interview paper

Copyright © Ana Celia Zentella, 1997

The right of Ana Celia Zentella to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 1997 Reprinted 1997

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Zentella, Ana Celia Growing up bilingual :Puerto Rican children in New York I Ana Celia Zentella p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-55786-406-3 (hbk: alk. paper) ISBN l-55786-407-1 (pbk: alk. paper) I. Bilingualism in children-New York (N.Y.) 2. Puerto Rican children-New York (N.Y.)-Languages. I. Title. Pll5.2.Z46 1997 420'.4261 '097471-dc20

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset in 10 on 12ptPlantin by Graphicraft Typesetters Limited, Hong Kong Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

This book is printed on acid-free paper

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of figures

List of tables

Key to transcription conventions

1 "Hablamos los dos. We speak both:" Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context

2 The Community: el bloque

3 The Bilingual/Multidialectal Repertoire of el bloque

Bilingualism en casa

The Hows and Whys of "Spanglish"

6 The Grammar of "Spanglish"

Life and Language in Young Adulthood

8 Isabel: A Special Case

9 Spanish Competence

'10 Raising the Next Generation of New York Puerto Ricans

11 Maria: Learning to defenderse

fi1 Expanding Repertoires: Linking Language, Education, and the New Diversity

Notes

References

Index

vi

Vll

viii

ix

1

17

41

56

80

115

137

160

179

213

244

262

289

300

316

So Your Name Isn't Maria Cristina Sandra Maria Esteves

She was just a young woman. Another Puertorriquefia among many. Desperate to define self within worlds of contradictions. Caught somewhere inbetween the casera traditions of Titi Julia and the progressive principles of a Young Lords cousin.

I'll admit she was barely a child, with no definitions of her own. No recognition of her vast cultural inheritance.

She didn't used to know herself. Having to pick and choose from surrounding reflections. Needing alternatives to focus by. So she found them here and there tried them on for size and feeling,' taking pieces from different places, coordinated like a wardrobe, sometimes elegant, most times plain ....

She watched how you fixed your own faucets, defending yourself against heartless violations.

How you marked out your path with defiant resistance agains all forms of enslavement. How you fought, yelled back, at those who wanted you to fail, expected it, crossing you.

She watched it all, and learned from the watching that weeding the garden is constant to its cultivation ....

The point is she grew, and watched, and studied, and learned, awakening into womanhood.

"So Your Name Isn't Maria Cristina" by Sandra Maria Esteves is reprinted with permission

from the publisher of Bluestown Mockingbird Mambo (Houston: Arte Publico Press-University of Houston, 1990).

1

"Hablamos los dos. I% speak both:" Studying Bilingualism zn the Community Context

One day in El Barrio (New York City's East Harlem) in 1979 I asked a nine year old of Puerto Rican background what language she spoke with her sisters and brothers. "Hablamos los dos. We speak both," she answered casually, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to speak two languages and to alternate between them. I was struck by her offhand tone and the seamless welding of Spanish and English which proved her point vividly. I knew from personal experience as well as from my research that her remark masked the complexity of her ability, its cultural implications, and its repercussions for her academic and social well being. I knew too that the grammatical skills she had in two languages and her knowledge of two cultures were not sufficiently understood, rewarded, or developed. Indeed, they were often blamed for her lack of progress and that of her com- munity. Yet, many children who stopped speaking Spanish did not get far in the outside world, and they severed important links to their families and culture. Because bilingualism had been such a source of personal strength and of broader cultural, racial, and political understanding in my life, I wondered why it is so often considered a problem, particularly for poor Spanish-speaking communities in the United States.

Over the next decade I observed how the efforts of that child and her friends, and later their children, to endure their neighborhood's escalating poverty, AIDS, drugs, and violence affected the course of their bilingualism and their educational progress. Bilingualism was an integral part of family life and community identity, but children were less preoccupied with grow- ing up bilingual than with growing up, surviving. Standard proficiency in two languages was only one of the unwarranted sacrifices they were forced to make. In some ways their experiences echoed those of other immigrant groups who lost their languages, but in other fundamental ways, most

2 Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context

notably the fact that their homeland and its language policies were controlled by the United States, they departed from that tradition. Old models that asked, "Are they striving to Americanize or not?" fell short of capturing their reality. They were neither passive victims irreparably damaged by oppress- ive forces or heroic poor winning out against all odds. The political, socio- economic, racial, cultural, and linguistic forces which impinge upon New York Puerto Rican (NYPR) children, and their responses to those forces, provide a little known picture of what it is like for them and many others to grow up in the US at the end of the twentieth century. The role of Spanish, English, and what some call "Spanglish" are of particular consequence.

In the hope of encouraging new imaginings of bilingualism for the entire nation, and a more empowering bilingualism for the next generation of NYPR children in particular, this book offers an inside view of the languages and lives of the children of el bloque ("the block"), one impoverished but vibrant NYPR community, between 1979-93. It walks readers through part of the nation's longest settled Puerto Rican neighborhood, El Barrio ("the neighborhood"), and introduces them to 20 families, with particular em- phasis on five children. ,

"Doing being bilingual" the NYPR Way

The title "Growing Up Bilingual" masks the complexity of the process and the product. It is more accurate to talk about how children and their community go about "doing being bilingual" (Auer 1984: 7), by trying on, discarding, integrating the many ways of speaking and behaving that sur- round them, until, with the help of their co-constructors, they create the particular blend that identifies them as an NYPR, or "Nuyorican." The coin- ing of the term Nuyorican, although stigmatized for many, is itself evidence of the recognition that their identity is similar to but different from that of island Puerto Ricans and other New Yorkers. 1 The form and content of their bilingual and multidialectal communication tell us how children learn to construct an NYPR identity that is really multiple and shifting identities, as befits a linguistically, racially, and culturally diverse community, and also tell us about the high price they pay when their new syntheses are disparaged and assailed.

As all children "learn how to mean" (Halliday 1973), they grow up learn- ing how to use language in ways peculiar to their group, and they come to recreate a model of the culture of which they are members. The model that children of ethnolinguistic minorities reproduce is subject to the "sym- bolic domination" (Bourdieu 1991) of the dominant class of monolingual English speakers, that is, to that class's definition of legitimate and illegitim- ate language and culture. It is subject also to the competing definitions of

Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context 3

urrounding but stigmatized groups, particularly African Americans. Much ~f what NYPR children learn to do and say reflects accommodation and res- . tance to conflicting pressures on their community's view of what is most 1S . b h'

luable in life. NYPR identity is not a given, an automatic mem ers 1p va anted by birthplace or parentage, or an accumulation of linguistic features, ~ltural artifacts, or group customs with meanings that can be definitively interpreted. Instead, "in any given actual situation, at ar~y give~ act~al

oment people in those situations are actively constructmg the1r soc1al m ' . . £ identities rather than passively living out some cultural prescnptlon or ocial identity" (Ochs 1992: 11). NYPR children adopt and transform ~e cultural recipe in ways that they communicate bilingually and multi- dialectally. Relationships among language, setting, and meaning are not fixed. Switching into Spanish in public or into English at home does not necessarily communicate intimacy or distance, respectively. Children who integrate linguistic features of several worlds sometimes defy traditional language conventions, or blur the boundaries in their re-confi~ration~. It · precisely the ability to co-author and co-interpret conversat10ns agamst 1S 'd a multicultural and multidialectal backdrop that enables NYPRs to 1 en- tify each other. Like basketball players who know where to hit the back- board in order to score a point, or salsa dancers who can follow a new partner's every tum, their interactions rely on shared linguistic and cul- tural knowledge of standard and non-standard Puerto Rican Spanish, Puerto Rican English, African American Vernacular English, Hispanized English, and standard NYC English, among other dialects. Speakers understand the overt and covert messages of fellow community members because they can follow varied linguistic moves and fill in the gaps for other speakers or translate for themselves. In the process they ratify each other's member- ship in the community and contribute to the re-shaping of NYPR identity. The complexity of the issues requires a different way of studying how NYPRs go about "doing being bilingual," and the crisis conditions of the community demand it.

The Community's Needs and the Limitations of our Knowledge

The families in this study belong to the second largest Spanish-speaking group (Mexicans are the largest) and one of the most disadvantaged and least understood groups in the US. Puerto Rican ways of living and of loving and raising children are misrepresented by the depressing statistics that define them nationally. New York is the city of the greatest Puerto Rican concentration; it is home to 896,7 63 of the country's 2.5 million Puerto Ricans. NYPRs have the lamentable distinction of having the highest

4 Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context

poverty rate of m:y group ~n the city: 55 percent in 1990 compared to 33 percent ~or Africa? Amencans, 32 percent for other Latinos, and 12 per- cent for whites (Institute for Puerto Rican Policy 1992). The youthfulness of the group (over one-third are of school age) makes education the tra- ditional hope for a way out of the ghetto, a burning issue. Con~entional explanations for why NYPRs have the lowest high school completion rates for persons 25 years of age and older (45 percent in 1991, compared with 56 . percent. of other Latinos, 66 percent of Blacks and 72 percent of ~hites, Institute for Puerto Rican Policy 1992: 8) often cite language. It IS as~umed that Puerto Rican children drop out because they do not know Enghsh, because they know the wrong kind of English, or because their bilingualism is cognitively confusing. Because of the harsh reality in which ~PRs raise their children, I argue (below) for an anthropoliticallinguis- tics ~~t never loses ~ight of that reality and struggles to change it. Growing Up Bzlzngual was written because so little is known about the varieties of Spanish and English that are spoken by NYPRs, the practices that socialize children to and through bilingual speech and literacy and the values linked to each language. '

Bilingualism has been studied all over the world, as leading texts docu- ment (Baetens Beardsmore 1982; Grosjean 1982; Vaid 1986; Appel and Muysken 1987; Hamers and Blanc 1989; Romaine 1989; Hoffman 1991), but framework~ ba~~d o? other nations often are not applicable to the study of language ~monties m the US. A landmark annotated bibliography by ~eschner, Bills? and Craddock (1975) focused on the Spanish and Eng- lish of US Latmos, and noted the limitations of the Hispanist thrust of much of the research. Since then, nearly a dozen collections of articles have do,cume~ted various aspects of the languages of US Latinos (Amastae and Ehas-Ohvares 1981; Dunm 1981; Fishman and Keller 1982; Elias-Olivares 1983; Elias-Olivares, Leone, Cisneros, and Gutierrez 1985· Wherritt and Gar~i~ 1989; Coulmas 1990; Bergen 1990; Klee and Ramos~Garcia 1991). Additionally, the Working Papers published by the Language Policy Task Force of the Centro de Estudios Puertom·queiios ("Center for Puerto Rican Studies") ben:veen 1978. and 1988 were devoted to the Spanish and English of one block m El Bamo. The starting point of most of the past research has been on specific features of the languages or on the switching between them (code switching), not on the context that gives rise to bilingualism and th~ way~ in which children learn to switch. As a result, we have partial port- raits of Interlocutors, rules, and usage, but no in-depth understanding of the process of becoming bilingual in any Spanish-speaking community in the United States.

2 The little insight we have into US Latino mother-child

interactions (Garcia and Carrasco 1981; Lindholm and Padilla 1981· Laosa 198l;Garcia 1983; Moreno 1991), is mainly from experimental s~ttings. Because code switching is so maligned, the majority of work has focused

Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context 5

on that phenomenon, for example, patterns of code switching (McLure 1977; Valdes 1976), a Mexican-American family case study (Huerta 1978), characteristics of speaker and hearer who switch (Pop lack 1981 b), the role of code switching in educational settings (Genishi 1976; Olmedo-Williams 1979; Zentella 1981c, 1982), discourse functions (Gumperz and Hern:indez- Ch:ivez 1975; Valdes 1981; Zentella 1982; Alvarez 1991; Torres 1992) and the syntactic rules of Spanish-English code switching (Pfaff 1975; Poplack 1980; Sankoffand Poplack 1981; Woolford 1983; Lipski 1985; Di Sciullo et al. 1986). These studies have built upon, contributed to and been chal- lenged by studies of code switching in many areas of the world (Gumperz 1976; Blom and Gumperz 1972; Berk-Seligson 1986; Bentahila and Davies 1983; Myers-Scotton 197 6, 1993a, b, c; Heller 1988; Eastman 1992a).

Research on Spanish-English code switching has established its rule- governed nature but the methodology has been disparate, with little unity between qualitative and quantitative approaches (Baker 1980; Zentella 1990a). Furthermore, most of the research on US Latino bilingualism has been carried out among Mexican Americans who differ historically, cul- turally, and linguistically from Puerto Ricans, and the bulk of it has been at the sentence level, ignoring the larger discourse and social context. Of particular theoretical importance is the failure of previous research to ana- lyze how bilingualism and community identity build each other, for example, the specific ways of viewing and using varieties of Spanish and English that bond NYPR community members to each other while allowing individual ways of being an NYPR.

In the end, communities differ from each other, and each bilingual's story is unique. Five children's stories are woven throughout the book. Within a community, speakers share rules for the structure of their linguistic codes and for the socially appropriate ways of speaking them (Hymes 197 4). The speech community's language patterns are related to cultural norms which reflect, and are shaped by, larger political, socio-economic, and cultural forces (the social context). Additionally, the type of bilingualism that results is shaped within the constraints of what it is possible to say and perform with human language in general and with the specific dialects in contact in particular (the linguistic context). The unique configuration of each com- munity's links between aspects of the social and the linguistic contexts are never divorced from the community's notion of what it is important in life to communicate - their language-world view connection (Schieffelin and Ochs 1986).

When the isolated bilingual is replaced by the speaker and his/her com- munity in natural interactions, an often dazzling complexity of norms and interpretations is unearthed. The holistic objective of ethnography ap- proaches this complexity by immersing the ethnographer in the life of the community in search of the whole pattern:

6 Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context

Major intravariations in the uses of speech may be assumed to be system- atically related to the constituents of culture patterns, including aspects of the social structure, cultural definitions of the situations of action, the cul- tural philosophy and value system, and their patterned interrelations (Albert 1972: 74).

Quantitative methods can be powerful allies, that is, they can produce stat- istical evidence of the relationship between the speakers' gender, class, race, ethnicity, etc., with particular linguistic variables, but they cannot supplant qualitative methods if the goal is to go beyond "How does this community talk?" to "Why does this community talk this way?" Each community's use of language is part of a coherent whole, and both quantitative and qualitat- ive methods are needed to adequately analyze linguistic rules in relation to the whole. This task is facilitated in some ways and hampered in others when the researcher belongs to the ethnic group under study.

The Ethnic Researcher as Community Member

The initial process of identifying and becoming part of an NYPR commun- ity presented singular challenges, some of which were the repercussions of the urban blight that characterizes inner city areas. Others had to do with the special situation of being a member of the community in some respects only. The especially devastated condition of the South Bronx, which had lost 50-100,000 housing units in the "nightmare decade" of the 1970s (Lemann 1991), made it impossible for me to study the NYPR community that I knew best. The block where I had lived for the first 20 years of my life was reduced to war-like rubble that two US presidents walked through and promised to revitalize. In truth, no predominantly Puerto Rican section of the city remained intact after the housing reshuffling which followed the upheavals of the 1960s; Manhattan's East Harlem lost 27 percent of its population between 1970-80 (Donnelley Marketing Information Services 1987). Finding an intact NYPR community was difficult, but the logistic problems were complicated by personal ones. I had to come to grips with the advantages and disadvantages of being a member of the same ethnic group that I intended to study, and how this affected traditional ethno- graphic concerns. With the benefit of hindsight, I see that my efforts to adapt methods of site selection, participant observation, tape recording, and data analysis to the reality of one community in El Barrio also were efforts to reassure myself that the gaps between my acquired middle class exist- ence and their poverty were bridgeable.

I chose El Barrio because of its historical importance, its central location and size, and because it contained communities in the time-honored

Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context 7

anthropological sense of that word: groups linked by networks, activities, history, and a sense ofloyalty to a specific area and to each other. The fact that it housed identifiable communities was important for questions of validity and comparability, but it also meant that El Barrio felt like home, that is, it reminded me of my childhood in the South Bronx. I hoped the similarity would make it easy for me to observe people talking and acting freely because unobtrusive participant observation was crucial for an ethno- graphic study of community bilingualism, particularly of a stigmatized phenomenon such as "Spanglish." I h~d to .get to know many parents w_ell enough to convince them to allow the1r children to wear a knapsack w1th a tape recorder. 3 This level of trust necessitated approximating actual membership in a community, which was never easy to achieve since "To participate in a speech community is not quite the same as to be a member of it" (Hymes 197 4: 50). How would being a member of the same ethnic group affect becoming part of the "local team" (Blom and Gumperz 1972)? I learned that "the indigenous ethnographer is empowered and restricted in unique ways" (Clifford 1986: 1 0).

Membership in the ethnic group which is being studied should enable the researcher to dispense with interpreters, to be sensitive to cultural norms, and to have easier access to and more profound relationships with a larger number of community members. The closer the researcher is to the group, however, the more myopic the researcher may become about the signific- ance of everyday acts that group members take for granted. Also, steps ! deemed mandatory in classic anthropology, for example, the history and definition of a specific community, may be considered unnecessary. Blind spots may obscure all but the "expectable obviousnesses," as Kroeber wor- ried might happen when complex societies became the object of anthrop- ological pursuits (Kroeber 1957: 196). Any researcher who comes from the racial and/or ethnic group s/he is studying and assumes "I know that community because I lived in one like it" may ignore significant regional, generational, and intra-cultural differences that distinguish one community from another. This is particularly harmful because there is a special pressure on the indigenous ethnographer to be all encompassing, to include every sub-group within the community, and to record a wealth of linguistic and cultural details accurately. By the same token, I knew that I was expected to know what could not be told, especially in a literate community whose members might read the book. Additionally, there was the danger that out- siders might latch onto an analysis of a community done by one of its ethnic own as a yardstick by which to measure all members of the group. NYPRs might be expected to talk, act, and believe like the subjects of this study or their legitimacy would be questioned by outsiders.

Every ethnographer is placed in a difficult position by being the cultural interpreter of one group for another, especially since "cultures do not hold

8 Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context

still for their portraits" (Clifford 1986: 1 0) and all portraits are partial truths. Youth who straddle the contact zone or borderlands between two cultures, like the subjects of this book, are in singular flux. The difficulties are compounded when the researcher is writing about a stigmatized group, her own, which some readers wish to see vindicated and others hope to see chastised or rehabilitated. 4 I felt a distinct pressure to "get it right," and feared that the penalty for not doing so would be far greater than that incurred by an outside ethnographer who could break off ties without being left bereft. At the same time, there were crucial advantages to being able to count on my native knowledge, especially of the dialects, because "many important aspects of the structure of a given language are essen- tially beyond the reach of the scholar who is not a native speaker of it" (Hale 1969: 386). Moreover, the empowering feeling that I was "going home" convinced me that my work would be more beneficial to me than to my group. To reap the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of a .such a high risk/high gain endeavor, I had to be particularly sensitive to how tradi- tional Puerto Rican norms and values functioned in the community I was to study, and to remember that being an NYPR should not lull me into believing that what I wrote would be the complete story about el bloque.

Becoming Part of el bloque

In order to become part of one of the many communities that lived in the over two hundred block area of El Barrio - the area spans 96 Street to 125 Street from First to Fifth Avenues - someone akin to a padrino ("godfather") or madrina ("godmother") or a compadre or comadre (literally "co-father"/"co-mother", see note 2, chapter 2) had to assure the commun- ity of my legitimacy and trustworthiness. Most important, a padrino/madrina or com(p)adre would link me to a particular family like extended kin, and I could enter their social network and become part of the larger network of families that every community represented. After seven months of getting to know the area, I asked a student at my college if he would introduce me to families on the block where he had lived for more than 15 years.

On my first visit, the student sought out Armando Garcia, a key figure on the block for decades, who became an effective padrino. He introduced me to his children, their friends, and parents as a college teacher who was going to write about how Puerto Rican children learned to become bilin- gual. I explained to the parents that I would need their permission to tape record because it was important to hear how the children spoke naturally, and I would not be able to write it all down. Word of my work, however, was circulated and interpreted in a number of ways. Some residents asked the children about my activities; two inquiries demonstrate the diversity of

Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context 9

children's versions, and the pitfalls of misinterpretations about the pur- pose of ethnographic observation and taping. ~~e man asked nine ye~r old Blanca why I was taping and she answered: You know, deponer [szc]

los nifios a ver si hablan bien el ingles o el espafiol, you know, ella es como :na maestra" ... ("to put the kids to see if they speak English or Spanish well ... she is like a teacher"). Blanca had linked teaching with notions ~f correctness, and applied that to what she overheard me tell her mother. Thts interpretation was innocuous in comparison to eight year old Isabel's, whose response to the inquiry of one of the bodegueros ("grocery store owners") on the block was cause for alarm: "Ella quiere saber to(d)ito pa(-ra) ponerlo en un papel." ("She wants to know eve~ing to P~_t it in/on a paper.") The bodeguero, an Ecuadorian whose busmess was fathng be~ause he could not conceal his dislike for the block and its residents, felt tmpelled to launch · to a disclaimer to the effect that he was an honest man who ran an honest m . business and never had anything to do with drugs. To allay commumty fears I spent my first visits with the children in full view of their parents. w~rking class Puerto Rican cultural values concerning children worked

to my advantage. Children were showered with affec.tion by every ~ember of the community, and they learned to get along wtth people of different social status, physical characteristics, and abilities via their extended fam- ilies and babysitters who were more trusted friends than hired workers. People with jobs and those on welfare were respected equally, one father who was mute was spoken to by everyone, a gay teen and a lesbian mother were never excluded or taunted. Dolores, a black Puerto Rican whose six children represented a wide spectrum of triguefio ("olive skinned"), negro ("black"), and indio ("indian") colors and features, took care of children with white, black, or mixed backgrounds who dearly loved her and who treated each other like sisters and brothers. 5 Neither race, nor income, nor education determined whom the parents trusted.

The children's safety was the primary concern of parents and relatives, and everyone- adult, teenager, and child- felt responsible for those younger. Even three year olds protected infants. Because the young were oblivious to the dangers that people or situations might represent, parents had to have confidence in whoever spent time with their children. In the late 1970s, it was still possible for an outsider to earn their trust. They admired anyone with the patience for entertaining or teaching their children, and appreci- ated the rest it allowed them from caregiving responsibilities. I joined in as children played with cabangas (twirling balls on ropes), cardboard and metal scraps, abandoned car seats, and other objects that wound up on the block, including lost dogs and fiddler crabs. Mothers responded warmly to ovJ•u~;vl:lt: who shared their concern for the children and who was demon-

but appropriately affectionate, generous, and above all, fair. They me judge ball games, foot races, and screaming contests, and I

10 Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context

soon earned the right to be the informal baby sitter for el bloque. Caregivers left children with me when they went on errands, and older siblings did not have to stay on the block if they saw that I was there. As the weeks went by everyone took being tape recorded as a matter of course.

Fieldwork Constraints

Successful relations with members of both sexes in the community meant being mindful of respeto ("respect"), behavior central to the conduct of int~rpersonal relations (Lauria 1964). Respeto encompasses the English notion of respect for elders and for authority, manifested by obedience in children. More central to the concept, however, is the sharing of cultural no:rns concerning appropriate speech, joking behavior, male-female roles, chdd-adult roles, etc. As a lone woman I had to be particularly sensitive to these norms or I would not be judged a trust-worthy friend for adults or a fit companion for children. Any overt challenge to the notion of separate male and female roles might kindle the antagonism of the community men, and possibly of the women. Fears of Latino male machismo are some- times exaggerated and the range of behaviors among Puerto Rican women is broader than stereotyped images of saintly "Virgin Mary" or sinful "Mary Magdalene" models convey, but traditionally, a Puerto Rican woman worthy of respeto is expected to avoid vulgarity and insulting speech and behavior especially in public. In addition, the women of the community might reac~ nega_tively: even violently, if I was not attuned to all the nuances of personal relatiOnships between males and females; I had to guard against any actions or statements that might be interpreted as overtures to a "spoken for" male. One woman became angry when I tried to record her toddler while he was in the arms of her mate, causing the only inter-personal challenge I encountered in 14 years. Fortunately, that mother soon became a supporter of my work and a friend, but my research was circumscribed to the net- works of females and children to avoid further incidents.

The socio-economic and personal problems of el bloque's families made controlled fieldwork an unattainable goal. My initial intent was to become a part of the daily rhythm of family life in order to see, feel, and talk about events as children and caretakers did. Participant observation was to be accompanied by tape recorded formal and informal interviews with all fam- ily members, and by weekly recordings at home. These expectations flew in ~e face of the principal characteristic of the life of el bloque, namely, that ~t was unpredictable. Disruptions took the form of expanding and contract- I?-g households, conjugal liaisons and separations, the push-pull of migra- tion to and from Puerto Rico, hospital stays, bouts of alcoholism, unstable and sometimes illegal employment patterns, and unexpected incidents like

Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context 11

fires. 6 Finally, systematic interviewing and controlled observations were impeded by disputes that led to mini-feuds involving ten families, three of which were due to female jealousies over mates.

Community members, particularly the women, responded to their indi- vidual and collective crises with a combination of sympathy, including "Bendito" (a uniquely Puerto Rican lament that means "blessed" literally but conveys concern for another's problems), with resignation ("Que se va a hacer" ... "What is one to do"), and with religious forbearance, ("Que sea lo que Dios quiera" . .. "Let it be whatever God wills"). Anger and viol- ence were not unknown responses, but during the first two years of my contact with el bloque these were not frequent or serious. 7 Dealing with the unexpected was such a way of life that it was not surprising that chil- dren and adults alike sang heartfelt refrains of the number one hit song of 1979-80, Pedro Navaja ("Peter Blade"): La vida te da sorpresas, sorpresas te da !a vida ("Life gives you surprises, surprises life gives you"). 8 The line rang true for everybody.

Eighty percent (16/20) of the families underwent changes in membership and/or residence in the early part of the study (1979-81). By the end of 1980 only 14 of the original 20 families were still living on or near the block, and the number of gradeschoolers had diminished from 12 to nine. A par- ticipant observer could not expect to have full or uninterrupted access to networks or keep to a schedule in the face of family turmoil, and the type and amount of data collected was necessarily affected. Two of the principal subjects left the community unexpectedly, and the alcoholism of the mother of another limited my access to that home. A decade (1980-90) of national and local policies of benign and brutal neglect dismantled el bloque, con- vincing me that this study was needed for more than reasons of academic interest.

Poisonous Stereotypes and Theories

Many US Americans believe that the very fabric of the nation's life is being torn apart as we approach the twenty-first century, and some blame those who speak another language and attempt to raise their children bilingually. 9

growing number of children from minority language communities a dilemma for educators: one in six US teachers has non-English

in the classroom. In NYC, the educational implications of NYPR ability to use sometimes distinct, sometimes overlapping linguistic

are most often viewed negatively. Differences in the linguistic codes community and the school, and conflict between their ways of speak-

learning, and showing what they know contribute to the academic of linguistic minority groups (Philips 1972; Heath 1983). But how

12 Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context

are children's different ways of using their bilingual repertoire related to their parents' view of their role as either teachers of labels and facts or as models of appropriate behavior, and how does this affect children's orien- tation to literacy and academic progress? Solutions to Puerto Rican edu- cational and economic problems depend on this knowledge, as do policy issues that affect all US Americans.

Policies are being formulated in response to the country's educational, economic, and social crises without comprehending the repercussions for minority and majority communities alike. Inflammatory debates about bilin- gual education, English-only laws, ethnic studies, and multicultural curricula are too frequently fueled by poisonous stereotypes of the nation's speakers of other languages (S0Ls). 10 This study of one minority that is large in numbers and often regarded as a "problem" hopes to contribute to the quality of public discourse on diversity.

Often I meet people whose only acquaintance with Puerto Ricans is the play West Side Story, the book La Vida, the film Fort Apache: The Bronx, or violent police dramas on television. Those negative images are rein- forced by jokes about cockroaches and pointed shoes, and references by government officials and business leaders to barefoot immigrants, knife wielding attackers, and welfare cheats. 11 The portrait is one of a violent, dirty, lazy, and immoral people, not interested in learning English or work- ing hard. Because Puerto Ricans are already US citizens when they emigrate and still are marginal to the economic and social life of the nation after three generations in NYC, the traditional model of immigrant adjustment no longer seems applicable. Some explanations of this anomaly revive pre- viously discredited theories, including genetic inferiority, for example:

While many people are willing to blame the low scores of Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans on their poor environmental conditions, few are pre- pared to face the probability that inherited genetic material is a contributing factor (Dunn 1988: 63).

Such racial interpretations should be deeply disturbing to all US Americans, not only to those of us who are Puerto Rican and/or Mexican. Clearly, there is an urgent need for insight into those communities which are the least well understood and, at the same time, the most negatively affected by lack of knowledge about them. The specific situation of Puerto Ricans cries out for attention. I stress the magnitude of the human toll for NYPRs and the damaging price the nation pays for its ignorance, in the hope of alleviating both. Even the best solutions fall on deaf ears if fears and misconceptions keep the dominant society and the greater NYPR community from work- ing for change, separately and together. This book speaks to the community and the nation, recognizing the fears of both, criticizing the lost opportunities

Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context 13

of both, out of concern for the impoverishment of both. Those concerns have guided the principles and methods of my research in ways that differ [rom many studies of language.

Towards an Anthropolitical Linguistics

Because the members of el bloque were more concerned, justifiably, about factors that affected their families' life chances than about their bilingual- ism, and because they did not recognize the role that bilingualism might play in improving thos~ li~e chances, I be~ame convinced ~~ the ?eed_ f~r an anthropolitical linguistics. Methodologically, anthropohtical hnguistlc analyses profit from joining the qualitative ethnographic methods of lin- guistic anthropology with the quantitative methods of sociolinguistics, as urged above. The objective: to understand and facilitate a stigmatized group's attempts to construct a positive self_ within a? economic an~ politi_cal context that relegates its members to static and disparaged ethnic, racial, and class identities, and that identifies them with static and disparaged lin- guistic codes. The members of el bloque communicated a different reality in up to five dialects of Spanish and English and in when, why, and how they alternated among them. The shifting nature of the interrelationships between their linguistic codes and their ethnic, racial, and class identities could not be captured via a purely quantified analysis of linguistic features and social variables, as in traditional sociolinguistics, although quantification did allow me to speak authoritatively about the extent of particular forms or practices. It was essential to learn how community members got defined as "a Spanglish speaker," "a Nuyorican," etc., and how they re-defined those terms, sometimes adhering to group patterns and sometimes going their separate ways to create individual identities. Accommodation and resist- ance were not necessarily polarized in their re-definitions; only long term prurttc:Iplmt observation made their multiple ways of "doing being bilin-

apparent. Despite their significant contributions, linguistic anthropology and so-

often fall short of capturing the way language is linked to of survival, that is, the language for survival dynamic that permeates behavior in oppressed ethnolinguistic communities. Most important,

fail to advocate change, with significant exceptions. 12 Anthropolitical mg:ui:stu:s includes a focus on a community's political economy of code-,

how bilinguals use language(s) to "construct and display multiple to understand their historic position, and to respond to rela-

of domination between groups" (Gal 1988: 247). A primary goal is repudiation of crippling notions like "dialectal inferiority," "true/ideal

""alingualism," etc., that exert symbolic domination over a group

14 Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context

and promote its subjugation. Achieving this goal requires participating in the community's challenges of the policies and institutions that circumscribe the linguistic and cultural capital of its members.

The present climate of concern over political correctness may make a call for an anthropolitical linguistics seem anachronistic, or imprudent. There is no doubt that my personal fears about the future of mi gente ("my people") override any professional fears I may have about exposing a pol- itical agenda. But I also believe that any linguist's analysis of communit- ies like el bloque would be incomplete if it did not (a) highlight the unjust economic and political policies that determine their informants' education, housing, employment, and - consequently - language development, and (b) work toward reversing those policies and the notion that community members must trade their language and identity for basic rights.

This is not a new call; among others, Dell Hymes voiced a similar con- cern when he wrote: "I would hope to see the consensual ethos <;>f anthropo- logy move from a liberal humanism, defending the powerless, to a socialist humanism, confronting the powerful and seeking to transform the struc- ture of power" (Hymes 1969b: 52). Yet many disagree, agreeing with Pete~ Ladefoged's insistence that "we must be wary of arguments based on pol- itical considerations," and that "it would not be the action of a responsible linguist to persuade them [a group that is giving up the use of its language] to do otherwise" (Ladefoged 1992: 81 0). Instead, he advises, "in this chang- ing world, the task of the linguist is to lay out the facts concerning a given linguistic situation" (1992: 811). But as Nancy Dorian (1993) has pointed out in her response to Ladefoged, the facts are not so obvious and there are no apolitical positions where languages and cultures are threatened. The act of supplying or omitting socio-political facts are both political. Moreover, I agree with Dorian that "it seems a defensible intellectual as well as emotional position to hold that each loss in linguistic diversity is a diminution in an unusually powerful expression of human cultural life, given the nature of language" (Dorian 1993: 578). When the stakes are not only loss of language and culture but a decent life, as they are in many ethnolinguistic minority communities in the US, the tasks of a responsible linguist must include political action. By incorporating the word "political" in its name, anthropoliticallinguistics openly declares its intention to discuss the language and politics connection and to make it clear that, whether we choose to discuss it or not, there is no language without politics.

Life and Language in the Book's Chapters

My observation of and participation in the lives of the 20 families with 37 children that constituted el bloque began in June 1979, and continued on

Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context 15

an almost daily basis until December 1980; my dissertation (Zentella 1981 a) _.. cused on the code switching that occurred in 103 hours of tape recordings 10 1 . collected during that period. I returned to the_ block severa times a year fter that, primarily to organize summer outmgs, fall weekends out of

atate and an annual Three Kings' Day celebration, but did so as a friend, ~ot ~ researcher, because I had abandoned the idea of writing more about el bloque. I did not tape record again unt~l the su~mer of 1989, an~ again, intermittently, in 1992-93 with the atd of VIdeo-tapes (appro~at~ly

3o hours total), when I decided that an ethnography of the commumty w1th focus on language was a part of the Puerto Rican experience that needed

a be told. After most members of el bloque had dispersed (by 1985), many ~~lls were taped on my telephone-answering machine. Children visited me t home or at work when they became old enough to travel alone, and when

~ was out of town, letters and tape recordings were mailed. This book is based on all the data collected since June 1979.

After a decade of community observations, my emphasis changed from the language of community life to the community life revealed in language, and that change is reflected in the organization of the book. Although there is both language and life in every chapter, several focus more on the formal and functional aspects of Spanish and English dialects and code switching, and others describe the family and community networks, job and school experiences, and personal relationships that shaped the course ?f commun- ity members' language development. Chapter 2 (The Commumty: el bloque) locates the community and introduces the principal children (five element- ary school girls ages 6 to 11 years) and the dense and multiplex networks they were enmeshed in; it ends with a transcribed excerpt of a tape record- ing made one summer evening out on the block. Chapter 3 (The Bilingual/ Multidialectal Repertoire of el bloque) describes the various dialects of English and Spanish spoken in the community and links them to specific networks. Chapter 4 (Bilingualism en casa) offers case studies of three of

principal types of bilingual families at home; they differ in the care- language(s) with each other and with their children. Integrating

and quantitative methods proved indispensable in moving "''"'''v"''"' a general description of community and family language patterns

an appreciation of intra-group distinctions and individual differences; individual code switching styles of the principal subjects are the focus

~cll.ap1ters 5 and 6. The development of code switching, or "Spanglish," tt::sl;n[Jea in chapter 5 (The Hows and Whys of "Spanglish"), and a

analysis contrasts group conversational strategies with individual ... "''1'-1:'"'· Chapter 6 (The Grammar of "Spanglish") focuses on the gram-

knowledge that children demonstrated as they tapped similarities structures of Spanish and English to weave their bilingual identity.

remainder of the book is devoted to the young women when they were

16 Studying Bilingualism in the Community Context

between the ages of 19-25, during which their dissimilar experiences with schools, work, and social networks had corresponding repercussions for the development of their bilingualism and language attitudes. Chapter 7 (Life and Language in Young Adulthood) follows four of the girls into young womanhood, and chapter 8 (Isabel: A Special Case) pays special attention to the oral and written English and Spanish of the young woman who spent most of her educational life in Special Education classes. Language shift and the multiple influences that transformed the Spanish of our second and third generation bilinguals are the subject of chapter 9 (Spanish Compet- ence). Four of the five principal subjects became mothers, and chapter 10 (Raising the Next Generation of New York Puerto Ricans) discusses the ways in which three of them socialized their toddlers to and through lan- guage by adopting and transforming traditional Puerto Rican practices. The language development and socialization of the fourth mother's child in preparation for pre-school is the subject of chapter 11 (Maria,: Learning to defenderse).

The final chapter (chapter 12, Expanding Repertoires: Linking Languag~, Education, and the New Diversity) is addressed to all who are interested in realizing improved communication across minority/majority institutions and cultures. It advocates specific efforts informed by an anthropoliticallin- guistic analysis. Reversing educational failure is a vital first step, and teachers eager to work with a community's language patterns and orientations to literacy are encouraged to consider alternatives for evaluating and teach- ing minority language children. I argue that this entails expanding the lin- guistic and cultural repertoires of teachers and students alike. In US Latino communities, strengthening the children's Spanish skills as well as teach- ing English and the ways in which standard dialects in both languages are used in mainstream institutions are facilitated when a critical pedagogy builds upon the linguistic and cultural strengths students bring with them from home. Youngsters like the one who responded, "Hablamos los dos. We speak both" should have the opportunity to take advantage of the best the US has to offer and to make their own best contribution. They must be allowed and encouraged to construct an identity that does not pit a main- stream, standard English-speaking identity against their primary ethno- linguistic identity. In the lives of many of us who function successfully in both worlds, those identities and ways of speaking are complementary, not oppositional, because we learned how to operate in a multi-code and multi- cultural milieu in our bloques. For the US to flourish in the twenty-first century, similar linguistic and cultural abilities must flourish nationally.

2

The Community: el bloque

El Barrio has been the traditional heart of the New York Puerto Rican com- munity for over 50 years. It stretches north from 96th Street to 125th Street, and east from Fifth Avenue to First Avenue. Although Brooklyn's ~avy Yard was the site of the first Puerto Rican settlement at the turn of this century, and today more Puerto Ricans live in the Bronx, El Barrio also known as Spanish Harlem or East Harlem - is the oldest contin~ous settlement of Puerto Ricans in the United States. In the late 1930s, It was home to the largest Puerto Rican community, and by 1940 approximately 70 percent of the 61,000 Puerto Ricans in NYC lived in Manhattan, mainly in El Barrio. In 1980, a year after this study began, only 23 percent of the city's estimated 810 000 Puerto Ricans lived in Manhattan (US Bureau of the Census 1986). Other Hispanics, principally Dominicans, began moving into East Harlem in the late 1960s, joined by Cubans and Mexicans in the 1980s, but Puerto

continue to account for the majority of its Latino residents, and Barrio retains its significant role in the US Puerto Rican community.

The area has a long multicultural history; it has been the first home in United States for successive waves of immigrants who settled there then moved on to higher status neighborhoods. German and Irish

ntrligi:ants took up residence in the late nineteenth century. Italians moved during the first three decades of the twentieth century; some Italian

still live on the eastern fringes of El Barrio. To the west and north Central Harlem, the traditional Mrican American heart of the city, many Americans of African descent live in El Barrio. At the beginning

1980s, the population of El Barrio was 112,915. The Latino popu- represented 4 7. 7 percent of the total, 43.1 were African American,

and 1.6 White (non-Latino), and 1.7 Other (National Planning Corporation 1988). To the south of El Barrio is the wealthy upper Side. Each of these neighborhoods is distinct, and there is little

'""·•l"o•·•uJ<. among the residents. On many national and local measures .. -u.:;u'"'· the residents of El Barrio are worse off than their neighbors