Linguistics

Latinxs and Spanish in the U.S. (pt. 2)

Week 6 - Monday

Linguistics 1000

Noel Quiñones: ‘8 Confessions of My Tongue’

Why don’t you speak Spanish? ■ Puerto Rican phonological characteristics: “vergüenza”

(shame) as [velgwensa] (3:05) ■ Language loss across the generations: “People say, ‘Your

parents should have taught you’” ■ Proving oneself: “Google Translate to prove myself…” ■ Family members’ input: “They laugh and say ‘You just feel

it’” (English ‘for’ = Spanish ‘por’ & ‘para’) ■ Lack of identity/home: “Two false skins stitched into a

name”; “Self-torture in front of the mirror”; “Now you don’t belong anywhere”

From relatives: Your Spanish is terrible!

Spanish & Identity

■ Mendoza-Denton (2008) studies Mexican women’s gangs in the southwestern US. – 2 grups: the ‘norteñas’

(northerners) y the ‘sureñas’ (southerners) – Each group considers itself

’more (authentically) Mexican’ than the other.

Spanish & Identity

■ About one code-switch in a confrontation between the two groups, Mendoza-Denton writes:

‘Tschhh, don’t EVEN talk to me in Spanish, ‘cause your Spanish ain’t all that,’ yelled Patricia, in English. Fighting words, since both Norteñas and Sureñas had a claim to authentic Mexican-ness, and both understood Spanish to be symbolic of that claim. The switch to English was intended to circumscribe the boundary of the right kind of Spanish, and to imply that Lupe could not speak it well enough” (pg. 207).

■ Americans tend to think of monolingualism as the norm or the default. – In reality, monolingualism is the exception.

■ Moreover, the vast majority of these Spanish speakers (90- 95%) also speak English at a level of “good” or “very good”

■ And yet, every few years we have a big push to make English the ‘official language’ – to defend poor little English!

■ Next week: We’ll look at how society is able to motivate a need to defend something which is not actually in need of defense at all!

Concluding Thought: Monolingualism as default

Code-switching

“The ability on the part of bilinguals to alternate effortlessly between their two languages”

(Bullock & Toribio 2009: 1)

Until the 1960s…

■ Languages “shouldn’t” be mixed. ■ Weinreich (1968: 73): “The ideal bilingual is one

who…switches from one language to the other according to appropriate changes in the speech situation (interlocutors, topics, etc.), but not in an unchanged speech situation, and certainly not within a single sentence”.

■ Labov (1971): “...the irregular mixture of two distinct systems”

Until the 1960s…

■ Because of this, code-switching was interpreted as the result of ‘imperfect bilingualism’.

■ The speaker hasn’t acquired one language OR the other in its entirety. – ‘Deficit Hypothesis’

■ Switching between languages reflects this lack of understanding of the complete system of the two languages.

Linguists’ first job: Demonstrate systematicity! ■ Code-switching is a natrual phenomenon. ■ It’s systematic; there are rules. – “Alejandra siempre está contando jokes. J

(Alejandra always is telling jokes)

– ”Ella goes a the playa to nadar every día.” L (She goes to the beach to swim every day.)

■ Speakers don’t alternate ‘randomly’ ■ And as soon as we notice this, then we can start asking

where, when, how, etc.

Why ‘code’? ■ Code: A way of speaking – In our case, code refers to ‘language’ – But ‘code-switching’ can also be used to refer to

switching between registers, dialects, etc. (as we’ve seen in previous lectures)

– “…efforts to distinguish code-switching, code- mixing...are doomed” (Eastman 1992: 1)

Two types ■ Where: – Intra-sentential: Switches inside a sentence.

■ Ex: Laura wants to wear her tacones (heels) tonight.

– Inter-sentential: Switches at a sentence boundary. ■ Ex: Laura wants to wear her heels tonight. El

restaurante adonde vamos es muy elegante. (The restaurant we’re going to is very elegant.)

■ Ex: A: Are you going with them? B: Ya te dije que no! (I already told you no!)

Constraints: Just one example ■ ‘Equivalence Constraint’

■ Code-switches will tend to occur at points in discourse where juxtaposition of the the two languages’ elements does not violate a syntactic rule of either language.

■ When the syntactic structure is the same, there can be a code-switch; if not, it’s less likely.

■ Ex: Ordering of nouns and adjectives in Eng. vs. Span ■ *Es una camiseta red. L (It’s a red shirt) ■ *Es una red camiseta. L

Between… Ex: Clitic pronoun and verb *She lo wants.

*She wants lo. *Ella quiere it. *Ella it quiere.

Subject pronoun and verb *Yo went to school *I fui a la escuela.

Haber (auxiliary) and past participle *She had venido ayer. *Ella había come yesterday.

Negation and verb *Él no is very friendly. *He no es muy simpático.

Interrogative word and verb *Cuándo do you arrive? *When llegas?

Impossible switches (*=bad)

Next: Something that is NOT ‘code-switching’

’Mock Spanish’ (see also ‘Mock ___’ )

■ Popping in ‘Spanish’ words – ...but words that aren’t actually Spanish – …or they are, but are being used to mean

something different in this context of usage.

■ NON-Spanish examples: – Adding an article + an ‘o’: El cheap-o; no problem-o – Super anglicized pronunciations: Fleas Navidad;

Grassy ass

José, can you see? (Zentella 2003)

■ Zentella argues that ‘Mock Spanish’ practices constitute one half of a double standard in that: – Latinos are required to comply with the linguistic

norms for English… – ...whereas Anglos can ignore the most basic aspects of

the grammar of Spanish. ■ She writes: "LatinXs are visibly constrained by rigid norms

of linguistic purity, but white linguistic disorder goes unchallenged; in fact, white linguistic disorder is essential to a congenial persona, and passes as multicultural 'with- it-ness.'"

’Mock Spanish’

■ Jane Hill (1993: 147) writes that Anglos… ”…do not manifest some abstract zero degree of monolingualism. They do use Spanish, but in limited and specialized ways that support a broader project of social and economic domination of Spanish speakers”

‘Mock Spanish’

Schwartz (2016)

And, let’s be clear…Trump did not say “bad men.” He said ‘bad HOMBRES.’ It was HOMBRES that connected the notion of “immigrant” not simply to “men” (the literal translation of that word), but to what the Spanish-ness of his choice could index: MEXICAN men as inherently undesirable, “illegal,” criminal, violent, and you know, all the other racist, anti-immigrant discourse he’s proudly associated himself with. The racism inherent in his choice of HOMBRES seems undeniable, indisputable and of course, unsurprising.

“But it’s only a joke!” It’s just “harmless fun!” (Santa Ana 2009)

■ This is where the real power of this sort of linguistic strategy can be found. – ”Contemporary racist culture…is reproduced especially through

practices which are never condemned as racist—practices which appear (at least to many Whites) to constitute mere common sense” (Hill 2001: 246)

– That is, racism today needs to be much more creative than before. – “Mock Spanish functions as an intentional source of humor (most

speakers are well aware that the mock register is incorrect), but it is never challenged in conversation as racist discourse. It indexes negative and racist stereotypes of Spanish-speaking people covertly; the humor itself centrally relies on the unspoken nature of its implicit message” (Schwartz 2011: 654)

“But it’s only a joke!” It’s just “harmless fun!” (Santa Ana 2009)

■ Referring to Trump’s comment, Schwartz (2016) writes: “This was a token of Mock Spanish that in any other context might so be easily defensible as “just a clever use of Spanish,” “just a joke” or an inspiration for a quip like “I think we’re just too PC nowadays.”

The bottom line is this: I think Donald Trump just made it a hell of a lot easier for me —and for all of us who teach about language, race and racism— to talk with students about Mock Spanish and the power of covert racist discourse. Trump exemplified how Mock Spanish worked, for all its discursive complexity and its seemingly ordinary, daily usage. Hombre itself might not be a racial slur, but when Trump used it last night, and when the word itself turned into a symbolic representation of his racism —the scope of that word’s injury, its offensiveness, its oppressive potential— became crystal clear.”

Reclaiming words/phrases