anna winham

Professor Stanford
LING 80: Dialectology
Tuesday the 3rd of June 2014

When is the Subaltern

not a Subaltern?
Socio-Political Implications of Spanish Use
in and beyond the US/Mexico Borderlands

Table of Contents
Introduction

Section 1 Literature Review

1.1 (Beyond the) Borderlands
1.2 Multiplicities of Latina/o Society
1.3 Spanish Use in the US/Mexico Borderlands

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Section 2 Preliminary Conclusions

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References

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Introduction
In a Linguistics senior seminar/Culminating Experience at Dartmouth College
focusing in Dialectology, the students, myself included, explored a wide range of approaches
to the study of dialects: from readings from a traditional textbook, Chambers & Trudgill
(1998) Dialectology, contrasting with readings that complicated and challenged that textbook,
such as Johnstone (2004) Place, Globalization, and Linguistic Variation, to field work
gathering data for our research on the dialect(s) of South Boston, to discussing articles such
as Clarke (2009) and Fought (1999) which both incorporate social understandings of the
community studied into the methods of analysis, to presentations by each student on articles
in realms of dialectology that particularly interested them. The course, in short, was broadly
informative, contrasted traditional and innovative approaches to dialectology, and engaged
critically the potentially problematic politics involved in studying the language use of certain
communities (eg. discussing why there are so very many linguistic studies of AAE/AAVE).
However, when focusing on the United States, especially on regional or class variation, the
articles on the syllabus as well as the topics of conversation in class almost always centred
around different kinds of English regional American English dialect variation, AAVE,
Chicano English, Hawaiian Creole English, Amish English (Landau 2014; Grieve, Asnaghi &
Ruette 2013; Murphy 2012; Stanford, Leddy-Cecere & Baclawski 2012; Cramer & Hallett
2010; Thomas & Wassink 2010; Becker 2009; Kaiser 2006; Labov et al. 2006; Thompson
2006; Fought 1999; Leap 1993; Carver; DARE; ANAE).
This paper explores the presence and socio-political meanings of non-English
language use in North America, particularly Spanish use in the borderlands of United States
and Mexico. The border and borderlands figure heavily into Latina/o, Chicana/o,

Nationalist Hispanic, and Hispanic politics and imaginaries, so my project focuses upon
Spanish use in these areas, though there are certainly boundaries elsewhere, for example the
Nuyorican community creates a kind of non-linear, semi-permeable border between New
York and Puerto Rico. An exploration of Spanish use in these Nuyorican borderlands,
however, is beyond the scope of this project. The US/Mexico border is also semi-permeable,
and Latina/o culture, identities, and language go back and forth across it. This permeability
helps to create the borderlands, a third space in which a new kind of hybrid community
resides. This community includes Chicana/os and also Latina/os, two identities which
require the US, Mexico, the border, and the borderlands. Spanish language use as well as
dialect variation take on different meanings across the border, such that the relative longevity
of Spanish in the US contributes to a shift in the kind of Spanish spoken, a Spanish
continually transformed and sustained by new waves of Spanish-speaking immigrants. In the
Mexican borderlands, however, Spanish functions more similarly to how English functions
in the US. Thus the border, though socially constructed, leads to socio-political, material,
and linguistic diffferentials.

Section 1 Literature Review

This project requires three kinds of literature: linguistic review of Spanish dialects in
North America, historical and theoretical understandings of Spanish speakers in North
America, and grounding in Spanish-speaking communities in North America today. Though
these three bodies of literature overlap, I have organised my review of them into the
following sections in order to facilitate a political historical understanding of the
anthropological setting in which I am studying Spanish dialects. The first two sections are
not strictly reviews so much as framing sections. Section 1.1 is thus titled (Beyond the)
Borderlands and draws from critical Latina/o and Chicana/o theory to understand the
political history of Spanish speakers in North America. Section 1.2 is titled Multiplicities of
Latina/o Society and draws from Latina/o studies and/or anthropology of Spanish
speaking societies1 in North America to understand some of the social norms that might
affect language use and dialects of Spanish in North America. Section 1.3, the longest of
these three sections, reviews research on Spanish use and dialects in North America, with
particular attention paid to the significance of the US/Mexico border. This section draws
also from other relevant linguistic studies.

Section 1.1 (Beyond the) Borderlands

For the scope of this paper, I will focus my discussion of Latina/o and Chicana/o
critical theory upon more recent history, from the mid-nineteenth century Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo to the present, especially regarding theory emerging from El

1 One can be a member of a Latina/o community without speaking Spanish, and one can speak Spanish
without being a member of a Latina/o community. This paper will, however, focus on Latina/o
communities in North America and how they use Spanish dialects.

Movimiento Chicano onwards. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signaled the end of the
1868-1848 US/Mexican War, and Mexicos concessions included an extension of US
ownership over Texas (to the Rio Grande boundary), California, New Mexico, Arizona,
Nevada, Utah, and parts of the Midwest (Beale-Rivaya 2011). The Mexicans in these regions
were forced to either relocate or to choose American citizenship, with full rights. This full
rights clause became key, particularly Article IX, which grants along with these full rights
cultural practice rights, and which has been interpreted to include the practice of their
heritage language, Spanish (Beale-Rivaya, 2011, p. 420). However, given Benedict
Andersons discussion of linguistic nationalism, where a common language comes to
symbolise belonging to the nation, speaking Spanish comes to continuously mark these
American citizens as Other. These full rights, however, were not frequently granted, and
both Mexicans and Mexican Americans, from both sides of the border, were mistreated and
oppressed socially and economically (Jacobs YEAR). For example, Bracerosunderpaid
fieldworkers in Californiaexperienced discrimination and racism on a daily basis (Macias,
2014, p. 8). Almost a century later in the 1960s, parallel to the Black Civil Rights Movement,
El Movimiento Chicano emerged.
El Movimiento Chicano, like the Black Power movement, was highly heteropatriarchal, with great emphasis placed on reclaiming man-hood rights and macho
sensibilities (Macias 2014). In the 1980s Chicana feminists, such as Gloria Anzalda and
Alma Garca, began mounting critiques2 of this movement, and contemporarily Chicana
queer feminism complicates the movement further. Much of the theory from these waves of
the Chicano movement deals with the issues of the border, the borderlands, and beyond. It
is in the vein of Chicana feminism and especially Chicana queer feminism that I would like

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feminist and lesbian feminist critiques

to analyse the social implications of dialects of Spanish spoken in North America, on both
sides of the US/Mexico border.
This border itself becomes polyvalent in the Chicana/o imaginary, becoming a line
from which a new space, a new nation, a new society can emerge (hence, the borderlands).
The border becomes unstable, creating for Chicana/os a source of subjectivity in process
attempting to resist the absolutizing tendencies of a racist, classist, patriarchal bourgeois
world that founds itself on the notion of a fixed and positive identity (Saldvar 1990). The
border becomes a true falsity instituted by Anglo/European society, a falsity which the
hybrid proves through mere existence as the refutation of the border as constituted by the border:
the Chicana/o, the Mexican American. This hybrid Chicana/o identity ultimately embraces
both Anglo and Mexican influences. Bruce-Novoa (1990) explains:
we are the space (not the hyphen) between the two [Mexican American], the
intercultural nothingness of that space, For those reluctant to accept this sense of
nothing, I offer a compromise: read the above as the intercultural possibilities of that
space. We continually expand the space, pushing the two influences out and apart as
we claim more area for our reality, whit at the same time creating interlocking
tensions that hold the two in relationship. In reality, there are not just two poles, but
many. Neither Mexico nor the U.S.A. is monolithic.
The distinction, the border, ultimately becomes a space between, a liminality, anOther.
Jacobs (2009) writes of Anzaldas Borderlands/La Frontera: the new mestiza is based on a
fluctuating subjectivity that moves through a number of races, cultures and genders, so that
identity becomes multiple, contradictory, and fluid so that the border ultimately destablises
identity through the subjects ability to cross it. Chicana feminism is able to make third
spaces both within and between borders; the border divides places but also provides
opportunity for new places.
Finally, Jacobs (2009) discusses the border as a multi-level concept, representing
the transgression of cultural and political constraints that often impede womens self-

realisation as well as the crossing of borders as a metaphor frequently evoked in order to

indicate a personal and often radical transformation to represent the heterogeneity of
Chicano/a identity as well as suggesting a more successful means of coming to terms with
non-hegemonic and hierarchical group thinking (155-156). Though not all Latina/o
communities in the US3 are Chicana/o, these theories of the border and the borderlands as
they exist in the Chicano/a imaginary create a historical and theoretical context for Spanish
speaking communities in North America. When Spanish-speaking Latina/os cross the
border into US, or as Chicana/os simply remain in the US, they inherit and begin to take
part in this history and imagination.

1.2 Multiplicities of Latina/o Society

With this history in mind, let us turn our attention to Latina/o studies and
contemporary anthropology of Spanish speaking (or Spanish using), and particularly
Latina/o, communities in North America, especially those in proximity to the US/Mexico
border. Terminology is difficult here what are the social and political distinctions between
Spanish-speaking, Latina/o, and Hispanic? While the next section of this paper will evaluate
what speaking Spanish does politically and socially, this section will use Latina/o and
Hispanic according to the terms used in the source examined. The four authors I primarily
assess here I have chosen due to their prominence in the field and their conversations with
each other. Because I find Tammelleos account most elucidating, I focus on his, after giving
brief summaries of Jorge Gracia, Linda Alcoff, and Angelo Corlett.
Gracia (2011) argues for a familial-historical view of Latina/o identity, which the
term Hispanic effectively describes, in which historical facts produce common (familial)

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and certainly not all Latina/o communities in Mexico

properties that may and also may not extend to all members of the group (those in Latin
America, the US, and the Iberian Peninsula), accounting for hybrid identities. This history is
that of the imperialism of the Iberian countries and their subsequent expulsion. Tammelleos
main critique is that Gracia focuses on the moment of conquest rather than on any
subsequent movements or resistances. Alcoff (2005) argues that Latino identity, and the use
of the term Latino, signifies the continuing political-economic relevance of colonial and neocolonial structures that influence the social and political constructions and divides between
North, South, and Central Americas, thus constituting a broadly American4 resistance to
these structures that the use of the term Hispanic threatens to elide. Corlett (2011) uses a
fairly bio-genetic approach, arguing that if one has Latino family members, this is both
necessary and sufficient for Latino identity, whereas other factors like language and culture
are neither necessary nor sufficient. He also argues that reclamations of literature are not so
necessary as policy goals, especially reparations such as affirmative action programs, related
to specific histories of different Latino groups. Corletts discussion leaves no room for selfidentification.
Tammelleo (2011) provides the most useful account for this project in that he
discusses three iterations of Hispanic identity that overlap and complicate one another,
paying particular attention to US/Mexico border politics. The first identity he elaborates is
the Colonial Hispanic identity, forged from Iberian imperialism in the New World and the
uneven exchange of cultures and genes through this. The second iteration is national
Hispanic identity, forged by each Hispanic American nation in the process of anti-colonial
revolution. The third iteration, he writes, is the Latino/a identity formed specifically within
the context of the US. He argues that this process begins with the Treaty of Hidalgo and

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not in the sense of United States of and instead in the sense of pan-American

continued by the US acquisition of Puerto Rico at the end of the Spanish American War in
1898, and now is influenced by the numerous racist practices that were and are employed
by Anglos in relation to immigrants from Latin America (Tammelleo, 2011, 541). This
Latina/o identity is grounded in the occupation of Mexico5 (thus the necessity of examining
theory surrounding the borderlands) but re-formed through subsequent waves of acquisition
and immigration. These waves all are characterised by difference because in colonial Latin
America, there was a great deal of mixing of languages, food, religion, music and dance;
however, the diverse elements did not entirely dissolve into a new common culture
(Tammelleo, 2011, 543). However, these waves all help to characterise a Latina/o identity in
that, when arriving in the US, most Latin American immigrants are united by the fact that
they speak Spanish and many people living in the USA treat them as if they were members
of the same group (Tammelleo, 2011, 548). Specifically, many US citizens treat Latin
American immigrants as though the all are Mexican, another reason that an examination of
the Mexican and Mexican-American borderlands is key to understanding Latina/o
communities. Latin American (Nationalist Hispanic) identity thus is very different from
Latina/o identity.
Tammelleo (2011) also explores what this Latina/o identity, which requires the US
context, means given acts of border crossing. He writes that though the Latina/o identity
originates in the context of the US, the growing phenomenon of temporary migrants who
return to their homes, often in rural Mexico, complicates Mexican (a Nationalist Hispanic)
identity: The migration of Mexican workers for temporary employment in the USA has
taken place since the early 1900s. This migration of (mostly) male workers has become an
intergenerational pattern that has deeply effected the economy of rural Mexico such that

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ie. the US Southwest

participation in the Latino/a experience of immigration effects both Mexicans living in the
USA and their families in Mexico (Tamelleo, 2011, 550).
This uneven cultural exchange across the US/Mexico border, reminiscent of the
Colonial Hispanic dynamic, will be key in situating the social implications of Spanish dialects
in North America, particularly in and around the borderlands. The tension between the unity
afforded by the Latina/o identity and the difference between different Latina/o groups, or
groups that do not identify as Latina/o but still speak Spanish, in the US also is necessary
context for the understanding of Spanish use.

1.3 Spanish Use in the US/Mexico Borderlands

In choosing to study Spanish use and dialects in North America, it seems relevant to
examine motivations for speaking Spanish in the US at all. Linton & Jimnez (2009) write in
Contexts for Bilingualism among US-born Latinos of the particular case of Spanishspeaking immigrants in the US (as opposed to immigrants who speak other non-English
languages). Though linguistic assimilation is generally encouraged for all groups upon
immigration to the US, the sustained waves of immigration of Spanish-speakers as well as a
rise in the social value of multiculturalism allow for more sustained bilingualism in Latina/o
generations of immigrants. Linton & Jimnez (2009) identify three variables that encourage
bilingualism through ethnographic research: institutional contact with Spanish, labourmarket rewards, cosmopolitanism (p. 967). They write against the prevailing assumption
that bilingualism is a transitional state on the way to English monolingualism (Linton &
Jimnez, 2009, p. 968), observing that more generations born in the US speak Spanish than
immigrant communities that speak other languages. They detail three types of immigrant
acculturation, of which many Latina/o communities seem to demonstrate the third.

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Consonant acculturation involves upwardly mobile, active assimilation of first and second
generation immigrants (resulting in monolingualism); dissonant acculturation involves the
first generation using their native language almost entirely and the second generation
assimilating to non-prestigious dialects (resulting in monolingualism); selective acculturation
requires ethnic networks and combines upward assimilation with bilingualism and
biculturalism. Latina/os are more likely to be bilingual (rather than speak only English) in
new immigrant destinations, where the relative concentrations of Spanish speakers, especially
Spanish-only speaker,s are highest. Financial incentives, such as jobs that require
bilingualism, also were found to correlate with higher rates of bilingualism. They did not find
significant effects of the availability of Spanish-language media on levels of bilingualism,
though Spanish speakers themselves cited Spanish-language media as significant to their
maintenance of Spanish language use in ethnographic interviews. The long-term economic
competitive advantages of Spanish-English bilingualism were cited among Latina/o, White,
and Black parents as motivations for bilingual education programmes.
Calvin Veltman (1990) discusses the role of immigration in maintaining bilingualism
in the US, as well as argues that the combination of immigration and high fertility rates in
Latina/o communities in the US also drive the Anglo, racist ideologies of the English
monoglot standard. He focuses his analysis on Spanish-speaking groups, composed of
Spanish monolinguals, Spanish-dominant bilinguals, and English dominant bilinguals, rather
than on Latina/os or a Census-driven determination of Hispanics. Veltman (1990) discusses
unidirectional language shift (always Spanish to English), though more recently this pattern
has reversed somewhat with the rising tide of multiculturalism and US-born later-generation
Latina/os taking interest in learning their heritage language. This paper likely was written too
soon to account for this change. Increases in the number of Spanish speakers are entirely

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attributed to continued immigration, which affects the overall number of Spanish speakers
directly as well as through increasing the strength of Spanish-speaking networks, but
Anglicisation of former Spanish-speakers is the main theme, particularly among the younger
speakers, especially those who are US born and have English dominant bilingual parents.
Escobar Potowski writes regarding the varieties of Spanish dialects in the US, making
a primary distinction between Spanish-speakers who resided in the US (in the Southwest)
before the twentieth century and Spanish-speaking immigrants who have arrived in the US
more recently and thus bring different varieties of Spanish with them. Potowski observes
that more recent immigrants speak differently from Spanish-speakers whose heritage has
been in the US for longer/generations, but that these recent immigrants also assimilate their
Spanish dialects into US Spanish dialects over time:
Sin embargo, el tiempo que llevan en los EE.UU. juega un papel importante. Varios
estudios han encontrado que los G1 que tienen un periodo ms largo de tiempo en
los EE.UU. hablan el espaol de manera algo diferente que los que tienen menos
tiempo aqu (Aaron & Hernndez 2007; Otheguy & Zentella 2012; Montrul &
Snchez Walker 2013), porque adquieren rasgos del espaol que emplean los de la G2
e inmigrantes con ms tiempo de residencia en el pas (Potowski 1)
Furthermore, because recent immigrants come from a number of different countries where
the Spanish spoken is distinctive Spanish spoken in Cuba is different from Spanish spoken
in Chile6, for example (Alfaraz 2002) the Spanish spoken by recent immigrants is not some
kind of monolithic recent immigrant Spanish and is instead comprised of a kaleidoscope of
Spanish dialects, leading most Spanish speakers in the US to encounter a variety of dialects
daily. Potowski notes which dialects of Spanish originating outside the US (ie. Mexican
Spanish, Caribbean Spanish) predominate Spanish speech in the US. He writes that Mexican
Spanish predominates and even has spread from the Southwest to the Midwest and
Northeast, while Caribbean Spanish (especially Puerto Rican Spanish) is prevalent in New

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And even within Cuba, for example, there are different Spanish dialects.

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York and Boston, while Cuban Spanish is prevalent in Florida and the south. He writes a
little about the spread of Central American Spanish and Andean Spanish, but these are less
represented in the US. Potowski also details the phonological differences between these
dialects of Spanish, but the purpose of this project is more to explore the socio-political
significance of the use of Spanish (and dialects thereof) in the US rather than their specific
features.
Assimilation over time is not always so simple as taking on features of the Spanish
already spoken in the US, however. Alfaraz (2002) explores how political attitudes of Miami
Cubans influence their perceptions of Spanish dialects, particularly with regards to prerevolution Cuban dialect and post-revolution Cuban dialect. Miami Cubans regard Cuba-Pre
as highly prestigious, similarly to Peninsular Spanish, whereas they view Cuba-Post as an
inferior dialect, equating it to their perceptions of Panamanian and Nicaraguan Spanish, even
though the phonology of these dialects is very different to Cuba-Post. Thus Cubans
immigrating in the later waves of immigration who speak with a Cuba-Post dialect often
assimilate their speech quickly to Cuba-Pre, though they continue to judge Cuba-Post less
harshly than immigrants who have been in the US for longer.
In considering Spanish use and dialects in the US and Spanish-speakers homelands,
Bonnici & Bayley (2010) insist that transnational migrants complicate traditional immigrant
narratives through their sustained language contact with their come communities and also
that emically understood social networks influence Spanish dialect variation as much as
national background. They emphasise that Spanish speakers in the US encounter not only
dialects of English, but also a wide array of dialects of Spanish, especially with new waves of
immigration from Latin America. In the Northeast, the Spanish dialect variety is particularly
broad, whereas in the Southeast the presence of Latina/os, particularly Mexicans is growing

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substantially. They also discuss Spanish dialect variation in Canada, but this variation is not
as relevant to this project. Dialect variation includes both phonological and morphosyntactic variation, and the social implications of both variation and new language
communities are complex and far-reaching. Socio-economic class from the home region as
well as US perceptions of Latina/os as a whole as well as sub-groups affect how various
groups are interpellated and construct their own identities through language. For example,
wealthy Mexican immigrants often try to restrict their childrens use of Chicana/o Spanish,
because they perceive this dialect as inferior. The US assumption of Latina/o uniformity
does harm, for example in multicultural workplace trainings, which assume that
miscommunication occurs at a much lower rate among Latina/o groups than between
Latina/os and Anglos.
The 1948 construction of the US/Mexico border is a relatively recent phenomenon,
and thus the potentially subversive implications of Spanish use in the US southwest and
other US regions in terms of refusal to assimilate are relatively recent too. Before the
drawing of this border, Spanish was the language of the colonists; how did Spanish then, as
the superstrate, affect indigenous languages? Cecil Brown (1998) explores some lexical
effects, studying nineteen indigenous languages in the Southeastern US and words borrowed
into them from Spanish. A difficulty in this kind of study is the extinction or near-extinction
of many indigenous languages as well as the lack of written sources for those languages.
Timucua and Apalachee demonstrate the greatest number of word borrowings of the
languages studied besides the twenty words evaluated, but if evaluating just the twenty words
chosen, Greek shows the largest number of borrowings. Languages spoken by communities
the most Southeasterly of the Southeast had the most Spanish borrowings, probably due to
greatest number of Spanish/indigenous interactions, while relatively Northern and Western

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communities did not borrow as many words. Brown posits a diffusional chain of lexical
borrowings. Browns piece has little information about how these borrowings occurred,
which he acknowledges, and also does not discuss the effects of indigenous languages upon
Spanish in this region. It is possible, he offers, that Creek has so many borrowed Spanish
words because it operated as a lingua franca of the polylingual area for a long while. He also
notes the more limited influence of French loan words on languages spoken in current-day
Louisiana. However, in the Southeastern US now neither indigenous nor Spanish is
frequently spoken, except perhaps in the case of Miami Cubans.
On the Mexican side of the border, where Spanish is the predominant language, its
use speaks to a colonial history and mestizo hierarchies through which indigenous peoples
experience continued marginalisation and invisibilisation. In this context, then, how does
Spanish in Mexico interact with indigenous languages7? Lastra (2009) discusses language
variation and change in Jonaz Chichimec, an Otapamean language, gleans from census data
that as of 2000 there were around 1600 Chichimec speakers, though this may be an
overestimation, and discusses both phonological and morphosyntactic changes. The history
of the Chichimecos involves initial attacks upon them by the Spanish followed by
subsequent attacks by the mestizos, who eventually drove them off the best land. Spanish
was the only official language until 2003, when indigenous languages were declared national
languages also, and thus the newly founded Nacional de Lenguas Indgenas is responsible for
standardising and teaching indigenous languages. It seems likely that this standardisation
process will affect language use/change similarly to Spanish heritage language programs in
the US. Though most Chicimecos are bilingual, this bilingualism is receding because of

7 There are many indigenous languages in the US too, many of which are endangered. Thus the racialised
language use in the US involves White English(es), Spanish(es), Black English(es), as well as indigenous
languages.

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negative attitudes of Spanish speakers towards Chichimec combined with the lack of local
jobs leading young men [to seek] jobs outside the community in nearby agricultural
enterprises or cities, as well as some temporary emigration to the United States (Lastra,
2009, 159). Spanish contact began in the 1970s, and since that time schools and other
institutions have used Spanish almost exclusively. In this situation, on the Mexico side of the
border, Spanish becomes a prestige language and actually functions similarly to the way
English functions on the US side. However, on this Mexico side of the border, positive
attitudes towards multiculturalism have not taken sway and thus bilingualism is not
encouraged.
Spanish being used differentially in the US and in Mexico marks material differences
that the border creates through its political implications and laws. This marks a departure
from the phenomenon Llastra (2010) describes in Convergence and Divergence Across a
National Border, where she writes about the inhabitants of the Scottish/English
borderlands and whether their sense of national identity is accentuated, and what this means
for their linguistic behaviour. She writes of the borderlands: transnationalism and the
development of a political and social separateness and otherness culturally different from
the core populations in their national societies can lead borderlanders to develop shared
values across the borderline (Llastra, 2010, 228). This relates back to the earlier
discussion of the border creating space, creating a borderland. However, Llastra maintains
that strong categorisations between groups in the borderlands may remain, and language use
is one possible way to mark the categories. The border Llastra focuses upon the
Scottish/English border is, however, a very different border, especially in regards to
transversibility, than the US/Mexico border.

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Beale-Rivaya (2011) furthers our understanding of the significance of the border to

the use of Spanish on both sides of it by arguing that the linguistic circumstances of
Spanish and English along the Mexican-U.S. border today in many ways parallel those of the
border areas of medieval Iberia and the Arabic and Romance languages (p. 415) and
subsequently comparing the two situations to create greater comprehension of both. BealeRivaya discusses how shifts in political borders change the way identities are constituted, as
happened to construct both Mozarabs in medieval Iberia and Hispanos in the US Southwest.
The Mozarabs sought to remain bilingual, speaking both Arabic and Romance, as they
imagined their identity constituted by being Arab-like Christians. This is similar to Latina/o
identity as discussed in Section 1.2. Beale-Rivaya describes these situations as transitional
bilingualism, as critiqued above in the case of US Spanish by Linton & Jimnez (2009),
through which, she argues, Spanish comes to be considered a heritage language in the US.
However, she then goes on to consider a hybrid model of non-linear language development
in which language is maintained through or because of a cultural shift.
Beale-Rivayas interpretation of the effects of the Treaty of Hidalgo are a little
optimistic. She says, the protection of language is a well-established tradition in the United
States as it was in medieval Iberia (2011, 421). Beale-Rivaya (2011) also predicts three
similar linguistic phenomena will occur in each of these borderlands: (1) isolated lexical
substitutions and lexical borrowing, (2) bilingualism and speciation, and (3) understanding
both languages but being able to comfortably produce only one, resulting in dominantlanguage monolingualism (2011, 423). Both Romance and Arabic lexical borrowings
occurred in Spain, and both Spanish and English lexical borrowings occur in the US.
Bilingualism in Spain was a feature of affluent communities, related to the economic
competitive edge bilingualism gave speakers; this is remarkably similar to bilingualist

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motivations in the US today. Beale-Rivaya (2011) discusses the Hispanos assimilation into
Anglo customs in the US without critical political lens or an eye to the social implications of
this assimilation. Over time in both Arabic and then reconquered Spain, she notes, almost all
inhabitants became monolingual speakers of the dominant/prestige language, whereas in the
US southwest there is a great variety of dual-language possibilities, ranging from
bilingualism, to forms of Spanglish, to monolingualism in either language, stating that hybrid
versions of the languages are becoming a more relevant identity marker than speaking a
distinguishable form of either. She ultimately argues that the loss of the symbolic power of
Spanish, accompanied by increased local, regional, and state control by speakers of English,
has directly contributed to the verticalization and linguistic shift from Spanish to English
(Beale-Rivaya, 2011, 428). She also describes possible contributing factors to the
maintenance of Spanish in the US as immigration, the association of Spanish with
economic growth on behalf of businesses, the existence of other countries having Spanish as
the official language, and revitalization movements (Beal-Rivaya, 2011, 431).
Part of the border politics at play involve the creation of temporarily migrant
workers who work in the US for a short time, in the process experiencing Latina/o-ness,
before returning to their native countries. This process of the export of Latina/o identity
complicates Nationalist Hispanic identity in Mexico and other non-US American countries,
and this complication is reflected linguistically in the export of Anglicisms in Spanish.
Teschner (1974), though an old study, explores the role of the United States Hispano (p.
681) in disseminating Anglicisms in Spanish. Teschner writes of a discourse of power in
language contact environments, which can affect the outcome of the language contact
situation differently. The language spoken by the dominant group does not always have to
prevail, he notes, citing the example of Afrikaans. He also describes a long history of

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Spanish/English contact, the status of Hispanic and Spanish-speaking immigrants and

migrants to the US contemporary to his writing, and the tenacity of Spanish use in the US as
compared to other non-English languages. The interesting component of his discussion is
the return to the homeland, in which he shows the high rate at which Spanish-speaking
residents, immigrants, and migrants all return to their homelands, for visits, to live for a
while, or to live for the rest of their lives. Most Anglicisms are loan words, some are
loanblends, and a very few are loan translations, and Teschner discusses the role of Spanish
language classes for US-educated Hispanos as an effort to eradicate these Anglicisms and
return these speakers to a standard, Mainstream, pan-American Spanish (which does not
exist). He does not ultimately detail the process of the export of Anglicisms, mainly focusing
upon efforts through the educational system to standardise Latina/o Spanish.
Regarding the teaching of Spanish to Latina/o communities in the US, Debra Suarez
(2002) writes of a paradox of hegemonic resistance, stating that in general it is instructive to
interpret patterns of language use in light of the interaction between language use and an
individuals awareness of, and resistance towards, linguistic hegemony and that specifically
in regards to learning Spanish as a heritage language the speakers awareness of, and
response to, the paradox of the resistance to linguistic hegemony is key to understanding
the socio-political meaning of learning the heritage language (p. 512). The paradox she
speaks of is that in order for resistance to linguistic hegemony to be successful, that
hegemony being monoglot Standard English, speakers must also be proficient in English and
thus acquiesce to this standard hegemony. She finds this paradox from studying a Hispanic
families in a community in upstate New York. Situating her discussion within Gramscis
concept of hegemony and then Wileys concept of linguistic hegemony, in which speakers of
a minority language participate in the subjugation of that language. In the US, English is

19

figured as a tool helpful to the aspirations of those who speak it, and thus English hegemony
is instated. Suarezs argument, though, implies that simply resisting one dominant language
does not resist linguistic hegemony itself and also that knowledge of the dominant language
is necessary for its resistance. By interviewing members of families who had the opportunity
to assimilate to English through ESL programmes instituted after struggle over racial
inequality and conflict, Suarez explored why Spanish-speakers choose to maintain their
heritage language. The Hispanic families who shifted to English use as well as those who
maintained both English and Spanish use both did so because they thought it would increase
their upward mobility. In both cases there is awareness that knowledge of English grants
access to spaces and employment that Spanish alone does not, and so while continued
Spanish use and bilingualism, as explored above, can have material benefits, English use too,
sometimes to the exclusion of Spanish use, certainly has material benefits that often are the
reason for immigration and migration in the first place.

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Section 2 Preliminary Conclusions

As described above, the border and the borderlands figure heavily into the
Chicana/o, Latina/o, Hispanic, and Nationalist Hispanic imaginary, creating a third space of
identification, which requires both the US and Mexico, as well as a space of disidentification,
which Muoz (1999) describes as descriptive of the survival strategies the minority subject
practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or
punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative
citizenship (p. 4). As Suarez (2002) describes, the material gains that come with speaking
English in the US are not to be discounted, and I am somewhat wary of the wholesale
celebration of Spanish-speaking Latina/os due to the potential disparagement of Latina/os
who dont speak Spanish due to their families choices based upon material constraints. I
also am wary of the problematics of endangered language discourse (Dobrin, Austin, &
Nathan 2007; Duchene & Heller. 2007; Moore 2006), which in some ways parallels discourse
surrounding Spanish language use in the US. Though, as detailed above, linguistic
communities often are related closely to the construction of identity, Latina/o identity would
not disappear if Latina/o use of Spanish did. This being said, disidentification is not always
adequate as a resistant strategy and the use of Spanish, the proliferation of Spanish dialects,
and the emergence of Spanglish on both sides of the border can have important sociopolitical implications.
The US/Mexico border, though a social construction, helps to determine material
reality in significant ways. Thus, Spanish transforms materially in implication on the sides of
the border. While Spanish is a minority language in the US, spoken primarily by an often
historically oppressed people, on the Mexican side of the border Spanish is the language of

21

the colonist and acts in many of the same ways as English acts in the US. Spanish in Mexico
influences indigenous languages as a superstrate in many of the same ways that Spaniards,
conquistadors, and even mestizos affected, oppressed, and exploited8 indigenous
populations. Even on the US side of the borderlands, Spanish has existed as a colonists
language for longer than English has and thus has affected indigenous languages in the US in
similar, though now interrupted, ways as in the Mexican borderlands.
In the US, though, Spanish takes on different socio-political meaning. The use of
Spanish can be a refusal to follow the generational assimilation plan as defined by the more
cooperative European groups and thus a defiance that creates a problem group in
hegemonic America, as read through Spanish speech (Bruce-Novoa, 1990, p. 42-43). Spanish
is fundamentally transformed through its use in the US, both phonologically and sociopolitically. Chicana/o Spanish becomes a symbol for Chicana/o culture, which is,
a secondary text in that it represents a violation of the taboo against crossing the
forbidden boundaries established by the primary cultural texts. Chicano texts claim
the right, through de facto existence, of exploring the zone as declared as foreign in
the Mexican primary texts. And, to the chagrin of the Mexicans, Chicano texts do so
while simultaneously claiming a right to remain in some way connected to the
Mexican tradition, although they are no longer MexicanIn other words, Chicanos
represent an ominous possibly of desconstruction through escape. The internal
culture of Mexico depicts this as betrayal to force the traitors into the role of seeking
complete assimilation to the They (Bruce-Novoa, 1990, p. 70)
The border creates the borderlands, which house the Chicana/o. Chicana/o culture and
language being the background for the existence of Spanish-speaking peoples in the US is
significant, but it is also transformed through new waves of Latin American immigration,
which influence and coconstitute Latina/o identity as well as reconstruct Spanish and the use
of its meanings. Different dialects of Spanish serve to differentiate different Latina/o
groups, but, as Tammelleo argues, being read as the same, especially through monoglot

8

all these verbs could be in the present tense, also.

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Standard English speaking Anglos, leads to a common experience which in some ways
validates the Latina/o identity. This identity is hybrid, and the Spanish these communities
speak demonstrates that hybridity, incorporating borrowed words, mixing different Spanish
dialects, and exporting some of these features back across the borders as migrant workers
return home.
The number of Spanish speakers in the US is growing, and the Spanish spoken is
variable by US region, home region, community network, and other emic categories. These
Spanishes are in a process of continuous transformation due to the waves of immigrants
who speak with different dialects as well as to exposure to English. Though some later
generations of immigrants do not speak Spanish, Spanish-speaking immigrant communities
are able to maintain their Spanish speech through a process that also transforms and
hybridises it much longer than other non-English language speaking immigrant and
indigenous communities. Because of the continued transformation of Spanish in the US,
teaching Spanish as a heritage language to Latina/os who dont speak Spanish become
politically rife, sometimes standardising and hegemonic itself. Furthermore, the recent rise of
multiculturalism that validated English-Spanish bilingualism isnt necessarily resistant to
hegemony. As iek (1997), writes, the problematic of multiculturalismthe hybrid
coexistence of diverse cultural life-worldswhich imposes itself to- day is the form of
appearance of its opposite, of the massive presence of capitalism as universal world system
(p. 47). Monolithising attempts at diversity training do not critique the corporate capitalism
that initially instituted the inequities between its diverse now-employees, and the rising
endorsement of bilingualism for the purposes of economic advancement indeed have
material consequences, but they are not necessarily resistant and in fact run counter to many
of the tenets of El Movimiento Chicano.

23

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