Latn@ Languages/Identities “Shifting among several identities, …specific nation, …another to a pan-Latin@ formation in the US, another to ideals of the

Latn@ Languages/Identities

“Shifting among several identities, …specific nation, …another to a pan-Latin@ formation in the US, another to ideals of the US, …local cities, …neighborhoods,. bloques, is commonplace for US Latin@s. In spite” [cont…]


“…of the fact that critics denounce hybrid identities as evidence of cognitive confusion, as watered-down versions of one culture or another, and even as unpatriotic abandonment of a core culture.”


“Language, the medium through which all culture is learned and transmitted, is a powerful lens through which we can detect the ways in which Latin@s use different voices…as members of different groups, at different times, even same time.”


“The varieties of Spanish spoken by national-origin groups serve as nationalistic flags that symbolize each group’s unique identity…”


“…facilitate the adoption of new words and ways of speaking that reflects new ethnic and racial identities. Help understand how linguistic codes help construct identities, including how and where the boundaries between linguistics codes are drawn...advocated anthropolitical linguistics”


“Anthropolitical linguistics assumes that the ways Latin@s in the US speak English and Spanish cannot be divorced from socioeconomic and political realities.”


“…importance is the dominant language ideology that equates working-class Spanish-speaking Latin@s with poverty and academic failure and defines their Spanish-speaking bilingual children as linguistically deficient and cognitively confused.”


“…assigns working class speakers to a race/class location in which people are assumed to be ignorant, disoriented, and all of the other stereotypes associated with the working class, thus robbing them of symbolic capital.”


“How do immigrant parents and their children in barrios across the nations respond to linguistic ideologies of purity that translate into social discrimination?”


“…are throwing off straightjacket notions about `good English’, ideal bilinguals, and inviolable language boundaries, and cultural identities. …telling us about being Latin@ in Latin@.”


“What Latin@s are saying, and how they are using their language and dialects in a Latin@ way to say it, is a joint product of:…

[cont….]

Latn@ Languages/Identities1.) linguistic behavior and

attitudes that are brought from the homeland and transformed in the new land

2.) others that are created in the US

Latin@ Languages/Identities

“..adaptation to the trauma of migration involves the creation of cultural spaces and `pockets of remembrance’ to facilitate continuity and change, …Latin@ languages reflect and transmit this new `dual vision’.”


“The variety of Spanish that is shared with compatriots eases the struggle of adaptation, while a growing familiarity with diverse types of Spanish and English smoothes their integration into larger communities.”


“...severely impeded by a Hispanophobia in the dominant society that undermines the cultural and linguistic capital of Latin@s via a process of chiquita-fication, or diminishment and dismissal or their verbal repertoire--dissing of dialects and Spanglish bashing.”


“...’the only real Spanish is spoken in Spain’ vs. `the only real English is spoken in England’. A myth that is propagated even by language teachers.”


“Linguistic difference as simple as the presence or absence of an /s/ at the end of a syllable can become identified with superiority or inferiority, and those judgments are extended to relate to features and speakers in a recursive fashion.”


“Social factors often determine linguistic judgments in highly selective and prejudicial ways.”


“…speakers of stigmatized dialects may try to adopt a more prestigious variety, or shift to English altogether, unless other, more powerful mitigating factors are at work.”


“Sociolinguists often find that the overt expression of negative attitudes toward a stigmatized dialect conflicts with covert attitudes that favor its perpetuation.”


“The partial portrait that we do have indicate that some members of the second generation learn to communicate in ways that resist the chiquita-fication of their language skills.”


“…acts of identity.” Mixing several varieties of Spanish and English is a graphic way of showing that they have a foot in more than one world, and they are most at ease when they can incorporate all of them.”


“…linguistic dexterity of children…reflects a lived multiculturalism, is misunderstood and maligned by teachers who usually have a more limited verbal repertoire than their students.”


“Second generation Latin@s are accused of not knowing Spanish or English and of corrupting both.”

Latin@ Languages/Identities“Code switchers are

characterized as lazy, sloppy, and cognitively confused. …a deficient code spoken by deficient speakers and responsible for their academic failure.”

Latin@ Languages/Identities“At the root of the problem is a view

of languages merely as separate sets of rules, not as flexible symbolic systems of communication that are enmeshed with the speakers’ identities and the communicative context.”


“In reality, there are multiple ways of `doing being bilingual’.”


“Indeed, we have shown that rule-governed code switching can serve as a diagnostic of normal language development.”


“Monolinguals may know the Spanish word for the borrowed items, but their children may think that the anglicism is the original Spanish word.”


“…young Latin@s are engaging in a process of semantic inversion that turns demeaning definitions into empowering and unifying identties.”


“…despite the continued influx of monolingual immigrants, Hispanics are undergoing language loss similar to, and even exceeding that of other groups in US history.”


“Does the loss of Spanish mean the loss of Latin@ identity?”

Review Questions1.) What’s the concept of a “hybrid identity”?

2.) What does “cognitive confusion” mean in the context of Latino identity?

3.) How/why do “linguistic codes” help construct Latino identity?

4.) What is Anthropolitical linguistics” and why is it important for us to know and understand?

5.) What is “symbolic capital” and how does it manifest itself in Latino community?

6.) What is “code switching” and what is its’ importance in the Latino community?

Documents

Latn@ Languages/Identities “Shifting among several identities, …specific nation, …another to a pan-Latin@ formation in the US, another to ideals of the