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ОглавлениеAn Introduction to Speaking Spanish in the US
To present and explain the focus and approach of our book, provide a general background on the sociopolitics of language and provide a brief overview of the subsequent chapters.
In the decades leading up to and following the turn of the 21st century, the presence of Spanish in the United States has become more salient. The most obvious reason is that the number (and percentage) of people who speak Spanish has increased significantly over the past few decades. According to the US Census Bureau, in 1990 roughly 17 million people aged five or older spoke Spanish at home, which was 7.5% of all persons over the age of five. That number increased to 28 million people (10.7%) in 2000 and 41 million (13.4%) in 2017 (American Community Survey 2017 one-year estimates). Spanish is by far the most common non-English language spoken in the US (the next most common language is Chinese, spoken at home by approximately 3.5 million people). These statistics, together with the long history of Spanish in what is now the US, make Spanish the de facto second language and part of the national fabric.
Even people who do not speak Spanish themselves and who do not regularly come into contact with Spanish-speakers are likely also to have become more aware of the presence of Spanish in recent decades. In other words, hand in hand with an increased number of speakers has come increased visibility of Spanish in the public sphere. Think, for example, of the expansion of Spanish language media and entertainment – including television channels, music, radio and internet programming – and the ubiquity of automated menus offering users the option of using Spanish at ATMs and on telephone customer service lines. In addition to both increased growth and increased recognition of Spanish-speaking populations in the US, these trends are also attributable to the proliferation of media outlets, audience segmentation, transnational programming, targeted and niche marketing and technological advances. In addition, outcry and activism surrounding the lack of ethnoracial diversity in television programming, Hollywood films and broader mainstream popular culture has brought increased attention to the underrepresentation of Latinxs1 and Spanish-speakers in English language media (such as the #OscarsSoWhite campaign). So too, political dialogue and campaigns invariably discuss the growth and the potential impact of the Latinx electorate. Because Latinxs are linked to Spanish in the minds of many people in the US, public discourse about Latinxs often involves attention to Spanish, even when language is not discussed explicitly. Thus, politicians routinely use Spanish in efforts to attract Latinx voters, sometimes even in primarily English language contexts such as presidential candidate debates.
While the presence, visibility and attention to Spanish have been on the upswing in recent years, people have been speaking Spanish in what is now the US for hundreds of years. In fact, two-thirds of the present-day US was previously under the control of a country where Spanish was the official language (i.e. Spain or Mexico), and Spanish has been spoken continuously by a significant segment of the population ever since (Macías, 2014). Indeed, Spanish has long been and still is ‘an American language’ (Lozano, 2018).2 In short, Spanish plays an important role in US society, whether you speak it or not, and this means that understanding what it means to speak Spanish in the US is critical to understanding the workings of US society. Further, understanding the case of Spanish in the US helps us to understand larger issues of multilingualism, so the concepts, themes and theories discussed in this book are also relevant for students who are interested in linguistic diversity more broadly.
Our primary emphasis is on social and political issues related to Spanish in the US. As such, we focus on the use and representation of Spanish rather than on its linguistic characteristics. Similarly, we are interested in language as social action, particularly the ways in which people use language to convey social and political meanings. For this extensively revised second edition of the book, we changed the title to better reflect this focus. The first part of the title is meant to emphasize speaking Spanish as an action and something that people do, rather than the language itself. The second part of the title similarly reflects our approach, and is also intended to make clear that we offer a broad introduction to the study of the sociopolitics of language, for which Spanish in the US can be considered an extended case study. In the next sections we will outline our theoretical orientation and then provide a brief overview of the chapters to come.
An Interdisciplinary Sociopolitical Approach
A key tenet of our approach is that language is inseparable from the people who speak it and the context in which it is situated; the sociopolitical context shapes the formal features of language, its use and its symbolic meaning. For this reason, our examination of speaking Spanish in the US covers a broad range of issues in language and society. Some of the questions we address are: Who speaks Spanish in the US and why? How is Spanish related to Latinx identity? How do people use language to express their identities? How are Spanish and Spanish-speakers treated in education? What public policies govern the use of Spanish and other minority languages? How is Spanish represented and utilized in the media? In order to answer these and other questions, we incorporate theory and research from a broad range of academic disciplines. Of course one of these is sociolinguistics, or the study of language in relation to society. However, the book is informed by social theory more broadly, and we also draw from anthropology, education, critical race theory, demography, history, law, media studies, political science and sociology, among other disciplines. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect or perspective, thus giving readers the opportunity to examine Spanish in the US from many different angles, even as we stress the interrelatedness of the topics we cover. In our view, it is only through this prism of perspectives that we can gain a full appreciation of what it means to speak Spanish in the US.
Just as language use is inherently social and political, the social and political world is also shaped by language. Indeed, language is at the heart of many of the issues discussed in this book, including individual and group identities, education and civil rights, as well as historical and contemporary understandings of national belonging. For this reason, our goals are not only to show how an interdisciplinary sociolinguistic approach can provide a multifaceted understanding of Spanish-speakers and Spanish in the US, but also to show how a consideration of what it means to speak Spanish can shed new light on those issues. Thus, our aim in writing this book is to make information about language in its social context accessible to readers from all academic backgrounds and interests.
Linguistic Variation and Language Varieties
One of the most striking characteristics of human language is its incredible diversity, and variation is inherent to all languages. One type of variation that is particularly salient to linguists and laypeople alike is geographic variation; differences in the ways in which people speak a shared language in different places is a frequent focus of humor and an occasional source of misunderstandings. To give just one example, carro is the word typically used for ‘car’ in Mexico and Puerto Rico, máquina is used in Cuba and coche and auto are used in other places. In Spanish, there is also significant geographic variation in subject pronouns; in some places including Mexico and the Caribbean the informal singular second person pronoun (i.e. ‘you’) is tú, while in others, including large parts of Central and South America, vos is used, and in some regions people employ both forms. (We provide more examples of geographic variation in Chapter 10.)
Not only does language vary geographically; it also varies socially. That is to say, there is also variation across social groups within the same geographic location. To return to the example of vos, in some places members of all social classes use this pronoun, while in others it is more common among people of lower socio-economic status and/or educational attainment (Lipski, 1993). Further, individual speakers don’t speak the same way all the time. Instead, they vary their language according to where they are, who they are with, what they are doing and how they want to present themselves, among other factors. Thus, there are three main types of variation: geographic, social and contextual or stylistic. Some linguists also cite a fourth type of linguistic variation, temporal variation (e.g. Penny, 2000). Temporal variation refers to language change, which is a natural aspect of all human language.
When we talk about variation being an inherent aspect of language, this means all levels of language. For instance, there is lexical variation (as in the different words for ‘car’ mentioned above), phonetic variation (such as whether the s at the end of a syllable is pronounced as ‘s’ or aspirated as ‘h’; for example the word más, which means ‘more’, might be pronounced ‘mas’ or ‘mah’), and morphosyntactic variation (such as the different pronouns and their corresponding verb forms, discussed more in later chapters). There is also variation in the social norms regarding language use.
Although laypeople sometimes use the word dialect to refer to the ways of speaking associated with specific places, linguists generally prefer the term varieties for different ways of speaking, whether these are regional varieties or social varieties associated with particular genders, ethnic groups or other social categories. We generally prefer to avoid dialect because non-linguists sometimes use it disparagingly to refer to languages with less official recognition or social prestige, such as Mayan languages in Central America.
In contemporary social theory, social constructionism is the dominant theoretical approach to social structures, identities and behaviors. The underlying idea is that social categories (such as race, gender and social class), as well as the specific characteristics that we associate with them, are not naturally occurring or fixed. Instead, even though they may seem like objective facts, they are actually constructed through the social practices and beliefs of members of society. One important aspect of this theoretical perspective is that it recognizes that social constructions, such as the boundaries between categories or the characteristics associated with them, can change. To give an example, societal ideas about the category ‘woman’ have shifted over time (e.g. What age is the boundary between ‘girl’ and ‘woman’? Must one have two X chromosomes to be a ‘woman’?), as have societal assumptions about what women are like and how they should behave.
Another central aspect of social constructionism is that our identities are not the source of our social behavior but the outcome of it. This is not how we often use the word identity in our everyday lives, so it may take a while to get used to this idea. We will discuss these ideas in great detail in Chapters 5 and 6, but social constructionism is a thread that runs through the entire book. As we noted earlier, we see language as a type of social action, and in this book we explore how people use language in the construction of their own and other people’s identities. In particular, we look at how speaking Spanish can be used to present oneself to the world – as well as how speaking Spanish impacts how people are perceived by others.
There is a constant interaction between our social behavior (including linguistic behavior) and our ideas about the world; they influence each other. To give one example: if speaking Spanish is perceived negatively, Spanish-speakers might avoid speaking it, in order to escape public stigma. However, if people speak Spanish publicly and proudly, this could contribute to a shift in perceptions of the language. The construction of the social meanings of particular language practices and the interactions between language use and perceptions of social reality are a major theme in this book.
Our final overarching theoretical theme in the study of speaking Spanish in the US is linked to critical approaches to the study of language and society. There are many different approaches under this umbrella term of Critical Studies (Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Race Theory, Critical Philosophy, etc.), but all share the underlying goals of examining phenomena within their sociohistorical context, investigating the relationships between social and political structures and exposing inequalities in society. A major focus is the study of ideologies, and our taken-for-granted ways of thinking about the world, a topic we delve into in great detail in Chapter 4. Implicit in critical approaches is a social constructionist perspective, that is, the idea discussed above that social categories are not fixed but instead are based on social behaviors and societal beliefs. Critical approaches ask us to question unexamined social norms and social categories. When we do, and we look critically at things taken as ‘common sense,’ the underlying assumptions and biases become clear, as well as the ways in which these assumptions serve powerful interests and reinforce inequality.
An illustrative example can be found in examining the outrage expressed online and elsewhere about having to press 1 for English; for example, see the song ‘Press One for English’ by RivoliRevue (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEJfS1v-fU0). The taken-for-granted assumption underlying this irritation and outrage is that English is the only legitimate language in the US. Thus, speaking Spanish is seen as a violation of the ‘natural’ state of affairs. A critical perspective brings these assumptions to light, examines their connection to xenophobia and racism, and analyzes how they contribute to inequality (we return to this topic in Chapter 4, and to this example in Discussion Question 2 in Chapter 8). Once revealed, these assumptions can be understood and challenged, with the ultimate goal of promoting social justice. With this book we hope to help readers think critically about language and the world around them – in general as well as specifically with regard to Spanish in the US.
We have adopted the use of Latinx (plural Latinxs)3 as the generic term for referring to individuals and groups. We prefer these terms to the alternatives Latino(s) and Latina/o(s) or Latin@(s), which either give preference to males or rely on a binary gender categorization of ‘male’ and ‘female’. The term Latinx, and gender-inclusive language in general,4 is not accepted by everyone, and in Chapter 5 we discuss some of the objections that have been put forth. Nonetheless, Latinx is an increasingly common term in academic and activist circles (see Vidal-Ortiz & Martinez, 2018, for further discussion). As we explore in depth later in this book, particular ways of using language allow people to position themselves in particular ways. We use the term Latinx in order to position ourselves, as authors, as inclusive and critical in our thinking. However, because we recognize that Latinx has some limitations, we will continue to engage with the heterogeneity of Latinxs and Spanish-speakers in the US and the marginalization of groups through language in our ongoing choice of labels. In instances where we (or authors we cite) are referring to specific individuals identified as male or female, we use Latino or Latina accordingly. In addition, when quoting research or official documents, we use whatever term appeared in the original.
Another less-than-perfect term that appears in this volume is Anglo, most commonly used to refer to non-Latinx Whites. This term is problematic in several ways, including its implication of Anglo (i.e. British) heritage, which is not the actual heritage of everyone referred to with the term. Nonetheless, as we have just explained, identity categories are socially constructed rather than based in objective facts. Further, the meaning of labels (and of words in general) does not reside in the words themselves, but in the ways in which they are used and understood in society. Thus, even though it doesn’t reflect the historical meaning of the word, if Anglo has come to be used to refer to non-Latinx White people, that is what the word means, at least in some contexts, such as the Southwestern US, where it is more common than in other regions. Still, people don’t often use Anglo to identify themselves. Thus, while we use the term, we do so sparingly.
We hope that this introduction has given you a sense of the philosophy and theoretical approach we take in this book. As we have said, two primary goals of this text are to help readers understand the historical, social and linguistic issues related to speaking Spanish in the US, as well as to appreciate the importance of taking language into account in other disciplines. While Spanish in the US is important in and of itself, it also serves as a valuable example or case study with which to gain a deeper understanding of the social and political aspects of language. Thus, a third goal is for readers to gain familiarity with the sociopolitics of language more broadly and throughout the book we have sought to introduce and explain key theoretical constructs in an easy-to-understand way. Finally, we aim to foster your critical analysis of taken-for-granted ideas about language, Latinxs and Spanish, as well as your ability to be critical consumers of public discourse popular culture. We hope to encourage you to be proponents of policies and practices that have a positive impact on the societies in which you live.
While retaining the primary sociopolitical focus of the first edition, this extensively revised and expanded edition covers additional topics and includes a wealth of new material and activities. Each chapter begins with a short overview before introducing readers to key theoretical concerns, historical perspectives, empirical research and practical issues. We stress interdisciplinarity and common themes throughout the book and each chapter ends with a section highlighting connections to other chapters. We follow this with set of discussion questions and activities, many of which make connections to materials available online as well as to other chapters. Finally, each chapter has a brief list of suggested further readings and resources. After the last chapter is a glossary with important concepts for which readers might require definition beyond what appears in the main text; words contained in the glossary appear in bold on their first usage in each chapter. An index is provided at the end of the volume.
Chapter 2 is a brand new chapter that provides information about the demographics of speaking Spanish in the US and reviews theoretical and empirical research about Spanish language maintenance and shift. Chapter 3 is also completely new and focuses on the history of the Spanish language in the US, including colonization, conquest and historical and present-day immigration, as well as contemporary struggles regarding the representation of that history. This chapter provides the context for the contemporary situation of Spanish in the US, which is the primary focus in the rest of the book.
Language ideologies, a central topic of the book, is the focus of an expanded Chapter 4, which outlines how ideas about language are deeply embedded in societal norms and are often more about the speakers than the languages spoken. We then turn to address race and ethnicity in Chapter 5, emphasizing both the socially constructed nature of race and the role of language in its construction, comparing constructions of ethnoracial identity in Latin America and the US and examining the ethnoracial classification of Latinxs. The focus on identity is broadened and deepened in Chapter 6, where we present more detail on the theoretical underpinnings of research on language and identity, and we examine the connection of speaking Spanish to a broad range of identities, such as gender, sexuality, nationality and so forth. These chapters have been significantly revised and updated to include expanded theoretical frameworks and recent empirical research. This is also the case for Chapter 7, which addresses how Latinxs are portrayed in the media, and how these portrayals draw on ideologies about language, race and other identities in the construction of Latinidad. New sections examine Spanish-language media and language in the built environment.
Chapter 8, another new chapter, addresses language policies in the US, with a brief history of the rise of English in dominance as well as the persistent multilingualism of the US, and an examination of the role of ideologies in language policy. Chapter 9 focuses on policies and practices in one important sector of society, education, looking at the goals and effectiveness of different models for educating Spanish-speakers, and linking these pedagogical approaches to ideologies about multilingualism, Spanish and Spanish-speakers. We have expanded the treatment of the teaching of Spanish to heritage speakers and added a new section on teaching Spanish as a second or additional language.
Chapter 10 shifts to a more linguistic focus and looks at structures that result from the contact between English and Spanish, as well as other languages, in the US. Included in this new edition are discussions of different varieties of Spanish spoken in the US, language mixing and contact between Spanish and English, and Latinx Englishes. Finally, Chapter 11, another new chapter, provides an overview of important takeaway points from this textbook, future directions and a call to action.
(1)Later on, we will explain our use of this term; please see discussion below as well as in Chapter 5.
(2)By American, Lozano means ‘of the United States.’ It is worth noting that many people object to this usage given that America encompasses all of North, Central and South America, rather than just the United States.
(3)Usually pronounced like ‘LaTEEnex’ but also sometimes as ‘LAtin-ex’.
(4)Another gender-neutral formulation gaining ground in Latin America replaces the -a and -o endings with -e.
