita-Couto 2012:461) explains Pidgin53 as “a reduced language that results from extended contact between groups of people with no language in common; it evolves when they need some means of verbal communication”. Therefore, Spanish-English alternation may be considered as an example of Pidgin, as it is probable that its origin is found in the need for communication between speakers of two different linguistic systems. Yet, a considerable amount of research, succinctly overviewed by Romaine (1995:76), has been conducted on how highly proficient bilingual speakers are involved in language alternation practices. In addition, Pidgins ←100 | 101→are characterised by a series of features that are not found in Spanish-English alternations.

Thomason and Kaufman (1988:167) expose the way in which Pidgin is created by emphasizing a key aspect of the progression: “the process of linguistic negotiation by which members of the new contact community develop a common means of communication”. Related to the concept of negotiation, the need for an ecology-specific competition and selection attitude is underscored by both Paulston (1992:43) and Hoffmann (1991:198).

Indeed, while encountering a situation of linguistic contact, usually the least powerful group is linguistically accommodating. Yet, it also needs to be stressed that the dominant group speakers incorporate changes in a given language in order to facilitate communication with the members of the other group. On the basis of the findings, one may assume that if the origin of Pidgins is compared to the visible linguistic situation in America, this negotiation process would not be observed, as generally native speakers of Spanish use a mixture of English and Spanish.

A further important insight is presented by Ardila (2007:63) who explains how Spanglish is an interlanguage essential to the Hispanic community despite the fact that most English speakers do not realise that Spanglish exists. According to the author, only Hispanics are aware of this language variety. Interestingly, one of the reasons why this negotiation does not take place is the habitual implementation of English as a lingua franca. Indeed, the study also confirms that this aspect is related to the fact that a particular type of contact situation causes Pidgin to arise, that is, when neither of the two languages may act as a vehicle for communication.

A further important insight emerging from another study is that although there is some degree of diversity within Pidgins and Creoles, these languages are caused by a specific contact situation. Winford (2001:268) posits that Pidgins “arose to facilitate communication between groups of different linguistic backgrounds in restricted contexts such as trade, forced labor, and other kind of marginal contact”. Nonetheless, Clements (qtd in RodríguezGonzález and Parafita-Couto 2012:461) expresses a considerably different, holistic approach by stating that a vast array of either contexts or circumstances for Pidgin formation is dependent on attitudinal and social asymmetry aspects. The author further discourages the usage of too prescriptive accounts by demonstrating that pidginisation may occur in a variety of ways and, thus, it is better characterised by wider rather than narrower contexts of operation.

Interestingly, the English-Spanish in America is far from being similar to those situations in which Pidgins arise following Winford’s (2001:267) criterion. ←101 | 102→By investigating research on Pidgin carried out by yet another researcher (Romaine 1995:31–32), it may be contended that structurally one of the characteristic features attributable to Pidgins is the fact that they lack linguistic complexity. In fact, such a simplification suggests not only an increase in regularity, but also may be perceived as a strategy under the condition that it enables minimisation of the competence needed by the speaker to understand grammatical constructions. This interpretation is not different from that of Rodríguez-González and Parafita-Couto (2012:461) who argue that Pidgins possess a derivative and more flexive reduced morphology than the languages from which they originate. Indeed, this increase in regularity is apparent on all linguistic levels and is emplified by a study of how plurals frequently appear marked solely based on the numeral: “that two piece (sic!) book” (Chinese-English Pidgin) would correspond to “those two books” (one of the original languages).

Taking into consideration phonology, the system also seems to be simplified. By way of illustration, Almeida (qtd in Rodríguez-González and Parafita-Couto 2012:466) shows that the tone of many tonal languages was a trait that was not transferred into any known Pidgin. Finally, research conducted by Romaine (1995:42) reveals that the most obvious simplification occurs in the lexicon as there is a significant reduction in the number of units creating the lexicon of.

What the above examples demonstrate is the fact that in the processes of Spanish-English mixture, a certain level of simplification may be observed. As it will be cogently argued in the following section, loan words from English tend to adapt to the phonetic and morphological rules of Spanish. This is evident in the case of the English verb to park into the Spanish first person singular indicative (yo) parqueo. In this example both Spanish orthographical and morphological conventions are followed54.

Generally, many authors claim that an increase in regularity occurs in this process, which is exemplified in the work undertaken by Otheguy and Stern (2011:153–159). The authors explain how gender differences are maintained in Spanish vocabulary, while, at the same time, being lost when stemming from English61. This issue is further exemplified in their studies by expressions “un full size bed” or “un pool table pequeno”, in which cama and mesa, the corresponding Spanish nouns, would be feminine. This type of simplification is defined by Otheguy and Stern as adaptation, as in a language contact situation speakers tend to prefer structures which are similar in both languages. Therefore, in the examples offered by the authors, the masculine form of the determiner ←102 | 103→un is used because, while in English morphological masculine-feminine gender distinctions do not exist, the masculine is the default in Spanish.

Among many researchers, it is important to mention White (qtd in Rodríguez-González and Parafita-Couto 2012:476) who, while conducting a study on Spanish second language learners, found that masculine determiners were interpreted by participants as referring to feminine nouns in a comprehension task. Likewise, Dussias (2002:56) underlines the fact that masculine is the default gender for Spanish-English bilingual speakers. Still, feminine would be possible provided that the Spanish translation is feminine. As another example, Deuchar (qtd in Rodríguez-González and Parafita-Couto 2012:461), based on his naturalistic set of data, suggests that it is also possible to find processes of linguistic simplification in cases of interference, that is, in a situation when some English grammatical constructions are adopted in Spanish. The same kind of evidence has also been supported by yet another researcher, Ardila (2007:75–76), who lucidly describes situations in which the Spanish verbal system is reduced because of its greater complexity when compared to the English one. Indeed, English verb tenses that do not exist in Spanish tend to disappear when Spanglish is used. Another example of this type of simplification is the loss of the distinction between indicative and subjunctive, i.e. para que no vienes manana instead of para que no vengas manana.

Still, it should be pointed out that according to prescriptive grammar, the use of the indicative mood in which the subjunctive is necessary is also common within the SpanishEnglish bilingual community with some attrition in Spanish (Lipski 2004; MacSwan 2000; Silva-Corvalán 1994). Yet, when code-switching occurs, the norms that rule the construction of each of the languages involved are frequently maintained. As a result, one may conclude that despite the fact that some simplification is evident in the English-Spanish mixture, its degree is much lower than that observed in Pidgins.

In order to further distinguish the result of Spanish-English contact and Pidgins, the competence of a speaker in the two languages in contact should be taken into consideration. Broadly speaking, Pidgins are created in circumstances where as a result of the non-bilingual population, the formation of a new language becomes essential so that populations that use different languages can communicate. As a way of contrast, the majority of the speakers code-switching between English and Spanish linguistic systems are, to some degree, proficient in both languages.

As evidenced by the above discussion of the most significant characteristics of Pidgins, it may be concluded that the Spanish-English alternations cannot be defined as belonging to this category. Even though some of the processes of ←103 | 104→Spanish-English mixed utterances are somehow comparable to the linguistic changes that create Pidgins, users engaged in SpanishEnglish mixture are highly competent bilinguals (Romaine 1995; Winford 2001). Therefore, none of these phenomena regarding the outcome of Spanish-English contact have resulted in an alternate and independent language adopted by the speakers to ease communication between English and Spanish monolinguals.

Details

Pages
282
Publication Year
2020
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631806654
ISBN (PDF)
9783631811771
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631811788
ISBN (MOBI)
9783631811795
DOI
10.3726/b16537
Language
English
Publication date
2020 (February)
Published
Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2020. 282 pp., 49 fig. b/w, 38 tables.
Product Safety
Peter Lang Group AG

Biographical notes

Judyta Pawliszko (Author)

Judyta Pawliszko, Ph.D. is a lecturer in the Applied Linguistic Department at University of Rzeszów. Her research focuses mainly on the verbal interpretation of reality and language hybrids resulting from linguistic contact. Recent publications explore code-switching and language worldview of bilinguals.

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Title: Sociolinguistic analysis of Mexican-American bilingualism: Spanglish as a sociocultural phenomenon