A Sociolinguistics of Diaspora

A Sociolinguistics of Diaspora
This volume brings together scholars in sociolinguistics and the sociology of

new media and mobile technologies who are working on different social and
communicative aspects of the Latino diaspora. There is new interest in the
ways in which migrants negotiate and renegotiate identities through their
continued interactions with their own culture back home, in the host coun-
try, in similar diaspora elsewhere, and with the various “new” cultures of the
receiving country. This collection focuses on two broad political and social
contexts: the established Latino communities in urban settings in North
America and newer Latin American communities in Europe and the Middle
East. It explores the role of migration/diaspora in transforming linguistic
practices, ideologies, and identities.
Rosina Márquez Reiter is Reader in the School of English and Languages at

the University of Surrey, UK.
Luisa Martín Rojo is Professor of Linguistics at the Universidad Autónoma,

Spain.
Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism
Edited by Marilyn Martin-Jones, MOSAIC Centre for Research on

Multilingualism, University of Birmingham, UK, and Joan Pujolar Cos,
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
1 Language in Late Capitalism 4 Bilingual Education and

Pride and Profit Language Policy in the
Edited by Alexandre Duchêne and Global South
Monica Heller Edited by Jo Arthur Shoba and
Feliciano Chimbutane
2 Language Mixing and
Code-Switching in Writing 5 Urban Schools and English
Approaches to Language Education in Late
Mixed-Language Written Modern China
Discourse A Critical Sociolinguistic
Edited by Mark Sebba, Ethnography
Shahrzad Mahootian, and Miguel Pérez-Milans
Carla Jonsson
6 A Sociolinguistics of Diaspora
3 Multilingualism, Discourse, and Latino Practices, Identities,
Ethnography and Ideologies
Edited by Sheena Gardner and Edited by Rosina Márquez Reiter
Marilyn Martin-Jones and Luisa Martín Rojo
A Sociolinguistics of Diaspora
Latino Practices, Identities, and Ideologies
Edited by Rosina Márquez Reiter and

Luisa Martín Rojo
First published 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A sociolinguistics of diaspora : Latino practices, identities, and ideologies /
edited by Rosina Márquez Reiter and Luisa Martín Rojo.
pages cm — (Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism; #6)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Hispanic American families—Languages. 2. Hispanic Americans—
Socialization. 3. Hispanic Americans—Foreign countries. 4. Hispanic
Americans 5. Sociolinguistics. 6. Latin America—Emigration and
immigration—Social aspects. I. Márquez-Reiter, Rosina, editor. II. Martín
Rojo, Luisa, editor.
P40.5.H57S63 2014
306.44—dc23
2014022892
ISBN: 978-0-415-71299-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-88357-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Figures vii

List of Tables ix
Introduction: Exploring Latin American Communities

across Regions and Communicative Arenas 1
ROSINA MÁRQUEZ REITER AND LUISA MARTÍN ROJO
PART I
Established Communities
1 Ethnolinguistic Identities and Ideologies among Mexicans,

Puerto Ricans, and “MexiRicans” in Chicago 13
KIM POTOWSKI
2 Nuevo Chicago? Language, Diaspora, and

Latina/o Panethnic Formations 31
JONATHAN ROSA
3 Language Ideologies and Practices in a Transnational Community:

Spanish-Language Radio and Latino Identities in the US 48
ANNA DE FINA
4 Queer Latin@ Networks: Languages, Identities, and the

Ties That Bind 66
HOLLY R. CASHMAN
PART II
Emergent Communities
5 The Dynamics of (Im)Mobility: (In)Transient Capitals and

Linguistic Ideologies among Latin American Migrants in
London and Madrid 83
ROSINA MÁRQUEZ REITER AND LUISA MARTÍN ROJO
vi Contents
6 On Being Colombian in La Sagrada Familia Neighborhood:
The Negotiation of Identities and the
Construction of Authenticity 102
ADRIANA PATIÑO-SANTOS
7 The Use of Deixis in the Oral Narratives of Latin American

Immigrants in Italy 122
MARIA VITTORIA CALVI
8 Language Ideologies and Latinidad at a Latin American

School in London 138
SOPHIE KELSALL
9 The Deterritorialization of Latino Educación: Noncitizen

Latinos in Israel and the Everyday Diasporic Subject 151
ALEJANDRO I. PAZ
PART III
Virtual Communities
10 Staying in Touch with My Mobile Phone in My Pocket and

Internet in the Cafés 169
JANE VINCENT
11 The Joint Construction of a Supranational Identity in the

Latin American Blogging Community in Quebec 181
BETTINA KLUGE
Afterword: The Sociolinguistics of Latino Diasporas 197

OFELIA GARCÍA
List of Contributors 203

Index 205
Figures
1.1 Relationship between social and linguistic attitudes among

MX and PR. 22
2.1 A mural that reads “latino flavors with the spice of life”.
Photo by David Flores. 34
2.2 A “Latino Express” bus. Photo by David Flores. 35
2.3 Student artwork juxtaposing Puerto Rican and Mexican
flags displayed in a ninth-grade NNHS classroom.
Photo by Author. 35
2.4 Puerto Rican and Mexican flag representations throughout
Chicago. Photos by David Flores. 36
6.1 Some Colombian products sold at La Pastelería colombiana. 112
6.2 Advertisements in a Colombian restaurant in Sagrada Familia. 113
This page intentionally left blank
Tables
1.1 Potowski & Torres (forthcoming) corpus 17

7.1 Origins of foreign population in Lombardy
(December 31, 2010; source: ISMU) 124
Introduction
Exploring Latin American
Communities across Regions and
Communicative Arenas1
Rosina Márquez Reiter and
Luisa Martín Rojo
This edited collection brings together for the first time contributions from
well-known and emerging scholars in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropol-
ogy, and the sociology of new media and mobile technologies working on dif-
ferent social and communicative aspects of Latin American diasporas on
either side of the Atlantic and across the Mediterranean.
It seeks to open a dialogue between research traditions concerned with
the ways in which language and communication, including information
communication technologies, influence the social life of members of Latin
American communities across the different geographical, cultural, and
sociopolitical regions. It is no coincidence that this influence is being exerted
at a time in which the patterns and itineraries of external and internal migra-
tion are on the increase (Vertovec, 2007) and when accessible channels
of communication (i.e., broadband) have transformed the ways in which
migrants maintain and develop interpersonal bonds back home and across
diasporas (see Vincent, Chapter 10, this volume) and prepare for life in the
receiving community (see Kluge, Chapter 11, this volume).
The contributions to the volume show, to varying degrees and from different
analytic angles primarily grounded in ethnographic work, the (language) prac-
tices Latin American migrants engage in while (re)negotiating their identities
through their continued interactions with their own culture, in similar dias-
pora elsewhere, and with the various “new” cultures of the receiving country.
Focusing on the role of migration in transforming linguistic practices,
ideologies, and identities in different national, economic, and sociopolitical
contexts, this book makes a contribution to sociolinguistic and linguistic
anthropology research. The contributions to the volume also address
the extent to which the methods traditionally used to approach the field
and gather data can provide us with a window into linguistic practices in
transformation and, at the same time, problematize some of the sociolin-
guistic categories conventionally evoked as a means of understanding and
evaluating linguistic practices in diaspora.
Although diaspora has received a great deal of attention in the social
sciences, only relatively recently has it surfaced as a topic of interest in general
2 Rosina Márquez Reiter and Luisa Martín Rojo
sociolinguistics as part of what is generally known as the sociolinguistics
of globalization (Blommaert, 2010). Up to now, research in this area has
primarily concentrated on “dialect contact zones” with English and varieties
of English constituting the main focus of attention (see, for example, Hin-
richs, 2011; Mair, 2003; Pennycook, 2007; Poplack & Tagliamonte, 2001).2
Latin American diasporas and Spanish, on the other hand, have received
considerably less explicit attention (see García in the Afterword to this vol-
ume). Most of the sociolinguistic research into Latino diaspora has been
carried out in the United States and has concentrated on educational envi-
ronments, as illustrated in seminal works by García, Mendoza-Denton, and
Wortham, among others. In view of this, the present volume is one of the
first to examine the sociolinguistics of Latino diaspora in diverse economic
and geopolitical contexts (see Potowski & Rotham [2011], and García in the
Afterword to this volume). Likewise, it is the first to focus on the complexities
of contact between different Spanishes and new varieties and new languages
beyond English, on the various constructions of ethnolinguistic identities
resulting from the different socioeconomic circumstances of local diasporic
members, on the way in which identities are (re)constructed, and on the
impact that new media and mobile technologies have on these processes.
The volume builds a bridge between the sociolinguistic and linguistic
anthropology research carried out principally, though not exclusively, in the
United States into Latino linguistic practices, ideologies, and identities and
research in Europe and the Middle East that has emerged as a response to
the relatively recent Latin American migration either from Latin America or
from Latin Americans in other parts of the globe (e.g., regular or authorized
Latin Americans living in Spain who have migrated to the UK). The joining
of these two bodies of knowledge coupled with sociological research into
migrants’ use of new media and mobile technologies will broaden the com-
parative scope of research with local Latin American communities and open
a window into the new avenues that are emerging for the investigation of the
link between sociolinguistic phenomena emerging in those communities and
wider social processes. Indeed, one of our objectives in bringing together
this collection of papers is to veer away from the compartmentalization of
regional and disciplinary traditions in Latino studies, particularly in the
sociolinguistic arena, and to encourage emerging research in Europe and in
other parts of the world such as Australia and New Zealand3 in an attempt
to foster cross-fertilization. Thus, the bringing together of different perspec-
tives and traditions will draw our analytic attention to the way particular
processes and phenomena have been interpreted across different locales.
This, in turn, should contribute to an expansion of interest in Latin@ studies
and raise the profile of the communities examined.
In spite of different migration histories and differences in the establishment
of the various Latin American communities examined in the volume (e.g.,
Latinos as the largest ethnic minority group in the United States vis á vis
their current invisibility in Israel and Italy) and their sharing of a com-
mon language (Spanish), these communities tend, nevertheless, to occupy
Introduction 3
marginalized social positions in their receiving communities. Arguably,
therefore, there should be no need to structure the contributions into
different parts. However, our interest in presenting the diverse landscapes
that result from the (re)positioning of these communities in their varying
receiving societies, including analyses of how these are influenced by the
affordances of modern technologies, has led us to divide the book into three
parts: established, emergent, and virtual communities.
Part I deals with established communities in the United States. Potowski
and Rosa (Chapters 1 and 2, respectively) show that despite the increas-
ing social, cultural, and linguistic heterogeneity of Latino communities,
the coexistence of different Latino groups over time, chiefly Mexicans
and Puerto Ricans in Chicago, has led them to construct a shared space
in this city. Potowski offers a linguistic analysis of the contact between
Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. She discusses how intergroup tensions and
criticisms of varieties of Spanish dissipate over time transgenerationally,
whereas Rosa identifies a hybrid practice (Agha, 2007; Bahktin, 1986)
that results from the contact between these Latino groups: inverted Spang-
lish—which consists of Spanish lexical items and English phonology—as an
emblem of MexicRicanness. He shows how diasporic and linguistic bound-
aries are jointly reimagined and reconstituted, resulting in the reterritorial-
ization of Mexico and Puerto Rico within Chicago.
De Fina, on the other hand, analyzes a Washington radio station (Chap-
ter 3), that targets primarily recent Latino migration. Her examination of
the role of Spanish and English in instances of radio broadcasting illus-
trates a different side of sharing spaces—in this case, the tensions between
the language ideologies promoted by an established Latino community
radio, its advertisers, and some of the hosts, and the linguistic realities
of the new transnational community the station caters to. These tensions
reveal the social value of Spanish as commodity, that is, as a means to
reach an audience of potential consumers. De Fina, Potowski, and Rosa
show how traditional linguistic ideologies (e.g., an ideology of compart-
mentalized bilingualism and ideologies of standardization) are still active,
even when challenged by existing practices, such as mixing English and
Spanish.
The observance of these ideologies is also present in the way in which
Spanish varieties are hierarchized according to national and ethnic differ-
ences. Thus, Mexican Spanish, or what is perceived as such in diaspora,
is more valued than Puerto Rican Spanish. However, similar positions are
assigned to these and other Spanish varieties across the Spanish-speaking
world and linked to (neo)colonialism (see Márquez Reiter and Martín Rojo,
Chapter 5, this volume). These are also evident in the reevaluation of hybrid
practices such as the enregisterment (Agha, 2007) identified by Rosa and the
ideological dissipation described by Potowski.
Indeed, Cashman (Chapter 4) shows how ideologies of multilingual-
ism are seen as a means of managing LGBTQ identities and belonging
in that they open the possibility of critical consciousness and liberation.
She contends that the unequal acceptance of nonheteronormative sexual
identities among bilingual Latin@s in Phoenix allows LGBTQ members to
navigate different communities. Contingent on this and on their personal
histories rests the decision to manage coming out or maintain silence.
The ideological struggles observed by the Latin@s examined in Part I are
also evidenced in the efforts that the Latinos in Part II make to develop their
lives in the receiving communities, to attain integration and well-being. Thus,
Part II concentrates on emergent and newly established communities in Israel,
Italy, Spain, and the UK. Márquez Reiter and Martín Rojo (Chapter 5) exam-
ine the relationship between language and social mobility of Latin Americans
in London and Madrid. Considering some of the linguistic and legal obstacles
that these migrants face in their respective receiving societies, they analyze the
ways in which they manage their linguistic resources to gain capitals (Bour-
dieu, 1986) and to integrate. The authors provide an economic portrayal of
how ethnolinguistic lines feed into the segmentation of the labor market. They
point out that in specific niche markets, Spanish is considered to be an essen-
tial resource for (occupational) mobility. They also show how given ethnolin-
guistic identities cannot be converted into capital in certain fields, although
they become an instrument of commodification (Heller, 2003) in others.
Similarly, Patiño-Santos (Chapter 6) analyzes how “Colombian” eateries
emerge as places where people recreate practices from their regions of ori-
gin while offering “authentic Colombian” products to tourists and the local
community in Barcelona. She shows how products, irrespective of the region
with which they are normally associated in Colombia, are vested with eco-
nomic and exchange value within the confines of what is considered to be
a legitimate/authentic outlet for them in the Catalan capital. She maintains
that an ethicized market of products for locals and tourists entails, rather
than an adjustment of the Latino American linguistics varieties and ideolo-
gies in the receiving society, their mere reproduction.
The implicit reterritorialization observed in Patiño-Santos is brought
to the fore by Calvi (Chapter 7) in her analysis of the representation of
(imagined) space through Latino narratives. By examining the recurrence
of deictic forms with greater demonstrative and situative value (here, there),
which reveal a subjective orientation of space and its importance in the con-
struction of identity, the author observes, in these representations, a strong
tendency toward a polarization between two spaces: the host society and
society back home.
Kelsall’s research in a Latin American complementary school in London por-
trays language proficiency and language choice in Latino families (Chapter 8).
She argues that adult Latinos construct a mutually constitutive relationship
between language practices and ethnicity (latinidad) and that their discourses
are shaped by localized language ideologies that (a) inform their understand-
ing of (Latino) community membership and (b) form part of the structuring
process that leads to their relative integration. Consistent with Potowski and
Rosa, Kelsall finds differing linguistic preferences across generations. Thus, a
Introduction 5
child’s proficiency in Spanish could be coded morally and become a source of
linguistic pride or shame for parents and grandparents.
Paz’s chapter (Chapter 9) closes this part of the book with an examination of
the ways in which non-Jewish Latinos in Israel understand educación—polite
interactional personhood—as a diasporic group characteristic. The analysis
also considers the role of space in shaping linguistic ideologies and prac-
tices. Drawing on the notion of deterritorialization (Appadurai, 1996), he
reveals how imaginings of community associated with large-scale social for-
mations (such as articulations of nationhood) do not necessarily occur within
the borders of a single state, thus producing discontinuous geographies. Lati-
nos, in contrast to locals, maintain a language ideology that underlines the
importance of educación. Contrary to previous assumptions that educación
tied Latino generations together and thus formed the basis of Latino diasporic
personhood, this essay shows contradictions within this ideology.
The contributions in the second part of this volume all highlight how
linguistic ideologies from a Latin American background remain active in the
diaspora despite being delocalized and relocalized in new social contexts.
Most refer to the enhanced value that Latino linguistic resources acquire
in this context: as symbolic capital, as resources for building authenticity,
and as a means to construct a differentiated identity. Similarly, all the chap-
ters implicitly or explicitly touch upon the significance of space as a consti-
tutive dimension of sociolinguistic phenomena and vice versa. As we will
argue, new theoretical instruments and methodological tools are needed to
move beyond the space-as-container ontology. Space must be understood
as a social construction (Pennycook, 2010, pp. 61–62), as a means of illu-
minating our understanding of processes such as the maintenance and chal-
lenge to linguistic ideology. A fruitful way of going about this, we would
suggest, is to engage with the value and convertibility of linguistic resources
and varieties and the emergence of diasporic identities and practices.
The importance of space is latent in the contributions to Part III, Virtual
Communities, an important area of research in information communication
technology and sociology that has up to now received limited attention in
sociolinguistics and even less in Latino sociolinguistics. Part III thus offers
the reader a glimpse of some the mediated practices and identities that are
likely to become the focus of (further) research in sociolinguistics and lin-
guistic anthropology. This is because virtual communities become important
spaces in which identities in diaspora are built and negotiated. In this part,
authors discuss how new media and mobile technologies influence migratory
trajectories and life in diaspora. Vincent (Chapter 10) shows how the avail-
ability and general accessibility of information communication technolo-
gies, coupled with the pace of technological development from telephones to
ubiquitous wireless Internet and mobile phone coverage, have changed our
relationships with technologies and possibilities for connection. She explores
communications between migrants and their left-behind family and friends,
showing how contemporary technologies influence and affect their emotional
bonds without necessarily becoming a substitute for copresence. She notes,
however, that such technologies do not allow for sympathetic silence.
Kluge turns her attention to a Hispanophone blogging community that
provides information about migration to Quebec (Chapter 11), where mem-
bers of this virtual community help each other through the immigration
process, giving and receiving crucial emotional support during this difficult
transition. She examines the linguistic means used by bloggers and readers
to interactively construct themselves as legitimate members of the commu-
nity and to collaborate on the joint construction of a supranational identity
as a Latin American immigrant. She shows how, for most bloggers, a fuzzy
supranational identity as a Latin American was likely present even before
migration but is now transformed into a “Latino” identity. Notwithstand-
ing this, she points out that national and sometimes regional identities can
be shown to persist and interact with the new identity as a “Latino”.
The two essays here contained show that social media are not only new
communication channels in migration networks, but they actively transform
the nature of these networks and thereby facilitate migration. They enhance the
possibilities of maintaining strong ties with family and friends and offer a rich
source of insider knowledge on migration that is unofficial yet widely useful.
As Dekker and Engbersen (2013) maintain, information from these networks
makes potential migrants “streetwise” when undertaking migration.
Several themes emerge from the essays in this volume. The first one is the
transformation of linguistic practices triggered by globalization and changes
in the political economy seen through the prism of time and space. The con-
tributions show that the emergence of hybrid linguistic practices is linked to
sociolinguistic emblems in the enactment of identities framed within deterri-
torialization and reterritorialization processes in urban spaces. Thus, we see
how the performance of authenticity in Patiño-Santos’s study is constructed
not only by employing Colombian personnel with allegedly Colombian
communicative practices and adopting Colombian emblems such as music,
TV programs, and flags and banners but also by recreating a culturally spe-
cific configuration of time and space.
The notions of deterritorialization and reterritorialization are employed
to refer to cultural practices that are dislocated from their traditional or
original geographies and reterritorialized and reinscribed in new spaces
(cf. Deleuze & Guattari, 1980). They thus encompass both spatial and
temporal dimensions and, in this sense, they are arguably related to the
notion of chronotope proposed by Bakhtin (1981), taken up later by Agha
(2007) and other scholars to examine current hybridized linguistic practices
and the maintenance or transformation of linguistic ideologies, among
others. Space becomes meaningful as time becomes endowed with the power
to bring change (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 120).
Thus a focus on the spatial and the temporal is helpful in that it pro-
vides us with a window from which to observe the changes in practices
and ideologies in diaspora. However, spatial and temporal complexities
entail a challenge for research. It does not, however, necessarily endow.
Introduction 7
As researchers, we are not necessarily endowed with the ability to inhabit
the very spaces of cultures that are being transported and reconfigured by
the migrants we examine (Bhatia & Ram, 2009).
A second theme is the need to take stock of the type of barriers migrants
face to participating in prestigious social fields, constraints to gaining social
mobility, integrating in the receiving society, and attaining general well-being.
Thus some of the authors in this volume discuss the observed reproduction
of linguistic ideologies and challenge them by drawing on how linguistic
resources are commodified either as instrument or as product (Heller, 2003;
cf. Appadurai, 1996) and the conditions that make capital convertibility
possible (Bourdieu, 1986). They thus show what makes a particular vari-
ety of Spanish valuable in the receiving society in given fields and within
a national context in which Spanish is seen as a language of migration.
To understand how the marginalized social positions these communities
occupy in their receiving societies are produced and reproduced on a daily
basis requires looking primarily not only at the language varieties and
resources in use but also at the values attributed to them and at the social
actors who are considered entitled to produce and circulate these socially
valued resources (Bourdieu, 1991. p. 331). Thus, it is in the interactions
examined by the contributors to this volume that we can observe how par-
ticipants negotiate the value to be assigned to different language varieties.
It is also within these interactions that speakers negotiate their legitimacy as
members of a linguistic community in which they live, both from their own
point of view and from that of the receiving community (Pujolar, 2011).
In this context, to master the language of the receiving community and even
the ability to produce it in an “unaccented” way can be seen as a means
speakers have of relocating themselves or repositioning themselves within
the receiving community and getting access to the symbolic and economic
capitals associated with their new language. The mere need of gaining
a position within new social contexts could weaken the implicit associations
between Latino identity and the use of Spanish.
With respect to the processes of de- and reterritorialization, attested to in the
chapters of this volume, that bring migrant labor populations into the lower
echelons of relatively wealthy societies, an apposite question is: What becomes
indigenized (Appadurai, 1996), hybridized (Bahktin, 1986) or (de)legitimized
(Bourdieu, 1991) within a given field, how and why? Indeed, it has been shown
that through these semiotic processes, transnational identities are indexed and
new local identities shaped (Coupland, 2013) in the diverse Spanish-speaking
Latin American communities examined by the authors in this book.
Finally, most of the chapters in this collection discuss the relationship
between the values conferred to the different language varieties and linguis-
tic ideologies. The reference to a spatial and temporal dimension is present
in Paz’s use of “calibration of displacement”, through which an ideological
association is established between a local variety or discursive practice, and
with what appears to be a deterritorialized and an ethereal realm called
“Latin America” or with the projected “homeland”. The contrasting values
conferred to linguistic varieties and discursive practices across generations
could also be explained by recalling/in terms of chronotopes displacement
and alignments (Agha, 2007): descendants are not aligned with their par-
ents’ requirements (or with parental requirements), and youth generations
do not reproduce traditional prejudices against certain language varieties.
Through communicative practices, which have immediate impact on the
public sphere, speakers are in fact transposing selves across discrete zones of
cultural space and time. By using explicit metapragmatic devices within nar-
ratives, like deictics, and the discursive opposition among them, migrants
situate themselves on a spatial and temporal order, as discussed by Calvi.
Furthermore, these narratives produce chronotopic representations which,
in Agha’s terms, create chronotopic displacements and cross-chronotope
alignments between persons here-and-now and persons altogether elsewhere
(Agha, 2007, p. 324; see also Dick, 2010).
In sum, the comparative perspective adopted in this book enables us to
shed light on the variability and fluidity of identity configurations, linguistic
practices, and ideologies in different social and political contexts. It also
enables us to explore the processes shaping migrants’ different linguistic and
migration trajectories. Importantly, it helps us to increase the visibility of the
communities examined and encourage interest in interdisciplinary examina-
tion. It contends that “Latino” is not just a category created by members
of the Latin American diaspora in these studies but is a category emerging
from particular social conditions.
NOTES
1. The editing and finalization of this publication were made possible thanks
to the funding provided by the Research Vice-chancellor of the Universi-
dad Autónoma de Madrid. This research was also made possible thanks
to the funding provided by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Com-
petitividad within the Plan Nacional de I+D+I 2008-2011 to the project
“New speakers, new identities: Linguistic practices and ideologies in the
post-national era” (NEOPHON; ref. FFI2011 24781). It has also benefitted
from the contribution of colleagues involved in the ICSH Cost Action Net-
work IS1306 “New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: Opportunities and
Challenges”.
2. Exceptions to this include the research carried out in the educational sphere
such as the work of Kleifgen and Bond (2009).
3. Despite having comparatively lower numbers of Latin Americans, both coun-
tries have received Latin American migrants in the last 40 years: www.dfat.
gov.au, www.stats.govt.nz.
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Part I
Established Communities
1 Ethnolinguistic Identities and
Ideologies among Mexicans,
Puerto Ricans, and
“MexiRicans” in Chicago
Kim Potowski
INTRODUCTION
The US Census of 2010 reported 50.5 million “Hispanics”,1 of whom

36.9 million said they spoke Spanish at home. If the estimated 9.4 million
undocumented Latin Americans living in the country (Pew Hispanic
Center, 2013) are added to this figure, the result is a total of 46.3 million
Spanish speakers. This then makes the United States the fourth largest Spanish-
speaking nation in the world after Mexico (112.3 million), Colombia (47.7),
and Spain (47.3 million). Yet several factors differentiate the United States from
other Spanish-speaking nations in important ways. First, it is not Spanish but
rather English that predominates at all levels of society and, in fact, 80% of
Census respondents say they speak only English at home. Its status as a minor-
ity language in the United States has important consequences for the structure
and intergenerational transmission of Spanish, as well as for the identity con-
structions of its speakers.
Another important factor that makes the United States unique is that
its Spanish-speaking population comes from a wide variety of countries.
The most numerous groups are Mexican (63% of all US Latinos), Puerto
Rican (9%), Cuban (3.5%), and Dominican (2.8%), but there are speakers
from all national dialect backgrounds across the country. This diversity is
particularly evident in larger cities, although many of them have traditionally
been associated with one particular group. For example, people usually think
of New York as Puerto Rican, Los Angeles as Mexican, and Miami as Cuban,
but the 2010 Census showed the following diversity: New York’s Hispanics
were 31% Puerto Rican, 30% “other”, and 25% Dominican; Los Angeles’s
Latinos were 66% Mexican but 14% “other” and 13% Salvadoran; Miami’s
Hispanic population was 49% Cuban, 32% “other”, and 10% Nicaraguan;
and in Chicago, the focus of this chapter, the Hispanic population was 74%
Mexican, 13% Puerto Rican, and 10% “other”. Although all four cities had
a single Latino group that outnumbered the others—not, however, by much
in New York—the particularly large percentages of “other” groups in New
York, Los Angeles, and Miami point to increasingly heterogeneous Hispanic
populations.
14 Kim Potowski
This increasing diversity is theoretically interesting for at least two
reasons. The first is linguistic: interaction among these different dialect
groups can lead to potential linguistic cross-influences on their varieties
of Spanish. In fact, Spanish dialect contact is occupying an increasingly
important position in studies of US Spanish (Aaron & Hernández, 2007;
Otheguy & Zentella, 2012; Schreffler, 1994; Zentella, 1990). Second, this
contact presents a new set of variables for scholarly work on latinidad.
Latinidad is defined as a sense of panethnic unity resulting from shared
experiences of economic, political, and cultural marginalization (Apari-
cio & Chávez-Silverman, 1997). Scholars working within this framework
examine the complexities involved in recognizing shared aspects of Latino
identity while simultaneously attending to the uniqueness of members of dif-
ferent Latino groups in their histories, culture, and positionings within US
society. Group identities are executed via a dual process of claiming who the
group is and also differentiating the group from “others”. That these groups
are increasingly sharing social space forces new examinations of their inter-
actions and identities as they coexist with increasingly more diverse groups
of “others” from whom to differentiate themselves—or with whom to align
themselves. Thus, the growth in Latino heterogeneity can simultaneously
lead to a degree of linguistic accommodation, making the Spanish of dif-
ferent groups more similar to one another’s while at the same time causing
members of the groups to articulate more clearly an identity as different
from the other groups.
Further complicating language- and identity-based studies are the expe-
riences of “intra-Latinos”: those whose parents belong to different Latino
groups. Owing to the heterogeneity just outlined, such individuals are becom-
ing more common in the United States. In New York City, for example, 1991
marriage records reveal a high rate of unions between Hispanics across dif-
ferent national origins (Gilbertson, Fitzpatrick, & Yang, 1996; Lee, 2006).
The mixed-ethnicity children that result from these unions offer interesting
loci to examine both linguistic and identity-oriented outcomes. That is, the
possibly hybridized characteristics of the Spanish of intra-Latino individu-
als, combined with their unique linguistic and intergroup ideologies and
their concepts of self-identity, broaden the spectrum of latinidad.
This chapter explores the following aspects of Latino heterogeneity in
Chicago, Illinois, a city of almost 3 million people located in the Midwestern
United States. First, I present a summary of social and linguistic outcomes
of contact between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in the city. This provides
a necessary background to understanding the experiences of “MexiRican”
individuals—those raised by one Mexican parent and one Puerto Rican
parent. The two principal questions I address are: How do Mexicans and
Puerto Ricans sharing social space in Chicago position each other socially
and linguistically? And, given this backdrop, how do MexiRicans construct
ethnic identities?
Ethnolinguistic Identities and Ideologies among Mexicans 15
MEXICANS AND PUERTO RICANS IN CHICAGO
Chicago has emerged as a major Latino metropolis, with a 2010 Census-

estimated Latino population of 778,862 that constitutes 29% of the city’s
residents. The city has more Mexicans than Veracruz and more Puerto
Ricans than Arecibo; the relatively large number of Mexicans (578,100)2 and
Puerto Ricans (102,703) makes it an ideal site to study inter-Latino contact.
In fact, according to Pérez (2003), Chicago is the only city where Mexicans
and Puerto Ricans have been sharing community space for generations; it
may very well be the first US city in which substantial numbers of different
Latino groups have done so.
This section explores one of the particularities of Chicago as a Latino
urban space, that of how Mexicans and Puerto Ricans coexist therein.
This, in turn, will provide some context for situating and understanding the
experiences of MexiRicans.
Sociocultural Relationships
The first studies of contact between Mexican (hereafter “MX”) and Puerto
Rican (“PR”) residents in Chicago were sociological. Padilla (1947) explored
early interactions between these two groups in the city, fostered by events orga-
nized by steel foundries to encourage socializing between male MX braceros
and female PR recruited laborers. Almost 30 years later, Padilla (1985), largely
credited with coining the term latinidad, examined it from an institutional per-
spective, studying how Chicago MXs and PRs put aside differences in order to
fight for collective benefits. He argued that these two groups forged a “Latino”
identity in order to mobilize politically despite their substantial ethnic and cul-
tural boundaries. A more recent manifestation of MX-PR collaboration for
political purposes is the participation of PRs—who by birth are US citizens—in
Chicago’s pro-immigrant rights movement, summed up in the chant by a group
of 2007 demonstrators: ¡Borica y mexicano, luchando mano a mano! (“Puerto
Rican and Mexican, struggling hand in hand!”; Rodríguez Muñiz, 2010).
However, in other work examining day-to-day interactions, members of
these groups have been found more likely to position themselves as fundamen-
tally different from each other. Focusing on gendered experiences, for exam-
ple, Pérez (2003) found that PR women accused MX women of being sufridas
(long-suffering) at the hands of abusive husbands, yet the MX women con-
sidered patience and forgiveness among their virtues. The MX women found
PR women too rencorosas (unforgiving), yet the PR women were proud of
their independence and knowledge of their rights.
The most in-depth exploration, to date of MX-PR contact DeGenova
and Ramos Zayas (2003), who examined how these two groups in Chicago
understood and reproduced differences between them and how those dif-
ferences were linked to a “larger social framework of racialized inequalities
16 Kim Potowski
of power and opportunity” (p. 2). Racialization here is understood as the
discursive production of identities that ascribe dehumanizing race-based
meanings to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice,
or group. A range of factors emerged as significant in how MXs and PRs
positioned themselves in relation to one another, including US citizenship,
participation in federal welfare assistance programs, gender and family ide-
ologies, and perceived levels of modernity. Specifically, MXs were accused
by PRs of being illegal immigrants, “taking” all of the jobs, and being
too docile, “backward”, or excessively traditional. PRs were criticized by
MXs for being lazy (principally for accepting government welfare benefits
despite enjoying legal work status) as well as for not maintaining intact
families, not attending church, and being too loud and brash. Thus, it is
unfortunately the case that these groups, in addition to being racialized
and negatively stereotyped by the hegemonic Anglo majority, also engage in
racializing and negatively stereotyping each other. These authors claim that
MXs and PRs in Chicago articulate their identities in large part through
discourses that clearly distinguish them from each other.
In addition to these racialized stereotypes, the Spanish language was
found to be “an especially salient object around which to produce differ-
ence” (DeGenova & Ramos Zayas, 2003, p. 145). They also found that first-
generation MXs expected that all MXs should know Spanish, including those
raised in the United States, and expressed a sense of betrayal when they did
not. They also characterized PR Spanish as inferior to MX Spanish, a value
judgment that many PRs had apparently internalized: many PRs agreed that
they themselves did not speak “proper” Spanish, which presented a challenge
to their notions of cultural authenticity. And although many first-generation
PRs expressed concerns about their children’s retention of Spanish, the trend
was for “urbanized bilingual PRs . . . [to demonstrate] greater wherewithal
to successfully adapt to the social order of white supremacy and Anglo hege-
mony in the U.S.” (DeGenova & Ramos-Zayas, 2003, p. 161). In fact, despite
MX discourses to the contrary, what PRs and MXs had in common was
that they were “drawn together by a latinidad that actually derived not from
shared Spanish language but rather a shared erosion of Spanish” (p. 168).
Potowski (2004) documented precisely such a shift from Spanish to English
across three generations among more than 800 Latino youth in the city.
In summary, despite the common fate of shift to English, these two groups
employed highly divergent discourses of language to fortify the racialized dif-
ferences between them—about spoken accents, particular words and idio-
matic expressions, and perceived “correctness” of Spanish, with MX Spanish
emerging on top of the hierarchy. In her ethnography of a Chicago high school,
Ghosh Johnson (2005), too, found animosity between MX and PR high school
students, who held linguistic ideologies asserting that MXs spoke “better”
Spanish than their PR counterparts. The students believed that MX families
placed more emphasis on Spanish maintenance while PRs were “street”, echo-
ing the traditional versus modern/urban discourses found by Pérez (2003).
Informed by these findings, Potowski and Torres (in progress) explored
relationships between these two groups but included a wider range of
generational groups. The two main goals were (1) to explore quantitatively
various linguistic features of the Spanish spoken in Chicago by Mexicans,
Puerto Ricans, and MexiRicans and (2) to examine qualitatively issues of lati-
nidad including social relationships between the two groups, articulations of
identity vis-a-vis each other (and in particular the role of Spanish in creating
MX/PR identity), and of early language socialization experiences. That is, the
authors examined not only what people said about the research topics but
also how they said things in Spanish verbally, lexically, and phonologically.
The present chapter draws from the Potowski and Torres corpus and
specifically addresses the topic of latinidad, with the first half of the chapter
asking the following research questions:
1) What racializations and stereotypes do MXs and PRs invoke about

each other across three sociolinguistic generations?
2) What linguistic ideologies do they hold about each other’s variety of
Spanish?
The corpus includes a total of 125 individuals identified via snowball

sampling. They agreed to participate in an interview in Spanish (although
code-switching into English happened frequently). Following sociolinguistic
convention, three “generations” were defined as follows: the first generation
(G1) immigrated to Chicago as adults; the second generation (G2) have G1
parents and were either born in Chicago or brought to the city before the age
of 6; and the third generation (G3) were born in Chicago to at least one G2
parent. The MXs in DeGenova and Ramos-Zayas’s (2003) study included
only G1s, while the PRs included only G2s; Potowski and Torres’s (in prog-
ress) corpus offers the possibility to examine intergroup relationships across
several generations. Table 1.1 displays the number of individuals from each
ethnolinguistic group and each generational group.
All 125 interviewees were bilingual in Spanish and English and all but
two were US Latinas. Interview questions followed a typical Labovian pro-
tocol, seeking to put speakers at ease by asking questions about their neigh-
borhoods, childhood memories, and dreams, followed by additional topics
mentioned earlier that were pertinent to the larger issues under study.
Table 1.1 Potowski & Torres (forthcoming) corpus
G1 G2 G3 Total
MX 12 14 13 39
PR 11 16 13 40
MXPR — 19 27 46
Total 23 49 53 125
18 Kim Potowski
To address the first research question about racializations and stereotypes,
a subset of 43 individuals from this corpus—18 Mexicans and 25 Puerto
Ricans, spread across the three generational groups—were asked about how
the two groups get along in the city and the common stereotypes that exist
about each group. In response, three of the negative stereotypes evidenced in
DeGenova and Ramos Zayas’s (2003) work emerged with frequency among
our participants:
MXs as undocumented
PRs as reprehensible for accepting welfare
PRs as too loud and “scandalous”
Interestingly, however, there was a noticeable shift across generations. That is,
the G1 MXs and PRs were more likely to produce these racialized discourses,
while the second- and third-generation respondents more often cited “rumors”
of MXs and PRs not getting along. They either offered personal counterevi-
dence that these rumors were untrue or reported witnessing conflicts between
the groups but adamantly insisted that they themselves did not have any per-
sonal negative experiences with the other group. This was stated by one G3
PR thus: “He escuchado que mexicanos y puertorriqueños (I have heard that
Mexicans and Puerto Ricans) don’t get along. Pero (But) I’ve never seen it”.
Thus, while our study provides additional evidence of frictions between MX
and PR residents in Chicago, they appear to be largely restricted to the immi-
grant generation and dissipate with successive generations.
There are at least two reasons later generations might hold fewer nega-
tive attitudes toward the out-group. First, generation is often correlated
with citizenship among MXs. G1 MXs are very often undocumented, while
most G2s and all G3s (by definition) are documented. The majority of our
G2 MX participants were in fact citizens, while all of the MXs in DeGenova
and Ramos-Zayas’s (2003) study were G1 and thus more likely undocu-
mented. Undocumented status could simultaneously elicit greater scorn
among PRs for Mexican, because they are perceived as “taking” jobs, as
well as greater scorn by MXs toward PRs who receive public aid. A second
possible explanation is that G1s have spent a relatively smaller proportion
of their lives sharing social space with out-group members, while G2s and
G3s have lived their entire childhoods and adult lives in Chicago, many
sharing neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces with members of the other
group. It is reasonable to posit that this increased contact results in more
positive attitudes; in fact, the very existence of MexiRican individuals is an
obvious result of intimate relationships between MX and PR individuals.
Language Ideologies
It is appropriate to recall here that, regarding the Spanish language,
DeGenova and Ramos-Zayas (2003) found that MXs were positioned both
by themselves and by PRs as possessing both a superior dialect and greater
proficiency in it. The Potowski and Torres (in progress) corpus, how-
ever, revealed a more nuanced mosaic of linguistic ideologies that, again,
varied according to generation. A subset of 66 participants (34 PRs and
32 MXs, equally distributed across the three generations) was asked whether
MX and PR Spanish were different, and, if so, to describe the differences.
They were also asked whether there is a “best” variety of Spanish. Every
single participant could describe the other group’s Spanish—an indication
that they are indeed interacting with each other in Spanish. Features of PR
Spanish frequently mentioned included:
PR coda /s/ weakening: [e.tá] for estás

Lambdacisms: [a.mól] for amor
Trill velarization: [cá.xo] for carro
. . . as well as a sense that it was “cortado” (cut off) resulting from

intervocalic weakening of /d/ ([kom.práo] for comprado). Both groups also
frequently claimed that PR Spanish was spoken at a faster pace, as well as
being “hard”, “strong”, or “loud”—judgments that, interestingly, overlap
with Pérez’s (2003) gendered evaluations of PR as “rencorosas”. MX were
also commonly familiar with a few PR lexical items including habichuelas
(kidney beans), guagua (bus), and china (orange fruit).
Although far fewer descriptions were offered of MX phonology, among
them that it was “sung” (cantado) and spoken at a slower pace, PRs mentioned
many more out-group lexical items than did MXs, including ándale (“come
on, ok”), órale (“ok”), güey and carnal (“dude”), no manches (“no way”), and
nomás (“only”). In fact, in their larger corpus, Potowski and Torres (2011)
administered a lexical familiarity task and found that PRs were statistically
significantly more familiar with MX lexical items than vice versa. They attrib-
uted this both to the numerical dominance of MX in Chicago as well as the
higher status and media presence of MX Spanish in the United States and
internationally.
A third of these participants (20 people), when offering descriptions of
out-group Spanish, did so as a criticism. For example, rather than neutrally
commenting that coda /s/ was weakened, they claimed that such individu-
als pronounced words “incorrectly”. Yet only one of these criticisms was
about MX Spanish;3 the other 19 were about PR Spanish. Thus, similarly
to what was found by DeGenova and Ramos-Zayas (2003), PR Spanish
appears to suffer from greater stigmatization than MX Spanish in Chicago.
And it is the PRs themselves who participate most actively in devaluing
PR Spanish. Approximately 20% of the MXs (7 of 32) offered criticisms
of PR Spanish, but almost half of the PRs offered criticism of PR Spanish.
The specific negative comments about PR Spanish were fairly homogenous
whether they came from MXs or PRs. PR Spanish was said to be machucado
(mashed up, ground); the phonological processes were said to represent
20 Kim Potowski
poor pronunciation or even a lack of ability to pronounce particular sounds
“correctly”; and their Spanish was said to be full of “Spanglish”. Even a G2
MX, whose proficiency was rated slightly lower than the G2 MX average,
felt confident offering this criticism of PR Spanish:
“Lo hablan muy (They speak it) like choppy, o muy rápido. [. . .] Y
siempre odio cuando dicen, ‘Dame ma’ arro’, (And I always hate when
they say, ‘Give me more rice) and I’m like what the hell? (laughs) And
I’m like its arroz, arroz, no arro’. (rice, rice, not rice). Or, ‘¿Cómo ehtá?’
No me gusta. (How are you? I don’t like it.)”
When PRs commented negatively on their own Spanish variety, it is notable that
they usually did so in the third person, such as the PR G2 who said “los puer-
torriqueños en Chicago muchos no hablan español, hablan Spanglish” (Puerto
Ricans in Chicago, many don’t speak Spanish, they speak Spanglish)”. This
seems to indicate a desire to distance oneself from those who speak in this
fashion (future analyses can determine whether such individuals themselves in
fact also utilized the features they criticized). Criticisms were also frequently
framed as “what others say”—and those “others” were usually reported to
be MXs:
“Muchos, muchos amigos mexicanos me dicen que los puertorriqueños

no saben hablar” (Many, many Mexican friends tell me that Puerto
Ricans don’t know how to speak). (PR G3)
However, a few PRs reported criticisms using the first person, as evidenced
by the use of “we” in the following quotes:
“Nosotros también decimos, los puertorriqueños, palabras que no están
en el diccionario” (We also say, Puerto Ricans, words that aren’t in the
dictionary).” (PR G1)
“Los puertorriqueños no pronuncian bien las palabras. Las cortamos

mucho. Decimos muchas palabras en inglés en español” (Puerto Ricans
don’t pronounce words right. We cut them a lot. We say English words
in Spanish).” (PR G3)
One G2 PR woman was particularly frustrated at what she perceived as a

lack of formality in PR Spanish:
“Los de aquí son sinvergüenzas y hablan–¡pshhhh! I’m like, ‘Where did

you come from?’ Los que vienen de allá hablan con un respeto. [. . .]
Aquí los puertorriqueños . . . se supone que le digan a otra persona
‘usted’. Si dice ‘tú’, you know, you’re too friendly. ¡Ay, sí! Qué lindo,
‘Señora, ¿cómo está Ud?’ Ah, that’s so pretty [sighs]”.
Those from here are shameless and they talk—¡pshhhh!
Those who come from there speak with respect. [. . .] Here Puerto Ricans . . .
they’re supposed to say [formal ‘you’ pronoun]. If you say [informal ‘you’
pronoun], you know, you’re too friendly. Oh yes! How pretty, ‘Ma’am,
how are [formal you pronoun]?’ Ah, that’s so pretty [sighs]”.
Only two PR women were adamant in their rejection of any positioning of

their Spanish as inferior, including this G2:
“Me molesta mucho cuando gente dice que . . . mucha gente ha dicho
que los puertorriqueños no hablan español bien. Que no saben hablar
español. Pero no creo que . . . es que lo hablamos diferente. No es que
uno lo habla mejor que el otro ni que uno lo habla bien y uno lo habla
mal, es que es diferente”.
It bothers me a lot when people say. . . a lot of people have said that
Puerto Ricans don’t speak Spanish well. That they don’t know how to
speak it. But I don’t believe . . . it’s that we speak it differently. One
doesn’t speak it better than the other, nor does one speak it well and
another badly, it’s that it’s different.
Interestingly, criticisms spiked among G2 interviewees. Only three G1s

(1 MX and 2 PRs) out of 20 expressed any negative evaluations of out-
group Spanish. But among G2, fully half of both groups did so. A possible
explanation is that those who immigrate as adults are linguistically secure
about their Spanish and do not feel a need to criticize other dialects. G2s as
a group are less proficient in Spanish than G1s (to a statistically significant
degree in the larger Potowski & Torres corpus) and often express insecurity
about their Spanish. This insecurity might make them more likely to accept
prevalent discourses of Spanish hierarchies: that is, MXs might more likely
be critical of PR Spanish and PRs of their own Spanish.
But why should criticisms of PR Spanish drop drastically among G3 MXs
(only 1 person out of 11)? Although all of our G3 participants were able to
carry out an interview in Spanish, their proficiency was significantly lower
than that of their G2 counterparts. In fact, many G3s around the country
have shifted entirely to English and develop very little productive capacity
in Spanish. It may be that Spanish no longer figures as prominently in G3
identity constructions. In other words, there is less at stake for ethnocultural
authenticity tied to the Spanish language. It is, however, interesting that the
PR G3 criticisms of PR Spanish remained at about half of the participants,
perhaps as a vestige of the general stigma assigned to PR Spanish.
Tied to the question of criticisms of out-group Spanish is the issue of
whether one dialect of Spanish is viewed as superior to others. Only 32%
of the participants (21 out of 66) stated that one type of Spanish was
better. This included 8 MXs who claimed superiority for MX Spanish and
13 PRs who gave this honor not to Puerto Rico but to Spain or Mexico.
These responses constitute yet another facet of PRs’ being their own worst
22 Kim Potowski
linguistic critics and ascribing Spanish dialect status to speakers of other
dialects. It also mirrors the hierarchy found by Zentella (1990) in New
York City, where PR and Dominican Spanish were the least-valued variet-
ies, which the author attributed to their speakers’ darker skin and lower
socioeconomic status relative to Cubans, Colombians, and other groups in
the city.
Overall, though, it is important to restate that claims of dialectal supe-
riority were evidenced by only a third of the participants. The other two
thirds rejected the notion that any type of Spanish was better than another,
expressing some variation of the following quote by a G1 MX:
“Cada quien tiene su estilo, y de ninguna manera pienso que ninguno

es mejor que otro, sino que es diferente” (“Every person has their style,
and in no way do I think that one is better than another, just different”).
To what extent might participants’ racializations and their linguistic prej-

udices be related? That is, as found by Zentella (1990), social prejudices
can shape linguistic ideologies such that a group that is viewed negatively
subsequently has its language variety stigmatized as well. As discussed, in
our data, social racializations expressed through negative stereotypes were
strongest in G1 and increasingly less present in G2 and G3, while nega-
tive linguistic evaluations peaked among G2 and were almost nonexistent
among G1 and G3. That is, G1 showed the greatest social friction but the
least linguistic friction; G2 showed less social friction but the greatest lin-
guistic friction; and G3 showed little friction of either kind. Figure 1.1 offers
a visual display of this relationship:
Thus, we found no evidence that negative evaluations of PR Spanish
were directly related to negative social evaluations of PRs. The criticisms
of PRs’ “mistreating the language” and speaking it machucado (mashed
up, ground) are certainly related to an ideology of language standardization
(Milroy, 2001), but one that seems to be losing ground in G3, very likely
due in part to a loosening of the bond between the Spanish language and
Latino identity.
Figure 1.1 Relationship between social and linguistic attitudes among MX and PR.
These prevailing social and linguistic sentiments among MXs and PRs
in Chicago, although more positive than those found by DeGenova and
Ramos-Zayas (2003), provide a portrait of latinidad that includes nega-
tive social stereotypes (particularly among G1) and negative evaluations
of Spanish (particularly among G2). This sets the stage for exploring the
ideologies of MexiRican (MXPR) individuals.
MEXIRICANS
What is it like to grow up in Chicago with one MX parent and one PR

parent—groups whose negative stereotypes of each other decrease with gen-
eration but nonetheless remain nameable by everyone, and many of whom
criticize each other’s Spanish? To date, there have been very few studies on
mixed-ethnicity Latinos. In this section, I explore some of the experiences
of MXPR individuals via the following research questions that mirror those
addressed in the first half:
1) What linguistic ideologies do MXPRs hold about both varieties of

Spanish?
2) Given the racializations and stereotypes that exist between MXs and
PRs, how do MXPRs articulate ethnic identities?
These analyses are based on the 46 MXPR interviews in the Potowski and
Torres corpus (in progress) and, for some analyses, include an additional set
of interviews with 27 MXPR individuals (Potowski, in progress).
Language Ideologies
All 46 MXPR interviewees analyzed were able to identify differences between
the two dialects. Their descriptions were the same as those used by MXs and
by PRs: that PR Spanish is “faster” and “cuts off some words”; that PRs
“can’t pronounce some letters”, giving examples of velarization of syllable-
initial /r/ and aspiration or weakening of syllable-final /s/; or that PR Spanish
was “more street” (echoing Ghosh Johnson’s 2005 findings that Chicago
PRs were considered more urban than MXs) and “used more Spanglish”.
It is noteworthy that the proportion of participants who claimed that no
variety was better than any other (70%) was the same as that found among
the MXs and PRs. Among the one third of participants who claimed that
some Spanish dialect was “the best”, five preferred MX Spanish, five said
Spain had the best Spanish, and two cited South America. None cited PR
Spanish as the “best”. Thus, in the proportion of individuals claiming that
no Spanish variety was “better”, as well as in the particular lack of citing PR
Spanish as “better”, MXPRs evidenced overlap with the ideologies of MXs
and PRs.
24 Kim Potowski
However, an important difference was evident: not a single MXPR offered
a direct criticism of MX or PR Spanish, not even the five individuals who
said that MX Spanish was superior. They presented their opinions more
neutrally, stating for example that MX Spanish was “more professional”
or that PR Spanish had “more slang”. This contrasts with the 20 quite
sharp criticisms offered about PR Spanish by both MXs and PRs. It may
be that MXPRs are less willing to be critical of Spanish varieties than their
monoethnic counterparts for at least two reasons. First, their experiences
as intra-Latino subjects raised among members of both groups very likely
engendered strong affective relationships with speakers of both dialects,
rendering them more exposed to and positively affiliated with their ways
of speaking. Second, their own Spanish may exhibit traits from both dia-
lects. Space restrictions prevent a full description of MXPR Spanish traits,
but I offer the following summary (from Potowski, 2008). Speech samples
from 27 MXPR individuals were evaluated by 8 Spanish speakers. Approxi-
mately 75% of these MXPRs produced dialect features that strongly marked
them as either MX or PR—that is, they exhibited a preponderance of traits
from one dialect or the other. The other 25% of the participants evidenced
mixed varieties that combined, for example, PR phonology such as coda /s/
weakening with MX lexicon like the use of the interrogative “¿Mande?”
(“Excuse me?/What?”). My ongoing analyses focus on comparing how
these individuals said their own Spanish sounded versus how their samples
were rated, as well as whether they claimed ability to switch between dia-
lects. For example, several women stated that PR Spanish was “meaner and
more assertive” and that their “Puerto Rican accents” emerged when they
were angry.
Thus, dialect consistency (75%) was far more prevalent than dialect
hybridity (25%). Equally as strong as dialect consistency was the
proportion of individuals rated as sounding more like that of their moth-
ers’ ethnolinguistic group. That is, if the mother was PR, the person was
more likely to be rated as sounding PR, whereas if the mother was MX, the
rating was more often MX. To date, the analyses appear to indicate addi-
tional connections to the mother’s ethnolinguistic group, namely, that lexi-
cal familiarity and realizations of coda /s/ are more PR-like when the mother
is PR (Potowski, in progress).4 This correlation between MXPR individuals’
dialect features with the dialect of their mother is not particularly surpris-
ing, given that mothers are traditionally more engaged in childrearing than
fathers, particularly during the early years of children’s language acquisition
(Labov, 1994). Thus, minority language transmission appears to constitute
another example of “the work of ethnic identity formation in families rest-
ing on women’s shoulders” (Pérez, 2003, p. 112) or, more precisely, in their
mouths.
The following and final section turns to a consideration of MXPRs’ eth-
nolinguistic identity articulations: How are these articulations connected to
larger inter-Latino racializing discourses present in the city and to language
ideologies about Spanish varieties?
Ethnolinguistic Identity
The connections between language and identity in the United States are
rooted in the nation’s linguistic culture. Despite not having an official
national language, the United States has displayed, since the 20th century,
a markedly monolingual hegemony that seeks to assimilate immigrants
and replace their languages with English (Schiffman, 2005). Non-English
languages have traditionally been viewed with distrust and sometimes
contempt; 31 out of 50 states currently have “official English” laws; and the
national “Official English” movement has 1.8 million members and regu-
larly supports legislation introduced to Congress declaring English the fed-
eral official language. One common result is the almost ubiquitous loss of
languages other than English by the third generation. It is due in part to this
linguistically repressive context that we see a wide variety of levels of Span-
ish proficiency among US Spanish speakers.
Non-English languages thus play an important role not only for questions
of communication among recent immigrants. They also serve important
identity functions among their United States–raised descendants, in part
because speaking a non-English language is typically an ethnically marked
behavior reported by only 20% of the nation’s population. The field of
“heritage language” education, which first emerged in the 1970s in response
to increasing numbers of Spanish-speaking students enrolling in “foreign”
language classes, recognizes that when a person’s family speaks a language
other than English, that language usually plays a crucial role in individuals’
identity configurations.
“Identity” as a theoretical construct is multifaceted and complicated.
Modern conceptualizations of identity often utilize several key terms. One
is performativity, which means that identity is constantly performed. In par-
ticular, Butler’s (1990) work on gender identity emphasizes that individuals
continually stylize their appearance, language, and body movements as they
“do” being women or men. That is, though all individuals are born with
a biological sex, gender is largely socially constructed and must be constantly
performed. Likewise, other aspects of identity are upheld through multiple
ongoing performances. Even among monolinguals, an individual’s identity is
never static; in multilingual contexts, identity is in an even more active state
of reevaluation and renegotiation (Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004). According
to these authors, “in multilingual settings, language choice and attitudes are
inseparable from political arrangements, relations of power, language ideolo-
gies, and interlocutors’ views of their own and others’ identities” (p. 1).
Similarly, there are various ways in which US Latinos “do” being Latino,
including through language. To start, even the terms “Hispanic” and “Latino”
26 Kim Potowski
are not agreed upon. According to a 2012 Pew Center nationwide survey, a
slight majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their fami-
ly’s country of origin, such as “Mexican” or “Salvadoran”; just 24% say they
prefer a panethnic label such as “Latino” or “Hispanic”. About half (47%)
consider themselves very different from typical Americans. Slightly more
than 80% say they speak Spanish, and 95% say it is important for future gen-
erations to continue to do so; yet the vast majority of sociolinguistic studies
show a near complete shift to English by the third generation. Proficiency in
Spanish appears to be neither required nor sufficient for Latino identity: not
required because numerous participants in several studies stated so directly;
and not sufficient because at least one study (Valdés, 2011) showed that
a Latina middle school girl was seen as an outsider by her Latino classmates
because of her light skin and her “middle-class, nerdy, politically and envi-
ronmentally correct background” (p. 139).
When Spanish is present among US Latinos, the individual’s level of
proficiency in the language, the degree of contact with English it displays via
code-switching, borrowings, and extensions, its connection to a particular
socioeconomic or educational background, and its dialect features all per-
form work in constructing identity. Regarding dialect features, we have seen
that Chicago MXs and PRs are acutely aware of how their varieties differ
phonologically and lexically and that a number of them (particularly in the
second generation) ascribe different values to each dialect. Thus, a Chicago-
raised MX who has Spanish proficiency, in addition to numerous other
Mexican-origin cultural perspectives, practices, and products acquired from
the family such as eating tacos and listening to norteñas, enacts an identity
as MX by speaking a variety of Spanish that is recognizable as MX. The
same for Chicago-raised PRs: in addition to eating arroz con habichuelas
and listening to salsa, for example, a PR identity is enacted by speaking
a variety of Spanish that has PR traits.
How, then, does a MXPR enact an identity as a MXPR? In the first
published study of MXPR in Chicago, Rúa (2001) found that her participants
experienced tensions when drawing from both of their cultural repertoires.
That is, they often felt social pressure to “pass” as either MX or PR. How-
ever, the 27 MXPRs in Potowski (2008) showed a greater degree of accep-
tance of inter-Latino hybridity, adamantly claiming to be equally MX and
PR, rarely if ever hiding or downplaying either identity. Unlike the findings
of Rúa (2001) and what might be predicted based on DeGenova and Ramos-
Zayas’s (2003) portrayals of tensions between the two groups, these MXPR
individuals did not experience significant challenges to their choice to claim
compound identities. They frequently described hybridized cultural practices
and products: for example, with very few exceptions, they ate both MX and
PR food at home, either varying day by day or sometimes at the same meal:
“My mom would make fried pork chops and Mexican rice, or mole with
Puerto Rican rice”. The greater degree of insistence on “being both” MX and
PR may be due in part to the fact that 7 years had elapsed between Rúa’s data
collection in the late 1990s and Potowski’s in 2005, during which time many
MX moved into previously PR–dominant North Side neighborhoods, where
many of my participants had grown up (a greater proportion of Rúa’s partici-
pants, on the other hand, were from the heavily MX South Side of Chicago).
Along similar lines to the MXs and PRs cited earlier, almost all MXPRs
were able to identify stereotypes they had heard about each group. The
most often-cited negative stereotypes about MXs were that they were illegal
immigrants5 and that MX men were machistas and the women very submis-
sive; as discussed earlier in this chapter, these same discourses of citizen-
ship or legality and of gender were found by DeGenova and Ramos-Zayas
(2003), Ghosh Johnson (2005), and Pérez (2003). On the other hand, MXs
were cited as being hard working. One MXPR participant said, “When
I work, the Mexican comes out because Mexicans are hard workers”.
Again echoing the stereotypes identified by DeGenova and Ramos-Zayas
(2003), thus providing additional evidence of their robustness, the most fre-
quent negative stereotype about PRs was that they were lazy because they
refused to take advantage of their US citizenship by fully participating in the
workforce. One participant remarked that her paternal grandmother, who
was MX, did not care for the participant’s mother, who was PR, stating
that every time her grandmother would visit, she would criticize PRs, say-
ing, “They don’t know how to do anything. They’re so lazy”. PRs were also
accused of being rude or “having an attitude”. For example, reflecting on her
own personality, one participant stated, “I could have an attitude sometimes,
I get that from my mother who’s Puerto Rican. She could be really rude and
in your face”. Overall, more negative stereotypes were cited about PRs than
about MXs, including that they were “ghetto”, stubborn, loud, cheap or vul-
gar, and partiers.
Beyond providing additional evidence for MX and PR racializations,
I sought to understand how individuals of combined MXPR heritage navigate
such racializations in constructing their own identities, how they “negotiate
nationalist tensions within inter-Latino spaces” (Rúa, 2001, p. 129). But
the fact is my participants did not appear to face any “nationalist tensions”.
These stereotypes, although within our participants’ awareness, did not pres-
ent challenges to nor significant fodder for their construction of identities as
MXPR. To them, being MXPR meant embodying the positive aspects of
each culture, not fighting off negative stereotypes. They described occasion-
ally being questioned or teased by family members, friends, and coworkers
with comments such as these:
“What are you, man?”

“We caught you, you said ‘¿Mande?’ ”.
“Allí viene el potorro”. [Here comes the Puerto Rican.]
“You look Puerto Rican, but you sound Mexican”.
“If I cut you, would you bleed salsa [MX condiment] or sofrito [PR
condiment]?”
28 Kim Potowski
They insisted, however, that such comments did not constitute strong pressure
to “pass” as one monolithic ethnicity. As noted by Val and Vinogradova (2010),
the development of a dualistic identity depends on the degree to which people
are able to “find coherence and continuity in multiple discursive worlds. It also
depends on whether [they] are able to develop hybrid situated non-conflicted
identities within the dominant [. . .] sociocultural discourses” (p. 5). It appears
that G2 and G3 MXPR in Chicago are able to find coherence in the multiple
discursive worlds of MXs and PRs. This is despite the fact that 75% of them
spoke Spanish in a way that was described by raters as belonging to one dialect
or the other. Thus, although they all claimed equal membership in both groups,
as soon as they open their mouth to speak Spanish, their dialect marks them
as one or the other.6 Unlike claims to ethnic identity, dialect variety is largely
not under a person’s control; the dialect(s) one acquires depends very strongly
on language exposure during childhood (although see Siegel, 2010, on sec-
ond dialect acquisition in adulthood). Thus, for MXPR individuals, displaying
a preponderance of traits from either MX or PR Spanish serves to mark them
as either MX or PR—despite their insistence on claiming both ethnic identities.
CONCLUSIONS
Tensions and negative stereotypes between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in

Chicago appear to be dissipating across generations. Language ideologies
are shifting as well, to the extent that the third generation no longer appears
to criticize the out-group dialect or believe in the superiority of any par-
ticular dialect. Under these conditions, MexiRicans can more comfortably
create a compound ethnolinguistic identity. As intra-Latino subjects, they
challenge monolithic constructions of “Mexicanness” and “Puerto Rican-
ness” by staunchly insisting on being identified with both. DeGenova and
Ramos-Zayas asked:
What might be the conditions under which the formation of a shared

“Latino” identity—a mutual sense of Latinidad that could provide
a viable and reliable basis for community and collaboration—becomes
possible? (2003, p. 174)
MexiRicans’ physical embodiment of both MXs and PRs constitutes such

“conditions”. Their unique linguistic ideologies—which, unlike MXs and PRs,
did not stigmatize PR Spanish—combined with their own hybridized identities
and Spanish dialects, present a new wrinkle in configurations of latinidad.
NOTES
1. This paper uses “Hispanic” interchangeably with “Latino.” See Oboler (1995)
for debates about these two terms.
2. As counted by the Census. Real figures are likely larger due to the reticence of
undocumented persons to complete Census forms.
3. This was by a G1 PR, who said that Mexicans are groseros (foul mouthed),
especially their frequent use of the word cabrón (bastard), which is substan-
tially more offensive in Puerto Rico than in Mexico.
4. That project analyzes ratings of 60 MXPR samples and offers PRAAT analy-
ses of realizations of coda /s/ and of /rr/.
5. Yet only a few participants mentioned initial resistance on the part of their PR
families to their parents’ union based on accusations that the MX partner was
seeking “papers”, that is, legalization of his or her status in the United States.
6. Current analyses are examining whether there are differences in identity dis-
courses between the 75% of MXPR whose Spanish was mostly monodialectal
vs. the 25% who were rated as evidencing traits from both dialects.
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2 Nuevo Chicago?
Language, Diaspora, and Latina/o
Panethnic Formations
Jonathan Rosa
INTRODUCTION
In February 2010, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a series of stories titled “Nuevo
Chicago: How Young Hispanics are Reshaping the Region”. The ambivalent
use of English and Spanish in the title of this series corresponds to the stories’
alternate framing of the experiences of Latinas/os1 growing up in Chicago
as “two cultures finding a happy medium in the mainstream” and “living in
two worlds”. The stories suggest that “emphasis on language and identity
seem to go hand in hand” and point to examples such as one young man who
“thinks of himself as Mexican” even though he “was born in Chicago and
speaks fluent English without an accent”. This series of stories exemplifies
the contested terrain over which language is positioned as a sign of assimila-
tion and distinctiveness for Chicago Latinas/os. It also raises questions about
the ways that the relationship between language and “Latina/o-ness” is con-
structed within Chicago’s specific urban context.
In this chapter, I analyze the interplay between ideas about language and
place in the construction of panethnic identities. I focus on Chicago as an
urban sociolinguistic context and “US Latina/o” as an emergent panethnic
category-concept that comprises US–based persons of Latin American descent.
Chicago’s Latina/o population is predominated by Mexicans and Puerto
Ricans. Many Chicago-based Mexicans and Puerto Ricans engage in diasporic
spatial practices by representing different community areas throughout the city
as “Mexican Chicago” and “Puerto Rican Chicago”. This reterritorialization,
in which Mexico and Puerto Rico are remapped as part of Chicago, calls into
question geographical borders between the US and Latin America. I show
how this imbrication of US–based and Latin America–based geographical
borders corresponds to an imbrication of English and Spanish linguistic bor-
ders through the creation of hybrid Spanglish forms.
For Chicago Latinas/os, linguistic repertoires consisting of culturally valo-
rized varieties of English and Spanish are linked to differing perspectives on the
linguistic signs that correspond to Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Latina/o identi-
ties. Based on the language ideologies associated with many non-Latina/o per-
spectives, Spanish is a homogeneous language that indexes Latina/o identity
32 Jonathan Rosa
in straightforward ways. These perspectives view Spanish language practices
as homogeneous linguistic phenomena that function as signs of homogeneous
Latina/o identities; this means that many US Latinas/os are faced with the
erasure of their ethnic specificity, for example, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and so
on, and positioned as members of the Spanish-language community regard-
less of whether they possess sociopragmatic control of the Spanish language.
Meanwhile, from in-group perspectives, Mexican Spanish and Puerto Rican
Spanish often play a central role in defining Mexican–Puerto Rican differ-
ence (De Genova & Ramos-Zayas, 2003; Zentella, 2009 [2002]). These com-
peting constructions demonstrate the centrality of language ideologies and
linguistic practices to the creation of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Latina/o
identities. Chicago-based Mexicans and Puerto Ricans navigate these contra-
dictory viewpoints by simultaneously embracing their Mexican and Puerto
Rican ethnic specificity and constructing panethnic Latina/o identities.
This chapter investigates the sociolinguistic fashioning of Latina/o
panethnicity in New Northwest High School2 (henceforth NNHS). NNHS is
a Chicago public high school whose student body is more than 90% Mexican
and Puerto Rican, including many “MexiRican” students who have immedi-
ate and extended families that are composed of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.
In this context, minute features of the English and Spanish languages are
enregistered as emblems of ethnolinguistic and institutional affiliation. The
concept of enregisterment captures the processes through which forms of lan-
guage are endowed with cultural value as coherent sets in relation to models
of personhood (Agha, 2007; Silverstein, 2003). In this case, the focus is on
how particular features of the English and Spanish languages are enregis-
tered as signs of Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Latina/o models of personhood.
While Mexican and Puerto Rican students demonstrate varying Spanish
and English linguistic repertoires, they often stereotypically position Span-
ish as the primordial Latina/o tongue and signal their investment in dem-
onstrating their intimate knowledge of Spanish. Yet students’ interactions
and presentations of self in the context of this American public high school
are powerfully anchored by hegemonic, standardizing language ideologies
that position English as the language that “ideally express[es] the spirit of
a nation and the territory it occupies” (Gal, 2006, p. 163). These dynamics
shape students’ investment in speaking what is ideologically constructed as
“unaccented” English and manifesting their Latina/o identities by referencing
their intimate relationship with Spanish. This tension between the embrace
and stigmatization of languages other than monoglot Standard English (Sil-
verstein, 1996) is characteristic of what Farr (2011) refers to as Chicago’s
“urban plurilingualism”. Latina/o NNHS students navigate these competing
ethnolinguistic demands by enregistering Spanish and English forms into a set
of practices that I call “Inverted Spanglish”. This register formation, which
consists of Spanish lexical items and English phonology, becomes a sociolin-
guistic emblem and enactment of panethnic Latina/o identities among Mexi-
cans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago. These dynamics inform my suggestion
Nuevo Chicago? 33
that Chicago’s unique (im)migration, political-economic, and social histories
structure ethnolinguistic transformations such as the emergence of Latina/o
panethnicity.
The chapter begins by analyzing the ways that Puerto Rican and Mexican
NNHS students construct national identities by creating and engaging in
symbolic practices that remap the boundaries between Puerto Rico, Mexico,
and Chicago. I argue that Puerto Rico and Mexico are understood to exist in
Chicago through processes of reterritorialization (Gupta & Ferguson, 1992).
These negotiations of borders surrounding national identities and geo-
graphical territories take shape in relation to the reconfiguration of borders
associated with varieties of Spanish and English. I point to a set of hybrid
language practices to demonstrate how the diasporic remapping of Puerto
Rico and Mexico within Chicago corresponds to the linguistic remapping
of Spanish within English. I show how Latina/o students’ experiences of
learning and transforming these “ethnolinguistic borders” (Rosa, 2014) are
linked to the creation of panethnic US Latina/o identities.
CONSTRUCTING DIASPORIC LATINA/O

EMBLEMS IN CHICAGO
New Northwest High School was opened in 2004 to offset overcrowding at a

nearby Chicago public high school. As an open-enrollment, “neighborhood”
high school, NNHS draws its students from several surrounding communi-
ties. Based on the highly segregated demographics of these communities, more
than 90% of NNHS’s roughly 1,000 students are Latina/o.3 The majority of
these students are Puerto Rican and Mexican. While Chicago Public Schools
does not statistically track students of mixed-Latina/o parentage, many of the
students with whom I worked had both Mexican and Puerto parents and/or
family members. In NNHS and its highly segregated surrounding communi-
ties, where I conducted ethnographic and sociolinguistic fieldwork between
2007 and 2010, profound forms of spatial, racial, and class marginalization
characterize Latina/o experiences. For example, nearly all of the 60 NNHS
students with whom I worked most closely did not know a single White peer
by name.4 This is a result of the racial segregation between neighborhoods
and community areas for which Chicago is notorious. Chicago’s neighbor-
hood segregation is tied to various forms of inequality and discrimination in
realms such as employment, housing, education, health care, and policing.
These issues were a central part of the discussion in my first meeting with
the principal of NNHS, Dr. Baez, which took place in the fall of 2007. She
introduced me to the school by explaining that one of her long-term goals
as principal is to transform her students from “at-risk youth” into “young
Latino professionals”. I was interested not only in Dr. Baez’s critical aware-
ness of her students’ experiences of spatial, racial, and class exclusion but
also in the question of what a “young Latino professional” might sound like.
34 Jonathan Rosa
Dr. Baez’s notion of “young Latino professional” invokes broader ideas
about Latina/o identities in Chicago, the US city with the third-largest popu-
lation overall and the fifth-largest Latina/o population (Bureau of the Cen-
sus, 2011). Throughout Chicago, various Latina/o emblems circulate in a
range of semiotic modalities, from advertisements and community-based
organizations to hairstyles and language use (see Figures 2.1 and 2.2). These
Chicago-based Latina/o emblems interact dynamically with the construction
of Latina/o identities across local, national, and international scales. Such
constructions often involve exoticizing stereotypes that position Latinas/os as
a unified consumer market regardless of ethnic difference, as in Puerto Rican,
Mexican, and so on. Dávila has analyzed this commodification of Latina/o
identity at length (2012 [2001]; 2008). She critically examines the ways that
seemingly positive, “Whitewashed” portrayals of Latinas/os are linked to
forms of homogenization and stigmatization more typically associated with
explicitly negative representations of Latinas/os as an undesirable population.
On the surface, Dr. Baez’s notion of “young Latino professional” appears
to coincide with the very forms of Whitewashing and homogenization that
Dávila critiques. This certainly does not stem from her lack of knowledge of
Puerto Rican and Mexican specificity. Dr. Baez, a middle-aged Puerto Rican
woman who was born on the island but raised in Chicago from the age of 4,
had closely interacted with Mexicans in Chicago throughout her life. In fact,
she is a mother to MexiRican children, that is, children of Puerto Rican and
Mexican parentage. The notion of “young Latino professional” reflects Dr.
Baez’s required adherence to the homogenization of Latinas/os within local,
Figure 2.1 A mural that reads “latino flavors with the spice of life”. This mural
adorned the side of a Latino fusion restaurant, Carnivale, located in downtown Chi-
cago. It succinctly signals the coherence of Latino panethnicity, its objective sensory
existence in experienceable “flavors”, and its links to a “spicy” way of life. Photo
by David Flores.
Nuevo Chicago? 35
Figure 2.2 A “Latino Express” bus. This Latino emblem involves the creation of
a Chicago bus company named “Latino Express”. Buses with the company’s name
prominently displayed on them can be seen throughout the city. The use of the term
“Latino” in the name of this business demonstrates the marketability of Latino iden-
tity. Photo by David Flores.
state, and federal educational policy.5 On each of these scales, Latina/o eth-
nic specificity, such as Mexicanness and Puerto Ricanness, is systematically
erased. This erasure contradicts students’ perspectives, from which signs of
Mexicanness and Puerto Ricanness are ubiquitous (see Figures 2.3 and 2.4).
Boundaries of “Mexicanness” and “Puerto Ricanness” were alternately
emphasized and erased as students engaged with ethnolinguistic emblems to
negotiate modes of shared identification. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans con-
stitute the two largest US Latina/o national subgroups. Chicago is the only
US city in which Puerto Ricans and Mexicans have been building their lives
alongside one another in large numbers since the mid-20th century. Chicago
contains the fourth-largest Mexican population of any US city and the fourth-
largest mainland US Puerto Rican population (Pew Hispanic Center, 2012).
Figure 2.3 Student artwork juxtaposing Puerto Rican and Mexican flags displayed
in a ninth-grade NNHS classroom. Photo by Author.
Figure 2.4 Puerto Rican and Mexican flag representations throughout Chicago.
The top left shows a monument to the Puerto Rican flag. The flag in this picture
is located on Division Street near California Avenue in Chicago’s Humboldt Park
community. An identical flag is located a few blocks away, near Western Avenue.
The two steel flag monuments flank a strip of Division Street called Paseo Boricua
(Puerto Rican Promenade), which is filled with predominantly Puerto Rican com-
munity organizations, businesses, and residences. They contribute to the nationalist
pride of Puerto Ricans born in Chicago and elsewhere. They also buttress claims that
the area between the flags is un pedacito de patria (a little piece of the homeland),
which I will describe in detail later in this chapter. The top right picture shows a tat-
too on a 12th-grade Puerto Rican NNHS student that includes the Chicago skyline
and the steel Chicago Puerto Rican flag. The top of the tattoo says “City of Wind”,
a play on Chicago’s nickname, “The Windy City”, and the bottom says, “Yo soy de
aqui” (I am from here.) There is a playful ambiguity between whether aqui (“here”)
means Puerto Rico, Chicago, or both; this young man was born in Chicago. The
lower left picture shows a Nike Air Force One shoe with the colors and design of
the Mexican flag, as well as the Chicago skyline in the green portion of the shoe.
The lower right picture shows a tattoo on an older sibling of an 11th-grade Mexican
NNHS student that includes the State of Illinois, the Mexican flag, and the words
“Lil Village”, a slang reference to Little Village, a community area on the South Side
of Chicago widely recognized among Chicago residents as the center of Mexican
Chicago. Each of these designs consists not simply of generic “Puerto Rican” and
“Mexican” symbols but of Chicago-based representations of Puerto Ricanness and
Mexicanness. Photos by David Flores.
Nuevo Chicago? 37
NNHS students made sense of Puerto Ricanness and Mexicanness through
these longstanding histories of face-to-face, frequently intimate interactions
that rendered their differences all the more tangible and, oftentimes, negligi-
ble. They were classmates, boyfriends, girlfriends, teammates, neighbors, and
family members. There were many students with one Puerto Rican and one
Mexican parent, a situation that has led to the creation of “MexiRican” and
“PortoMex” as identifiable categories (Potowski & Matts, 2008; Rúa, 2001).
Thus, for some students, Latina/o panethnicity was definitional of their identi-
ties. However, even though the vast majority of students identified specifically
as either Mexican or Puerto Rican, they developed intimate knowledge of
both Mexicanness and Puerto Ricanness. This knowledge was often reflected
in the invocation of various stereotypes about one another’s physical appear-
ance, musical tastes, styles of dress, and language use; these Chicago-based
Mexican and Puerto Rican stereotypes have been analyzed extensively in
previous research (De Genova & Ramos-Zayas, 2003; Pérez, 2003). Rivera-
Servera (2012) characterizes the complexity of these intra-Latina/o relation-
ships as forms of “frictive intimacy”.
The beginning and end of each NNHS school year coincide with parades
and carnivals that celebrate Puerto Rican and Mexican identities. Septem-
ber 16 officially marks Mexican independence, and young people in many
Northwest and South Side Chicago neighborhoods can be seen waving Mexi-
can flags on street corners and seeking supportive “honks” from passing cars
throughout the month. The Puerto Rican complement to these practices begins
in early May, when vendors line the edges of Humboldt Park with Puerto
Rican paraphernalia of all kinds6 in preparation for the annual Puerto Rican
festival and parade in June. A second annual Puerto Rican festival, “Bandera
a Bandera” (flag to flag), is held during the first weekend of September; both
of these festivals take place just a few blocks from the school. The name of this
festival refers to the massive steel Puerto Rican flags that flank Division Street
between Western and California Avenues (see Figure 2.4).
By no means were students’ celebrations of Mexican and Puerto Rican
identity limited to these scheduled ritual events. Inside NNHS, the respec-
tive flags could be seen on headbands, necklaces, bracelets, notebooks, gym
towels, book bags, and artwork that hung on classroom walls (see Fig-
ure 2.3); outside of school, where an entirely different uniform policy took
hold, flags adorned sneakers (“gym shoes” in the Chicago idiom), jerseys,
t-shirts, shorts, jeans, dresses, cars (on bumpers, rear windows, rearview mir-
rors, seat covers, and so on), houses, apartment windows, storefronts, fanny
packs, bicycles, hats, beach towels, key chains, and even haircuts. The flag
can be artfully shaved into the back or sides of one’s hair; this could be seen
most frequently around the time of the Puerto Rican parade.
The knowledge of one another’s Puerto Rican or Mexican identities, or
a combination of both, was oftentimes a requirement for everyday interac-
tions. Students either presupposed one another’s ethnoracial identities or
38 Jonathan Rosa
they explicitly inquired about them at the outset of interactions. What does
it mean to be Mexican, Puerto Rican, or simply Hispanic/Latina/o in the
context of Chicago? How could students identify so strongly with these cat-
egories if they were born and raised primarily within the US mainland? Even
the few Latina/o students who had never visited Mexico or Puerto Rico still
identified strongly as Mexican or Puerto Rican. The following section dem-
onstrates the ways that being born in Chicago can be reimagined as a way
of being born in Puerto Rico or Mexico.
¿DE QUÉ PARTE? (FROM WHAT PART?): DIASPORIC

DETERRITORIALIZATION AND RETERRITORIALIZATION
While most NNHS students were born and raised in Chicago, many of
them had either lived in Puerto Rico or Mexico at some point or visited
several times throughout their lives. However, Mexican and Puerto Rican
identities were not necessarily restricted to students who had “concrete”
ties to these nations, such as close family members residing in Mexico or
Puerto Rico or family-owned property there. In fact, many Mexican and
Puerto Rican students who had either never been to Mexico or Puerto Rico
or who had not visited in many years were not regarded as less “Mexican”
or “Puerto Rican” than anyone else. After learning of one’s Mexican or
Puerto Rican identity, students would often ask, “¿De qué parte?” (From
what part?). One’s response to this question was not interpreted literally as
a statement of birthplace but rather of ancestry. Students who were born
and raised in Chicago, including those who had never been to Mexico or
Puerto Rico, responded to this question by identifying particular Mexi-
can or Puerto Rican localities. The most common Mexican states students
identified were Michoacán, Jalisco, Guerrero, and Guanajuato; Puerto
Ricans named cities such as Ponce, Bayamon, and San Sebastián. While
there are no official statistics on the Mexican and Puerto Rican locali-
ties from which Chicago-based Latinas/os emigrate, previous research has
analyzed transnational relationships between Chicago and Michoacán,
Mexico (Farr, 2006), as well as Chicago and San Sebastián, Puerto Rico
(Pérez, 2004).
It is not by chance that students could be born in Chicago and still be
“from” Mexico or Puerto Rico. Various parts of Chicago, including areas
around NNHS, are formally and informally identified as “Little Puerto Rico”
or “Little Mexico”. “Paseo Boricua”(“Puerto Rican Promenade”), the stretch
of city blocks between the steel Puerto Rican flags described and pictured ear-
lier, is popularly referred to as “un pedacito de patria”, or “a little piece of the
homeland”. For many residents and visitors, including visitors from Puerto
Rico, Paseo Boricua is part of Puerto Rico. From these perspectives, Puerto
Rican restaurants, bakeries, music shops, hardware stores, schools, archi-
tecture, murals, parades, music, folklore, and festivals resituate Humboldt
Nuevo Chicago? 39
Park within the boundaries of Puerto Rico (Ramos-Zayas, 2003). Similar
kinds of formal designations exist in Mexican neighborhoods; for example,
La Villita or Little Village, the neighborhood referenced in one of the pictures
in Figure 2.4, has its own monument, a gateway that states “Bienvenidos a
Little Village” (“Welcome to Little Village”), on the South Side of Chicago
(De Genova, 2005). Puerto Rican and Mexican activists who participated
in the naming of these community areas sought to counter negative images
of and ideas about Puerto Ricans and Mexicans that circulate in popular
cultural representations, news media, and the everyday conversations of city
residents. These activists also attempted to encourage young Puerto Ricans
and Mexicans, who might otherwise be ashamed of their identities, to take
pride in their respective histories.
This reworking of geographical borders, in which parts of Chicago become
linked to Puerto Rico and Mexico, should be understood as a process of
deterritorialization and reterritorialization. While diaspora is often analyzed
as a phenomenon that is chiefly characterized by territorial displacement,
I seek to highlight here the ways that displacement is called into question
when social actors such as NNHS students reconstruct Chicago as part of
Puerto Rico and Mexico. The ritualized events and symbols described earlier,
in conjunction with extreme forms of neighborhood segregation, inform Chi-
cago Puerto Ricans’ and Mexicans’ remapping of national borders. In many
ways, by reframing spatial segregation, these forms of deterritorialization and
reterritorialization counteract forces of internal colonialism. That is, decades
of community struggle have allowed Chicago-based Puerto Ricans and Mexi-
cans to resist spatial, racial, and class exclusion. By laying claim to parts of
the city in which they dwell en masse, generations of Puerto Ricans and Mex-
icans valorize their national identities and the Chicago-based territories to
which they are understood to correspond. Such diasporic imaginaries demon-
strate students’ engagement with competing ideas about their identities and
unsettle straightforward narratives of assimilation and transnationalism.7
There were even situations in which borders constructed around particular
areas within the school and specific classrooms became playfully figured as
transnational spaces. In one freshman classroom, a group of Mexican stu-
dents sat together each day. They spoke English and Spanish in their interac-
tions with one another and with other students. One day in this classroom,
a Puerto Rican student who was not part of this group announced that he
needed to borrow a pencil from someone; when a Mexican student in the
aforementioned group offered to let him borrow one, the Puerto Rican stu-
dent jokingly suggested that he would have to cross the border in order to
get to her. She playfully responded by demanding that the Puerto Rican stu-
dent show his green card in order to approach her desk. Similarly, a group
of 12th-grade Puerto Rican students who ate lunch together referred to their
table as “Division and Cali”. This phrase is a reference to the Humboldt Park
intersection between Division Street and California Avenue where one of the
steel Puerto Rican flags pictured in Figure 2.4 can be found. In many ways,
40 Jonathan Rosa
the phrase “Division and Cali” is emblematic of Puerto Rican identity. Talk
of national borders, ethnoracially identified neighborhood areas, “papers”—
that is, US citizenship—and green cards was common in school interactions
and showed how students, the majority of whom were Chicago-born US citi-
zens, understood one another in relation to broader conceptions of Mexican-
ness and Puerto Ricanness. Thus, deterritorialization and reterritorialization
take place on multiple scales.
Despite these complicated in-group dynamics, out-group perspectives
often invoke presumptions of Latina/o homogeneity. These presumptions
rest on intuitions about a cultural quality of “Spanishness” that is associated
with music, food, and, most importantly, language; none of these exten-
sions of “Spanishness” existed to Latina/o students as straightforwardly
homogenized concepts. “Spanishness” is a particularly powerful emblem of
Latina/o identity. This highlights the ways that “Latina/o” is constructed as
a distinctly ethnolinguistic concept. The following section links the diasporic
remapping of national borders analyzed earlier to the remapping of ethno-
linguistic borders and the construction of panethnic Latina/o identities.
CONSTRUCTING SPANISH AND ENGLISH AS SIGNS OF

MEXICAN, PUERTO RICAN, AND LATINA/O IDENTITIES
While one might assume that the Spanish language is a ready-made vehi-
cle for the creation of Latina/o ethnolinguistic identities, Spanish in fact
becomes a prime ideological site in which to locate Mexican–Puerto Rican
difference. Students learned to do impressions of Mexican and Puerto Rican
Spanish and became acutely aware of the ideologies surrounding these dif-
ferent varieties. In the school’s Spanish language classes, these ideologies
often took the form of playful lexical debates about the correct word for
objects such as socks (Mexican: calcetines, Puerto Rican: medias), drinking
straw (Mexican: popote, Puerto Rican: sorbeto), and cake (Mexican: pastel,
Puerto Rican: bizcocho). At times, students delighted in teaching each other
different Mexican and Puerto Rican words. This was especially the case
when a given word meant something very different in Mexican and Puerto
Rican Spanish, such as the last example above, in which “bizcocho” means
“cake” for Puerto Ricans but for Mexicans is a vulgar way of referring
to female genitalia. On other occasions, Puerto Rican students complained
that particular Spanish-language teachers privileged Mexican Spanish over
Puerto Rican Spanish. For many students, Mexican Spanish was stereotyped
as more “correct” than Puerto Rican Spanish because stereotypical Mexican
forms often corresponded more closely to those found in Spanish-language
textbooks and mainstream Spanish-language popular media.
When I asked Carlos (Mex, Gen. 2, Gr. 9)8 to compare Mexican and
Puerto Rican Spanish, he initially communicated an egalitarian perspective,
simply claiming that every Latino national subgroup has its own variety of
Nuevo Chicago? 41
Spanish. He pointed to my paleto-velar pronunciation of /r/ as /l/ in the word
/verdad/ (really) as an example of how Puerto Rican and Mexican Spanish
differ. Upon further questioning, Carlos went on to say that Mexican Span-
ish is probably a little bit better than Puerto Rican Spanish because it is more
correct. He said that he knows this because Mexican Spanish is the variety
taught in NNHS language classes and the variety spoken on television and
on the radio. On the other hand, he also joked with me about the fact that
he had only recently learned from friends at NNHS that words such as “ché-
vere” (cool/awesome) and “bochinche” (gossip) are in fact Puerto Rican,
not Mexican Spanish terms.9 These categorizations of phonological pat-
terns and lexical items as Mexican and Puerto Rican demonstrate students’
investment in the Spanish language as a sign of intra-Latina/o difference.
Like Carlos, most students viewed Mexican Spanish as more standard
than Puerto Rican Spanish. At the same time, they also invoked stereotypes
that positioned Puerto Rican Spanish as “cooler” than Mexican Spanish. As
evidence, they pointed out that stereotypical Puerto Rican phonology, lexical
items, and syntactic constructions often corresponded more closely to forms
heard in popular reggaeton songs.10 These stereotypes were fodder for debates
between Puerto Rican and Mexican students about what cultural and linguis-
tic practices constitute an ideal panethnic Latina/o identity (Urciuoli, 2008).
While ideas about the Spanish language figured centrally in the
construction of identity within NNHS, there was also a strong investment
in speaking what was ideologically constructed as “unaccented” English.
Students often performed exaggerated impersonations of school employees’
pronunciations of English words with Spanish accents. Ms. Lopez, a Puerto
Rican support staff member, was a frequent target of students’ linguistic
derision. A student-created Facebook group titled “You know you went 2
NNHS when . . .” included postings such as, “You know you went to NNHS
when you cant understand a damn thing Ms. Lopez says!!! Hahahaha” and
“when you had 3 yrs of Spanish and you still cant understand Ms. Lopez”.
Ms. Lopez generally spoke to students in English, so the joke here is that even
though students possessed English and Spanish comprehension skills, they
still could not understand Ms. Lopez. The same students who valued Span-
ish language skills in some contexts disparaged particular Spanish accents
depending on the situation. Spanish language skills were valuable only inas-
much as they did not interfere with one’s ability to speak unmarked English.
These ideas positioned people, such as Ms. Lopez, as objects of students’
ridicule. This embrace of mainstream ideologies of accent (Urciuoli, 1998)
demonstrates the hegemony of monoglot Standard English ideologies in the
context of US schools. Whereas Mexican and Puerto students distinguished
between one another in terms of Spanish language use, they created shared
identities in relation to these ideas about English.
NNHS students valued the ability to speak “unaccented” English at the
same time that they were invested in the significance of Mexican and Puerto
Rican varieties of Spanish. The felt need to speak “unaccented” English
42 Jonathan Rosa
and manifest one’s Latina/o identity by referencing Spanish presented Mexi-
can and Puerto Rican students with the paradoxical task of signaling their
Latina/o identities by always coming across as if they could speak Spanish
while speaking English, but never letting too much “Spanish” seep into their
“English”. What linguistic materials might allow them to negotiate these
competing demands?
ENREGISTERING LATINA/O LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY:

INVERTED SPANGLISH AS A PANETHNIC EMBLEM
NNHS students responded to the paradoxical demand that they demon-

strate their ability to speak Spanish in English without being heard to pos-
sess an accent by enregistering (Agha, 2007; Silverstein, 2003) forms of
language that signaled their intimate relationship with Spanish and their
ability to produce “unaccented” English. They enregistered conventional
and hyper-anglicized English phonology on the one hand with in-group
and out-group Spanish lexical items and phrases on the other. Importantly,
enregisterment must not be understood simply as a linguistic process; it
simultaneously renders visible panethnic Latina/o identities and linguis-
tic practices. I call this register formation “Inverted Spanglish” because it
involves both a lexico-phonological inversion by combing Spanish lexical
items and English phonology and an ethnolinguistic inversion by signaling
neither Puerto Ricanness nor Mexicanness but a US Latina/o ethnolinguistic
identity through the use of particular Spanish and English forms.
In Example 1, Victor (Mex/PR, Gen. 3, Gr. 11) produces an Inverted
Spanglish11 usage in one of my interviews with him:
Example 1
JR: Does your birth mom speak Spanish?
V: Yeah.
JR: What kind of Spanish does she speak?
V: Regular Spanish, like she just learned it from Ingles sin Barreras
[/ɪnɡleɪs sin bʌɹɛɹʌs/] (Spanish, [[/ɪnɡleɪs sin bʌɹɛɹʌs/] sin bareiɾas],
“Inglés sin Barreras”, “English without Barriers”)
JR: And how is that regular Spanish?
V: To me, that’s like a new breed thing right there. But my mom
talks Spanish, she sound like a Mexican.
JR: Okay.
V: But my step-dad sounds like Puerto Rican when you hear him talk
Spanish.
Victor references “Inglés sin Barreras”, an English language-learning

course that is often advertised on Spanish-language television channels. By
Nuevo Chicago? 43
pronouncing “Inglés sin Barreras” with English phonology, with potentially
the most noticeable difference being his use of the English alveolar approxi-
mant /ɹ/ in the place of the Spanish trill /r/ and tap /ɾ/ in “Barreras”, Victor
jokingly suggested that his mother speaks generic Spanish like the variety
spoken in the commercials for Inglés sin Barreras. This indexicality requires
Latina/o in-group knowledge of language and culture.
NNHS students also used written forms of Inverted Spanglish. Mayra
(Mex, Gen. 1.5, Gr. 11) showed me a notebook in which she and her friends
wrote jokes to one another. The words “pink cheese, green ghosts, cool
arrows”, which when read aloud sound like the Spanish, “pinches grin-
gos culeros”, in other words, fucking American (or White) assholes, were
written largely across one of the pages of her notebook. Mayra told me
that she and her friends loved to trick their favorite White, monolingual
English-speaking teachers into reading this out loud in front of the class.
In this case, Inverted Spanglish takes the form of a coded message in which
Spanish words are disguised as English graphemes. The written forms are
intended to be pronounced with English phonology and the humor is derived
from non-Latinas’/os’ inability to recognize—at least at first glance—that
these written English forms correspond to Spanish words when spoken
aloud. Despite the surface appearance of aggression in this particular exam-
ple, I saw students engage in this sort of public practice only with teachers
around whom they felt the most comfortable.
Other Inverted Spanglish usages consisted of hyper-anglicized pronun-
ciations of widely understood Spanish words in the course of English-
dominant interactions. These tokens of Inverted Spanglish involved
neither intimate Spanish vulgarities nor private conversations. In one case,
a teacher began the day in a sophomore study skills classroom by ask-
ing students to remind her of the date. One student yelled out, “Novem-
ber cuatro” [/kwɒtɹoʊ/] (Spanish, /kwatɾo/, “cuatro”, “four”). Later in the
class, another student responded to the teacher’s request for a volunteer to
answer a question on a worksheet: “I’ve got the answer to numero tres”
[numɝɹoʊ tɹeɪs] (Spanish, [numeɾo tɾeis], “numero tres, number three).
These usages, which involve Spanish words that are familiar to many non-
Latinas/os, more directly parody the speech of Whites and others who might
know and use basic Spanish words such as “tres” and “cuatro”. The parodic
nature of this language use is signaled by the students’ hyper-anglicized
pronunciations, which in effect mock Americanized pronunciations of
Spanish words. These examples suggest that Inverted Spanglish is a way in
which US Latinas/os respond to what Hill (1998) calls “Mock Spanish”
usages, which involve non-Latinas’/os’ incorporation of “Spanish-language
materials into English in order to create a jocular or pejorative key” (Hill,
1998, p. 682). Similar to Zentella’s (2003) and Mason Carris’s (2011)
accounts of Latinas/os using mock language practices to parody the speech
of Whites, Latina/o students at NNHS flipped the script on Mock Spanish
by using Inverted Spanglish to mock non-Latina/o Spanish language use.
44 Jonathan Rosa
The enregisterment of particular language forms referred to here as
Inverted Spanglish downplays Mexican–Puerto Rican difference, thus creat-
ing a linguistic emblem of Latina/o panethnicity. Whereas Spanish is a sign
of Puerto Rican-Mexican difference and unmarked American English is
a sign of Whiteness, Inverted Spanglish is a sign of US Latina/o paneth-
nicity. At the same time, Inverted Spanglish represents students’ satirical
response to Dr. Baez’s project of transforming their identities. Inasmuch as
the aforementioned category of “young Latino professional” attempts to
balance assimilation and cultural identity maintenance, Inverted Spanglish
is, it would seem, students’ playful way of saying, “we get it”. Inverted
Spanglish indexes not only the fashioning of panethnic Latina/o identities
but also the principal’s project of socialization within NNHS.
CONCLUSION
It is not by chance that the creation of linguistic emblems of Latina/o pan-

ethnicity would take place in an urban context such as Chicago. The city’s
sociohistorical dynamics uniquely position it as a producer of emblems of
panethnic Latina/o identities that are composed of elements associated
with the nation’s most populous Latina/o subgroups, Mexicans and Puerto
Ricans. By creatively forging diasporic identities through the reterritorializa-
tion of Chicago as part of Puerto Rico and Mexico, Chicago-based Latinas/
os respond to the forms of spatial, racial, and class exclusion with which
they are continually faced. The linguistic corollary of this diasporic reter-
ritorialization can be seen in the enregisterment of language practices such
as Inverted Spanglish, which maps the US onto Spanish linguistic forms and
Latina/o panethnicity onto English linguistic forms. Inverted Spanglish is just
one example of a linguistic emblem of Latina/o panethnicity. This chapter
has sought to illustrate spatial-diasporic and ethnolinguistic elements of pan-
ethnic category-making processes, with the ultimate goal of demonstrating
how Chicago becomes a central site for imagining and experiencing Latina/o
panethnicity.
NOTES
1. In this chapter I use “Hispanic” and “Latina/o” interchangeably to refer to

US–based persons of Latin American descent. This is how the terms were used
among the research participants in the ethnographic setting that I analyze later
in the chapter.
2. The names of the school and all research participants are pseudonyms to pro-
tect anonymity.
3. Almost all of the school’s non-Latina/o students are African American.
4. Throughout the United States, “Latina/o” is variously ethnicized and racialized
in relation to categories such as “White”, “Black”, “Asian”, and “Native
Nuevo Chicago? 45
American”. In the context of my research, Latina/o was constructed as a dis-
tinctively non-White racial category. This means that even very light-skinned
Latina/o students who might be viewed as White in other contexts were seen
as non-White in NNHS and its surrounding communities.
5. Elsewhere (Rosa, 2010), I argue that Dr. Baez’s notion of “young Latino
professional” is a complex bureaucratic strategy that reflects alignment with
Chicago Public Schools policy while also creating a space for alternative con-
structions and enactments of Latina/o identity within NNHS.
6. These items range from flags, clothing, and beach towels adorned with
Puerto Rican symbols to cooking utensils and food associated with Puerto
Rican cuisine.
7. Importantly, these modes of identification erase the heterogeneity internal to
the categories of “Mexican” and “Puerto Rican”. In contexts that are either
predominantly Mexican or Puerto Rican, labels that distinguish between
types of Mexicans or types of Puerto Ricans on grounds such as perceived
degree of US assimilation are much more prevalent.
8. Students are coded using abbreviations of self-ascribed Latina/o national
subgroup categories such as “Mexican” (Mex) and “Puerto Rican” (PR),
as well as generation cohort with respect to (im)migration and grade year in
school. For example:
Pedro (PR, Gen. 3, Gr. 10)

Name (self-ascribed identity, immigration cohort, grade year)
Generation 1: born and raised outside of the US mainland until the age
of 12 or older
Generation 1.5: born outside of the US mainland but raised within the US
mainland before the age of 12
Generation 2: born and raised within the US mainland by parents who
were born and raised outside of the US mainland
Generation 3: born and raised within the US mainland by parents who
were born and raised within the US mainland
I use the phrase “US mainland” to distinguish between the continental United
States and its territories and possessions; Puerto Rico is an unincorporated
US territory. Thus, someone born in Puerto Rico is born “outside of the US
mainland”. This allows for a unified designation for people born in Puerto
Rico or anywhere else in Latin America.
9. It is important to emphasize that these distinctions between Spanish lan-
guage forms as Mexican or Puerto Rican reflect ideological investments in
Mexican-Puerto Rican difference rather than objective linguistic facts about
different varieties of Spanish. The very notion that “Mexican Spanish” and
“Puerto Rican Spanish” are homogeneous language varieties involves the
erasure of infinite linguistic differences in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and their
respective diasporas.
10. Stereotypes linking Puerto Rican Spanish and reggaeton, a musical genre
with Spanish/Spanglish lyrics, Afro-Latin American/Caribbean/hip-hop
influences, and predominantly Puerto Rican artists, are tied to the broader
coconstruction of Puerto Ricanness and Blackness. In Chicago, this cocon-
struction is reflected in the stereotype that Puerto Rican Spanish is analogous
to “Black English”. Each of these language varieties is stereotyped as “cool”,
yet incorrect. In this context, both Mexican Spanish and “White English” are
often stereotyped as correct, yet uncool.
46 Jonathan Rosa
11. Inverted Spanglish usages are bolded, italicized, and followed by phonetic
transcriptions in brackets. The corresponding Spanish versions of these usages
are also presented with Spanish phonology, written with Spanish orthography,
and translated into English. For example: numero tres [numɝɹoʊ tɹeɪs]
(Spanish, [numeɾo tɾeis], “numero tres”, number three)
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3 Language Ideologies and
Practices in a Transnational
Community
Spanish-Language Radio and Latino
Identities in the US
Anna De Fina
INTRODUCTION
Globalization has radically transformed the way we live, conceive of ourselves,

and communicate by opening up the world’s frontiers to the movement
of goods, ideas, and people (see Appadurai, 1996; Coupland, 2003; Fair-
clough, 2006). One of the most important effects of globalization has been
the heightened centrality of transnationalism (Vertovec, 2009), as not only
do people move more often and in higher numbers from one geographical
area to another, but they are also afforded greater opportunities to maintain
contacts with their places of origin. Thus, members of transnational com-
munities often “become involved in the chronic maintenance” (Rouse, 2004,
p. 30) of different worlds, a process fraught with ambiguities and contradic-
tions. Indeed, while languages and identities are traditionally defined in main-
stream discourses in either/or terms, the experience of transnational people
is always one of in-betweenness. Recent research on transnational and new
urban communities points indeed to widespread tendencies toward the incor-
poration of notions of diversity in their everyday practices (see Blommaert &
Rampton, 2011) as a result of continued contact and interaction. Thus, peo-
ple in situations where movement across different geographical areas and/or
contact with other ethnicities and languages are the norm tend to creatively
incorporate diversity in their everyday lives, navigating between old and new
identity categories and conflicting language ideologies. With this background
in mind, this chapter focuses on the investigation of one transnational com-
munity: a Spanish-language radio station in the greater Washington, DC, area
and its participants, both listeners and practitioners. The analysis centers on
how language practices reveal and, at the same time, construct transnational
identities and how they relate to both dominant and locally invoked language
ideologies. While underlying ideologies often indicate the acceptance of ste-
reotypical conceptions about the role of Spanish and English in US society,
language practices index more complex and contradictory realities. Thus,
language ideologies and practices in radio broadcasting are seen here as nodal
Language Ideologies and Practices in a Transnational Community 49
points in the study of the evolving identities of the Latino community in the
area. Data for this chapter come from about 8 hours of recordings of differ-
ent kinds of broadcasting from the Spanish-speaking Radio Station El Zol
107.9 FM. In the next section, I provide some data on the presence of Latin
Americans in the greater Washington area, describe El Zol, and discuss the
impact of radio broadcasting on Latinos in the US.
RADIO EL ZOL AND THE LATINO PRESENCE IN THE

WASHINGTON AREA
The Latin American population in the Washington area has experienced an

accelerated growth in the last two decades. According to census data sum-
marized by the government (see District of Columbia State Data Center),
the Hispanic1 population in the District of Columbia area grew by 21.8%
from 2000 to 2010, increasing from 44,953 in 2000 to 54,749 in 2010.
Thus, in 2010, Hispanics comprised 9.1% of the total population in the
DC area. The two largest groups are represented by Salvadorans (30%) and
Mexicans (15.5%). Roughly half of this population is foreign born. There
are 11 listed Spanish-language stations in the area (see Lazo, 2008), but the
only one broadcasting in FM is El Zol.
EL Zol was launched in 2005. Classified as a “tropical music” station, it
is currently owned by CBS Radio Corporation and represents its first Spanish-
language radio. According to Lazo (2008), El Zol is the only station in the
area with a marketwide signal, and it captures 3.7% of the radio market. In
2005, El Zol was rated at number 7 out of 49 ranked radio stations in the
Washington/Baltimore area (Wiltz, 2005), and its audience has been calcu-
lated at around 500,000 for the most popular programs (Thomas-Lester,
2010). El Zol exemplifies the more general phenomenon of the growth of
Spanish-language radio in the US. Indeed, recent calculations (see Guskin
& Mitchell, 2012) indicate that radio broadcasting among both English-
dominant and Spanish-dominant listeners is still very popular among Lati-
nos in the US, as it reaches between 95% and 97% of the adult population,
depending on gender and age.
El Zol’s main programming consists of music. The radio broadcasts
a variety of Latin American musical genres such as salsa, merengue, bachata,
cumbia, and regaetton. However, programming also includes a popular
morning show, Pedro Biaggi en la mañana (Pedro Biaggi in the Morning),
and several call-in shows.
LANGUAGE PRACTICES, IDEOLOGIES, AND IDENTITIES
Language ideologies and language practices are seen in this chapter as closely
linked with the construction of identities in that they represent respectively
50 Anna De Fina
widely shared ideas on how people’s use of language defines who they are
and concrete ways of constructing identities in actual communication. While
language practices are ways of using languages embedded within other
communicative practices that characterize radio broadcasting, language
ideologies are more or less conscious conceptions about the role that different
languages and their speakers play in society and sets of values connected with
those. As noted by Woolard and Schieffelin (1994, p. 53), definitions of lan-
guage ideologies vary from regarding them as rationalizations of people’s beliefs
about language structure and use (Silverstein, 1979) to presenting them as
commonsense and rather implicit ideas about language that stem from habitus
(Bourdieu, 1977). These include evaluations of linguistic structures or forms
as “good” or “bad” but also language-based evaluations of the behavior, char-
acteristics, and intentions of individuals and groups. Language ideologies are
sometimes openly referred to, but often they implicitly underlie social practices
and discourses and invite indexical associations between linguistic and social
phenomena. Language practices may be functional or contradictory of specific
ideologies, and it is through this interplay between practices and ideologies
that identities are created and negotiated. Identities are seen in this chapter
in social constructionist terms (see De Fina, Schiffrin, & Bamberg, 2006) as
stemming from social practices in that it is within concrete doings that people
convey, negotiate, and construct different kinds of identities.
ENGLISH, SPANISH, AND LATINO IDENTITIES IN THE US
El Zol’s choice of Spanish as the language of broadcasting cannot be divorced

from its construction of an identity as a voice for the Latino community in the
area, an identity to which the radio attributes an absolutely central role. As
discussed in detail elsewhere (see De Fina, 2013), it presents itself as a repre-
sentative of the Latino community through a number of implicit and explicit
strategies that include the use of the label “Latino” as a positive qualifier for
products and services offered or advertised and the ubiquitous use of terms
such as “nuestra comunidad” (“our community”) or “nuestra raza” (“our
race”) to refer or to appeal to the audience. I have also argued that such
a community is construed as including all people of Latin American origin
and therefore as pan-Latina, through the stress on common traits and the
corresponding underplaying of differences. The strategies employed to create
this pan-Latino ideal include the broadcasting of news from all over Latin
America and the creation of routines in which every Latin American country
is equally celebrated by audience members and hosts. I have also shown that,
through its commercials and kind of programming, El Zol privileges specific
traits of the Latino audience. Indeed, the audience is depicted as consisting
of individuals who are first-generation immigrants with strong transnational
ties to their countries of origin who therefore are not yet fully integrated into
US society. The choice of Spanish as the language of the radio is completely
functional to such identity construction. Indeed, choosing Spanish over
English in the media and elsewhere can rarely be perceived as a decision of
no consequence in the US, since, as noted by many (see, for example, Urcioli,
1996; Zentella, 1995), Spanish language “is racialized to be an iconic marker
of Latino ethnic identity” (Barrett, 2006, p. 163) and is regarded as such also
by Latinos in the US (see Taylor, Lopez, Martínez, & Velazco, 2013).
Mainstream language ideologies in the US are marked by Hispanophobia,
as shown by the many attempts to institute English-only policies in US states.
According to Potowski and Carreira (2010), “as of 2007, twenty-one states
have laws declaring English an official language. In many cases, it was the
presence of Spanish speakers that prompted the legislation in the first place”
(p. 71). According to more recent figures this number has increased to 27
(Crawford, 2012). Spanish is connected, in xenophobic and anti-immigrant
discourse, to a lack of integration into US society (De Fina & King, 2011;
Haviland, 2003), while English competency and English monolingualism
in particular are often taken as proxies for immigrant integration and suc-
cess (García, 1995; Linton, 2009). For these reasons and as a reaction to
these discourses, Spanish has been embraced by many Latin Americans as
an index of positive ethnic affiliation (see Leeman & Martinez, 2007), and
its use in the media is connected with ethnic solidarity (Dávila 2012; Rodrí-
guez, 1999). Furthermore, Spanish has also become a commodity as Latinos
are seen and targeted as an important emerging market for the sale of goods
and services.
Within this background, the choice of Spanish as the main medium of El
Zol is therefore functional to the fostering of the radio’s identity as repre-
senting the Latino community and of the constructed identity of the audience
as constituting a minority still not fully accepted in the country. References
to this image (and therefore the acceptance of an ideological positioning
of Spanish as a marker of ethnicity) can be found in many commercials in
which the audience is represented as Spanish speaking rather than bilingual.
See the following advertising for a cellular phone Internet plan.2
Example (1)
01. (. . . .) pregunta por el plan con INternet llamadas y mensajes de
texto
02. ilimitados en todo el país por solo cincuenta dÓlares al mes,
03. y para los que quieren estar conectados con su gente escuchen esto (.)
04. con go phone puedes enviar mensaje de texto ilimitado a México y
a más
05. de CiEn paIses!
06. No::: espEREs más y sal corriendo ahora mismo para la tienda mÁs
07. cercana de AT&T hablan tu idioma y te atenderán como te lo
merEces!
08. At&T piEnsa sin límites!
52 Anna De Fina
Translation
01. (. . . .) ask for the INternet plan unlimited calls and text messages
throughout
02. the country for only fifty DOllars a month,
03. and for those who want to stay in touch with their people listen to
this (.)
04. with go phone you can send unlimited text messages to all of Mexico
and to more
05. than ONE hundred countries!
06. Do::: n’t wAIt any longer and run right now to the closest AT&T
store they
07. speak your language and they will treat you as you deserve!
08. AT&T thinks without limits!
(Pedro Biaggi en la mañana, March, 12, 2013)
As we can see in this advertisement, the typical member of the audience is

constructed as both transnational and monolingual (or at least more com-
fortable) in Spanish. The person seeking this phone plan wants to keep in
touch with relatives and friends in the country of origin (line 03; which can
be Mexico or more than 100 other countries; see line 05), but s/he is also
supposed to be encouraged to go to AT&T because in that store her/his
language (Spanish) is spoken and s/he will be treated as s/he deserves. Lines
06 and 07 imply that the target audience has a preference for speaking Span-
ish (indexically referred to as his/her language), but it may also be taken as
subtly referring to the possibility of less-than-satisfactory treatment in other
stores. Interpretations are of course open here, but it is possible that the text
may also be implying that Spanish-speaking people are not treated well in
stores because of their being Latinos. Thus, underlying this advertisement
is a strong association of the Latino audience with the Spanish language.
LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES AND LANGUAGE PRACTICES

ON THE RADIO
The ideal of a Spanish-speaking Latino community represented in the

previous advertisement, however, comes into conflict with actual discourse
practices on the radio, which include not only a great deal of code-switching
and mixing but also translations from one language to the other in songs
and commercials and the presence of both languages (with somewhat dif-
ferent functions) on the website. First, hosts often code-switch from Spanish
into English. Such code-switches may have specific communicative func-
tions. Tseng (2011) noted, for example, that in the bilingual radio that she
studied, code-switching in the talk of hosts happened in conjunction with
closing utterances in specific radio genres and thus indexed the ending of
a segment. Examples of functional code-switching are common also in El
Zol. For example, Pedro Biaggi, one of the most popular hosts, uses code-
switching to create a kind of “signature utterance”. He pronounces the
utterance “I love it” in English so often that it has become a kind of style sig-
nature for him. See the following exchange between him and another host:
Example (2)
01 PB: Tendremos boletos, Reyna!
02: R: Boletos para que::::!
03: B: Para el show the GeOrge Lopez! se viene para WAshington DC.
02 R: That’s ni::ce!
03 PB: I love it!
Translation
01 PB: We will have tickets, Reyna!
02: R: Tickets for wha::::t!
03: PB: For the GeOrge Lopez show! He is coming to WAshington DC.
02 R: That’s ni::ce!
03 PB: I love it!
(Pedro Biaggi en la mañana, February 1, 2012)
Notice that the code-switch is initiated by Reyna, who responds to Pedro’s

utterance in Spanish with an utterance in English. Depending on each host’s
preference for and command of English and Spanish, the form and amount
of presence of English in an utterance may vary a great deal. Some hosts,
like Diamond Boy Luis (the main speaker in the following example), show
a marked tendency to use a style in which English and Spanish are so freely
mixed and alternated that they can hardly be seen as separate codes. See the
following fragment in which Diamond Boy Luis promotes the sale of tickets
for a show. (Ch. in the transcript refers to a chorus of voices.)
Example (3)
01 DB: El zol 107.9 Dj explosive rocking la mexcla the kid is on FIRE today
02 >U:::::::hh!<
03 Ch. Ye::::::::
04 ven estamos activados para tu week end!
((a few seconds not transcribed))
05 ((. . .)) hoy buscando la llamada numero nueve right now al uno ochocientos tres
06 veintiuno noventa y cuatro treinta y siete I am gonna hook you up con un >par<
07 de boletos para que vayas a ver a Jennifer Lopez y Enrique Iglesisas EN
08 COncierto, márcalo right nOw one eight hundred three two one ninety four
09 thirty seven eso es uno ochocientos tres veintiuno noventa y cuatro treinta y siete,
10 la llamada número nueve se lo llEva y mientras tanto explosive job aquí!
11 let’s keep it going aquí en el traffic jam mix por el zol 107.9 let’s >go!
54 Anna De Fina
Translation
01 DB: El zol 107.9 Dj explosive rocking the mix the kid is on FIRE today
02 >U:::::::hh!<
03 Ch. Ye::::::::
04 come we are activated for your weekend!
(( a few seconds not transcribed))
05 ((. . .)) today waiting for call number 9 right now at one eight hundred three
06 twenty one ninety four thirty seven I am gonna hook you up with a>couple< of
07 tickets for you to go and see Jennifer Lopez and Enrique Iglesisas IN COncert,
08 call right nOw one eight hundred three two one ninety four thirty seven that
09 is one eight hundred three twenty one ninety four thirty seven,
10 call number nine gets it and meanwhile explosive job here
11 let’s keep it going here in the traffic jam mix in el zol 107.9 let’s >go!
(Diamond boy show July 6, 2012).
As shown above in Diamond Boy’s talk, languages cannot be neatly sepa-

rated in as much as English words and expressions flow into Spanish and
vice versa, indexing, on the one hand, a completely bilingual persona while
implying, on the other, an audience that dominates both languages with
equal fluency. He can be best described as “translanguaging” (García, 2009;
Li, 2011), in the sense that he is creatively using all the linguistic resources
available to him.
Language choice has certainly to do with the hosts’ individual preferences,
but mixing is also very common on El Zol’s website and in the commercials
that are broadcast, indicating that this radio station, as a commercial entity,
has incorporated hybrid linguistic practices as part of its routine. See the
following advertisement for an electronic magazine:
Example (4)
01 ((underlying music)) Que está happening magazine!
02 your source for ALL latin music and culture in the DC area!
03 recibe la revista a tu casa complETAmente gratis,
04 grAtis!
05 sólo entra a que esta magazine.com,
06 esto es ((spelling)) q a e ese a magazine punto com,
07 entérate de todos los conciertos y eventos del área,
08 las mejore discotecas→
09 reasturantes→
10 what’s hot in style,
11 fashion!
12 eventos locales,
13 chances para ganar tickets a los mejores conciertos,
14 your source for all latin music and culture in the DC area!
15 entra ya a que esta magazine punto com!
Translation
01 ((music underneath voice)) What is happening magazine!
02 your source for ALL latin music and culture in the DC area!
03 get the magazine in your home complETEly free,
04 frEE!
05 just click on que está dot com,
06 that is ((spelling)) q e s e a magazine dot com,
07 find out about all the concerts and events in the area,
08 the best discos→
09 reasturants,
10 what’s hot in style,
11 fashion,
12 local events
13 opportunities to win tickets to the best concerts,
14 your source for all latin music and culture in the DC area!
15 click now on que esta magazine dot com!
(Diamond Boy show, February 1, 2012)
This advertisement is illustrative of the same style of translanguaging that

we saw in the case of Diamond Boy. Here English and Spanish cannot be neatly
separated, and rather than constituting different codes, they seem to constitute
resources through which messages are constructed. Indeed, the name of the
magazine is already a mixture of Spanish “que está” (“what is”) and English
“happening,” and then English and Spanish utterances alternate in much the
same way, creating a message in which they become rather indistinguishable.
Spanish and English also appear together on the website, where shows
by singers are advertised in Spanish, but utterances such as “follow us”
below the Twitter logo and “become a fan” below the Facebook logo are
in English. Also in English are advertisements for hotel deals and for CBS
alerts. In the case of the website, usage of English or Spanish may hint at
different target audiences with different language preferences or to one tar-
get audience that is younger and bilingual.
In sum, linguistic practices point to a total acceptance of bilingualism as
a possible trait of both the Latino audience and the Latino radio and rec-
ognition of the diversity of such Latino audience. However, the ideological
association between Latin American varieties of Spanish and ethnic Latino
identity is very strong not only in much of the advertising and in the use
of Spanish as the base language of the station but also in the implicit and
explicit attitudes of show hosts toward the two languages. It is to the analy-
sis of such attitudes that I want to turn now.
Implicit associations between Latino identity and the use of Spanish
underlie the following stances adopted by some of the hosts: displaying irony
toward unaccented English while accepting Spanish-accented English and
correcting the Spanish of radio hosts who seem to be English dominant. Let
56 Anna De Fina
me first clarify what I mean by accented and unaccented English and Span-
ish. Some radio hosts’ speech in English is marked by traits that are regarded
as typifying a Spanish accent in English (see Hong, Alwan, Kazemzadeh, &
Narayanan, 2012). Among these traits is a tendency to prefix a [ɛ] sound
in words beginning with a consonant cluster starting with /s/, the rendering
as [s] of both /s/ and /z/ sounds, the simplification of many consonant clus-
ters, and the elimination of the distinction between short and long vowels.
Other hosts speak locally accented varieties of American English without
any influence from Spanish phonology.
Let us consider the following exchange between Pedro Biaggi, one of the
most popular morning commentators, his colleague DJ, and a third col-
league (whom I will call Juan given that his name was not mentioned) who
reports on traffic in the city. We need to note that Pedro Biaggi has a Spanish
accent when he speaks English. For example, he pronounces his signature
phrase “I love it” as [aɪ lov it] rather than as [aɪ lʌv ɪt ]. Juan, on the other
hand, has no Spanish accent when he speaks English and indeed he pro-
nounces all the names of the roads with a native US accent:
Example (5)
01 J: (. . .) Paciencia porque necesitamos esto en el lado de Pikesville Maryland el
02 tráfico en el área esta bumper to bumper por un accidente en la 695 en el
03 outerloop entre la 595 y la 740 con retrasos de 10 minutos!
04 retrasos en el lado de Kensington Ma[ryland,
05 PB: [(..) Pero dÍ Kensington en español por
06 favor!
07 DJ: KensigtÓN!
08 PB: Ah ok![@@@@
09 J: [Por un accidente en la Newport cerquita de la Veirs Mill RoaD, se
10 reporta un accidente en Bailey Crossing Virginia en la Columbia Pike lado
11 oeste antes de la ruta 7.
12 PB: Con razón la gente no entiende cuáles son los problemas porque tu dices
13 estas cosas en inglés@@@
14 mira este!
15 por esto que te castigamos cada vez que @podemos no te vamos a ((dejar
16 pasar))@@@!
Translation
01 J: (. . .) Patience because we need that on the side of Pikesville Maryland
02 traffic in the area is bumper to bumper because of an accident in 695 in the
03 outerloop between 595 y 740 with 10 minutes delays !
04 delays on the side of Kensington Ma[ryland,
05 PB: [(..) But say Kensington in Spanish
06 please!
07 DJ: KensigtÓN!
08 PB: Ah ok![@@@@
09 J: [due to an accident in Newport close to Veirs Mill Road, an accident is
10 reported in Bailey Crossing Virginia on Columbia Pike on the west side
11 before route 7.
12 PB: That’s why people do not understand what the problems are because you say all
13 these things in English!@@@
14 look at this guy!
15 that is why we punish you every time that we @can we are not going to
16 ((let you through)@@@!
In his traffic report, Juan goes smoothly from Spanish, which is the base
language of the entire fragment, into English, clearly pronouncing all the
names and numbers of roads and main traffic points in English without any
Spanish-influenced trait. He also uses English for some expressions related
to traffic such as “bumper to bumper” (line 02). All of this is unsurprising,
given that he is using the specialized language of traffic reporting. However,
PB starts making fun of the way he pronounces the word Kensington (name
of a district in Washington; line 05–06), telling him that he should say it
in Spanish). DJ aligns with him, pronouncing Kensington as if it had a
final accent, thus stylizing a native Spanish speaker pronouncing the name
(line 07). After this, PB pretends to be satisfied and starts laughing (line 08).
Juan does not react but continues to read the traffic news in the same style
that he has been employing until he finishes his turn (lines 09–11). At that
point, PB makes fun of him, openly noting that, because he speaks so much
English, people do not understand “what the problems are” (lines 12–14).
He continues to make fun for the next two utterances as signaled by his
laughter during and at the end of the turn (lines 16). It is to be noticed
that PB does use English (as we have seen in his exchange with Reyna in
example (2)), so it is very likely that his reaction is related to the extent
to which his colleague is code-mixing and to his accent in English, espe-
cially given that PB’s own English accent is influenced by his Spanish. We
can conclude that PB is doing delicate identity work here: by signaling his
rejection of his colleague’s use of English and by claiming that people will
not understand him, he is aligning with an ideal audience who identifies
with Spanish rather than with English. Thus, he is projecting a traditional
Latino persona (but see De Fina, 2013, for a more in depth discussion of
this example).
NEGOTIATING LANGUAGE VARIETIES IN

DIALOGIC INTERACTION
Another way in which this kind of alignment is built by hosts on the radio
is through minimization of their ability to speak English. Besides promoting
58 Anna De Fina
a language ideology that identifies Spanish with Latino identity, the radio
also appears to subscribe to a view of English as a tool for success in work
and life that is amply present in mainstream ideologies about migration (see
García, 1995; Linton, 2009).
Indeed, advertising for the English course Rosetta Stone is amply pres-
ent in the station’s broadcasts, and Rosetta Stone is openly commercialized
as a tool for success. In the same spirit, hosts strive to “educate” their
audience in English. During 2009, the hosts of Suéltalo el show broadcast
a segment called “Aprendiendo inglés” (learning English), whose objective
was precisely to teach English to the audience. This is demonstrated in the
fragment below. Audience members were invited to call in and propose
a word or expression that the hosts had to translate in order for the audi-
ence to learn it.
The participants here are the hosts: Jota Ere (JR), Hiernandi (H), and Rey
Parker (RP), and callers (C). Ch. refers to a chorus of voices.
Example (6)
01 JR: En este momento vamos con la sección (.)
02 nada más y nada menos que (.)
03 está dando de qué hablar,
04 la sección que está educando a nuestros oyentes
05 es (.)
06 Rey Parker,
07 la sección dice de esta manera.
08 Ch APRENDIENDO INGLÉS!
09 JR: Uno ochocientos, tres veintiuno nueve cuatro tres siete, uno ochocientos treinta
10 y dos uno nueve cuatro tres siete.
11 cÓmo trabaja (.) eh dicha sección?
12 RP: Ok vamos a ponérselo de esta manera [nosotros nos vas a dar-
13 H: [no a mi no@@@ a mi no este,
14 All: @@@@@
15 JR: este @mejor da la explicación.
16 RP: ((. . .)) manera ustedes nos dan una palabra,
17 JR: Aha,
18 RP: en inglés y nosotros la traducimos en español,
19 obvio!
20 JR: Aha,
21 RP: No sabEMOS hablar inglés,
22 tiene que ser algo simple y sencillo,
23 recuerda estamos en el inicio,
24 JR: En el pre- prebásico.
25 RP: En el prebásico del aprendizaje de inglés,
26 no me vengas con frases largas con (.)
27 >una historia porque es obvio que no te vamos a poder dar la respuesta<
((a few lines not transcribed. . . .)))
28 JR: Dime papa! la palabra que tu tienes para nosotros, es esta tarde.
29 C: Ok, lo hago suave <cook my wife for me>.
30 JR: Eh yo creo que yo sé lo que es eso, mi esposa cocinó para mí.
31 C: Vaya!
32 Ch: ((loud applause and cheers))
( )
33 JR: Mira me imagino que yo paso a otro nivel!
((a few lines not transcribed))
34 JR: Pancho hello Pancho!
35 C: Un saludo por ahí de Panama.
36 JR: Panama::::!
37 Ch: ((Applause and cheers))
38 JR Dime papa cual es la palabra,
39 en la sección aprendiendo ingles?
40 P: Ok una fácil mira I want to (. . .)
41 JR Pero (. . .) tu vas para el club esta noche?
42 C: @@@@
43 JR: Ahí está a la primera!
44 Ch: Ua:::: ((applause))
45 JR: Es que el inglés panameño se entiende ves?
46 (. . . . . .) @@@@
47 JR: Vamos con Carlos,
48 H: Te voy a decir una cosa yo tengo una palabra para ti te la voy a decir en
49 español,
50 Como estás bemba de perro.
51 (.)
52 hijo de la guasparra palomón you understand that?
53 JR: hhhhhhhh
54 ((with strong Spanish accent)) I wanna try say in English this (.)
55 RP: Uhmm,
56 H: Díselo en espanish en espanish!
57 JR: No no but I wanna try I wanna try.
58 H: Try try!
59 JR: ((with strong Spanish accent)) I don-t know may be it sounds very bad on
60 air but I wanna try can I try?
61 H: Try!
62 You are the ↑ (back a cat) on my face!
63 Ch. @@@@@@
64 H: Ah si ah si.
65 JR: Yo piENSO que salió bien.
66 @@@@@@
Translation
01 JR: In this moment we go to the section (.)
02 nothing less and nothing more than (.)
03 it’s making people talk,
04 the section that is educating our listeners
60 Anna De Fina
05 is (.)
06 Rey Parker,
07 the section is called this way.
08 Ch. LEARNING ENGLISH!
09 JR: One eight hundred, three twenty one, nine four three seven four seven,
10 One eight hundred three twenty one, nine four three seven four seven.
11 hOw does (.) uh this section work?
12 RP: Ok we are going to put it this way [you are going to give us-
13 H: [no not @@@ to me no uh,
14 All: @@@@@
15 PB: Well @it’s better you explain.
16 RP: ((. . . )) way you give us a word,
17 JR: Aha,
18 RP: in English and we translate it into Spanish,
19 clearly!
20 JR: Aha,
21 RP: We don’t KNOW how to speak English,
22 it has to be something simple,
23 remember that we are beginners.
24 JR: In pre- prebasic.
25 RP: In pre basic in the learning of English,
26 don’t give us long sentences (.)
27 >or a story because it’s obvious that we cannot give you an answer<
28 JR: Man! tell me the word that you have for us tonight.
29 C: Ok, I’ll go very slowly <cook my wife for me>.
30 JR: Uh I think that I know what it is, my wife cooked for me.
31 C: Great!
32 Ch: ((loud applause and cheers))
33 JR: I imagine that I will pass to another level!
34 JR: Pancho hello Pancho!
35 C: Hello there to Panama.
36 JR: Panama::::!
37 Ch: ((Applause and cheers))
38 JR: Tell me your word
39 for the section learning English?
40 P: Ok look an esay one I want to (. . .)
41 JR: But (. . .) are you going to the club tonight?
42 C: @@@@
43 JR: There at the first try!
44 Ch: Ua:::: ((applause))
45 JR: It’s that English from Panama is easy to understand isn’t it?
46 (. . . . . .) @@@@
47 JR: Let’s go with Carlos
48 H: I want to tell you one thing but,
49 I want to say it in Spanish.
50 How are you dog face?
51 (.)
52 son of a bitch idiot you understand that?
53 JR: hhhhhhhh
54 ((with strong Spanish accent)) I wanna try say in English this (.)
55 RP: Uh,
56 H: Tell him in espanish in espanish!
57 JR: No no but I wanna try I wanna try.
58 H: Try try!
59 JR: ((with strong Spanish accent)) I don’t know may be it sounds very bad on
60 air but I wanna try can I try.
61 H: Try!
62 You are the ↑ (back a cat) on my face!
63 Ch: @@@@@@
64 H: Oh yes oh yes.
65 JR: I tHINK it came out well.
66 @@@@@@
At the beginning of the fragment Jota Ere, who is always referred to by

his initials, announces the section of the program called Learning English
(lines 01–08) and his companion Rey Parker explains that people have to
call in with a word or phrase, which the hosts will translate (lines 11–19).
There is some teasing among Jota Ere, Rey Parker, and Hiernandi (all show
hosts, lines 13–15) that I will not have space to analyze here. But notice
that in lines 21 through 27, the hosts insist that words must be easy and
elementary. All of them here put forth an identity as incompetent English
speakers. They do so by exhibiting a strong Spanish accent (see above for
a definition, lines 53–61) and by pretending to be tentative in their transla-
tions (see line 30). At a certain point, Jota Ere boasts about having been
able to translate the words proposed by his caller, saying that he is ready
for a more advanced level of English (line 33). The jokes in the last part of
the fragment, which based on translations into English of insults and vulgar
Spanish expressions, are also based on a strong Spanish-accented pronun-
ciation of English and tentative grammatical renditions. See, for example,
line 62, where Jota Ere produces an ungrammatical sentence in English.
He also ignores errors in utterances produced by members of the audience
(such as the one proposed by the caller in line 29) by translating them into
correct ones. Since these three hosts speak mostly in Spanish during the
show, it is hard to tell what their level of English is, but given the utterances
they produce in this language in lines 52 through 61, it is clear that they are
much more fluent than they pretend to be. Thus, the hosts are showing a
clear adherence to an ideology that sees English as necessary for success in
the US, and they are aligning themselves with a Latino audience that is seen
as essentially Spanish speaking by downplaying their own ability to speak
English.
62 Anna De Fina
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
In this chapter, I have discussed language ideologies and language practices

in Radio El Zol, focusing in particular on code-switching, translanguag-
ing, and language-related negotiations and on English-teaching sessions on
one of the shows. I have argued that, while language ideologies are in line
with the preferred identity of the radio as a representative of first-generation
Latino transnational immigrants, language practices reflect both the het-
erogeneity of El Zol’s hosts and audiences and the reality of their identi-
ties as people who are exposed to and deal every day with two languages
and different cultural constructs. Thus, we have seen that El Zol presents
itself as a Spanish-speaking radio station, not a bilingual one, therefore
subscribing to an ideology that identifies Latino ethnicity with the Spanish
language. We have also seen that some of the hosts tend to chastise their
colleague when they are speaking with unaccented English, as it may be
interpreted as indexing lack of identification with those Latinos who have
Spanish as their preferred language, and when they mix the two languages
more regularly. However, we also noted that they seem to accept the use of
Spanish-accented English in small doses. Language practices, in contrast,
show a large presence of code-switching, mixing, and blending in a variety
of speech genres, from host talk to advertising, thus pointing to the diversity
of the Latin American population and of their experiences in the US. In the
case of advertising, however, it also highlights the clear consciousness of
such diversity on the part of the corporations governing the business. More
in general, the chapter has shown how the study of language ideologies
and practices leads to a better understanding of the composite identities
and identity practices of transnational communities and their representative
media.
TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS
(ADAPTED FROM JEFFERSON 1984)
. Falling intonation
? Rising intonation, not necessarily a question
, Continuing intonation
→ Listing intonation
(.) Noticeable pause
A: [word Overlapping speech
B: [word
A: word = Overlapping speech
B: = word No discernible pause between utterances
↑word,↓word Onset of pitch rise or fall
hh, hh In breath and outbreath
@@@ laughter
wor- cut off
wo::rd Elongation of preceding sound
(words) Uncertain transcription
word Loud
WORD Very loud
>word word< Faster speech
<word word> Slower speech
(( )) Transcriber note
word Code-switching into English
NOTES
1. Here I use the term “Hispanic” as it is used in the Census data.

2. I have tried to reproduce emphasis in the Spanish text in a nonliteral way,
in the sense that I have attempted to reproduce word stress used in Spanish
to emphasize certain concepts by putting stress markers also in the English
text.
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4 Queer Latin@ Networks
Languages, Identities, and the
Ties That Bind1
Holly R. Cashman
INTRODUCTION
In her ground-breaking research in which she used a social network

approach to examine sociolinguistic variation in Belfast, Milroy (1987) dem-
onstrated that dense and multiplex social networks promote maintenance of
nonstandard language varieties. These same network characteristics promote
language maintenance, while less-dense networks might encourage language
shift (see, for example, Gal, 1978; Gumperz, 1982; Li, 1994; Milroy, 2001;
Milroy & Li, 1995).2 It is not only the density of the network that may mat-
ter. Li Wei (1994) revealed that the ethnic makeup of a social network, in
his case, in a British Chinese community, affected speakers’ language choice
more than, for example, age or gender, two variables known to correlate
with language choice or use in bilingual communities (Gal, 1978; Klee,
1987; Tove, 1991). Wiklund (2002) concluded that “there are tendencies
for better Swedish performance in bilingual informants whose networks are
mainly oriented toward Swedes . . . or toward Swedes and ethnic groups
other than their own . . . Here the language used is Swedish, and there is
consequently negotiation of meaning to varying degrees, which facilitates
development of the L2” (p. 87). Similarly, Raschka, Li, and Lee (2002)
argue that frequency of (Chinese) input directly affects (Chinese) language
proficiency among bilingual children in Great Britain. In US Spanish, several
studies have demonstrated the relationship between social networks and
language use, language proficiency, or language maintenance (Cashman,
2001, 2003; Chávez, 1988, 1993; Zentella, 1997).
But what happens when a person’s social network ties are stretched or
broken due to that individual’s assertion of a nonheteronormative identity,
an act or process known as “coming out”? In the coming out process, the
LGBTQ3 (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) subject confronts mem-
bers of her or his social network, creating a situation in which social network
ties are challenged to accept or reject the newly asserted self-identification
(Penelope & Wolfe, 1989). The assertion of an LGBTQ identity within the
family context may lead to a crisis in the relationship, and some family ties
may be permanently severed or irrevocably damaged. Despite this, little or no
Queer Latin@ Networks 67
research on language maintenance and shift has considered the language prac-
tices of queer bilinguals. Lipman (2004) found that there was a “culture of
silence” in queer bilinguals’ first language, while their second language offered
the possibilities for critical consciousness and liberation. Labrie (2005), on the
other hand, found that participants’ sexual identities and their linguistic iden-
tities played a crucial role in their mobility and that their social and linguistic
trajectories affected their bilingual practices. These studies both hint that there
might be a dynamic interaction among sexual identities, ethnic identities, and
language resources among queer US Latin@s. In US Spanish, however, lan-
guage practices of queer Latin@s have received relatively little attention, even
outside the more narrow area of language maintenance.4
Extensive research on Spanish language maintenance and shift to English
among Latin@s in the US has indicated that there is a rapid shift to English
that is sensitive to a variety of factors including age, generation, gender,
educational attainment, socioeconomic status, and size and density of the
Latin@ community, in addition to proximity to the border, among others.
While the shift to English is often presented as inevitable, some research has
highlighted speaker agency and uncovered hints of Spanish maintenance
(see, for example, Mora, Villa, & Dávila, 2005, 2006; Rivera-Mills, 2007),
and Martínez (2009) argues for what he terms a “sociolinguistics of hope”
regarding Spanish maintenance in the US, stressing the role of Spanish
language maintenance in ethnolinguistic minority group development and
preservation and building on the notion of speaker agency in bilingual con-
texts, without denying the overall trend toward language shift to date.
The coming-out process is a normative part of establishing a viable LGBTQ
identity, although the universality of the coming out experience has been called
into question. For US Latin@s and members of other ethnolinguistic minor-
ity groups, queer identity formation is complicated by the competing per-
ceptions and conflicting demands of three groups: mainstream heterosexual
cultural norms, Latin@ cultural norms, and LGBTQ cultural norms (García,
1998). The negotiation of the tension among these expectations may impact
the coming-out process for queer Latin@s. It has been documented that the
social organization of gay and lesbian identity in the US differs from that in
Latin America (Lumsden, 1996; Murray, 1995). In Latin America, it has been
argued, family- and neighborhood-based social networks take precedence
over individual identity concerns (Lumsden, 1996). Díaz (1998) uses the term
“sexual silence” to describe the practice of not coming out, or choosing not
to self-identify as gay or lesbian in public or within family- or neighborhood-
based social networks, among the gay Latinos he studied. García (1998) criti-
cizes the extent to which both ethnicity and sexual identity are “presented
as two constructs on a continuum with two exclusive endpoints” (p. 4). For
queer bilingual Latina@s in the US, individuals may feel trapped between the
expectations of the mainstream LGBTQ community and the expectations of
the Latin@ community with regard to coming out, and coming out may have
serious consequences for ethnic and sexual identities.
68 Holly R. Cashman
This chapter seeks to explore the (socio)linguistic consequences of com-
ing out, that is, the assertion of nonheteronormative sexual identities, among
bilingual Latin@s in the US. I focus on the experiences of four people who
can teach us about the intersection of ethnic identity and sexual identity,
as well as the interaction of these with their language practices, or what
Martin-Jones, Blackledge, and Creese (2012) describe as “the meshing and
interweaving of diversities” (p. 7). The concept of intersectionality is, how-
ever, nothing new (Crenshaw, 1989), but too often in sociolinguistics, the
notion of distinct, bounded, and independent social identity categories has
persisted. Comparing the language practices and social networks of four
participants—Andrés, Lynn, Diego, and Milagros—this research reveals
how the life trajectories of individuals can be impacted by the act of com-
ing out or the decision to maintain silence and how these trajectories affect
people’s access to language resources and their language practices.
METHODOLOGY AND DATA
The larger project that this chapter is part of draws on the following data:
in-depth, semistructured ethnographic interviews with 35 LGBTQ Latin@
bilingual participants, questionnaires, recordings of spontaneous conver-
sational interaction, and extended participant observation in the LGBTQ
community in Phoenix, Arizona, in May to July 2012, January 2013, and
June 2013.5 This chapter mainly employs data from (1) interviews, which
took place in a variety of locations, usually chosen by the participant, includ-
ing cafés, bars, restaurants, and private homes, and (2) the questionnaires,
which were administered following the interviews. Interviews varied in
length from just over 37 minutes to more than 2.5 hours, with an average
duration of approximately 68 minutes. Unlike that of much of the research
on language maintenance and shift, the approach used here is small scale and
ethnographic, an approach advocated for by some researchers on language
maintenance and shift (for example, Smith, 2002; Stoessel, 2002) “because
of its benefits of flexibility in design, richness in detail, realism in perspec-
tive, and applicability of findings” (Smith, 2002, p. 137). The ethnographic
nature of this research also allows for the more in-depth explorations of
identities that are dynamic, constructed, and negotiated and a more nuanced
view of the relationship between language and identity, or a “narrative view
of identity” (Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004, p. 19).
Having lived and worked in the Phoenix metropolitan area from 2001
through 2008, I began my fieldwork by contacting long-time friends in
the community, and I identified potential participants through existing
affiliations of initial contacts. In any qualitative ethnographic research, it is
necessary to recognize that the research process is intrinsically and unavoid-
ably impacted by, among many things, the dynamics of power between
researcher(s) and participant(s), affecting both the data collection process
and also the product, that is, the data collected. As an Anglo woman from
the US Northeast who is a lesbian, I enjoyed insider status in some respects,
that is, with regard to sexual identity, although this shared aspect of sex-
ual identity was no guarantee of the establishment of trust or rapport with
participants. The mere sharing of an ethnic, gender, or sexual identity is not
sufficient to build trust, and it may in fact be counterproductive (see Ken-
nedy, 1996; Lang, 1996). I was also surprised by the fact that, as I moved
further away from my close contacts, I was not necessarily “read” as a
lesbian or even as Anglo, and I only realized relatively late in the data collec-
tion process that coming out and locating my own identity might be useful
and productive in the process of data collection.6
COMING OUT AND BREAKING TIES
The overwhelming majority of the participants in this research reported

being out, which is not surprising given what Barrett (1997) says about
defining a gay speech community: “The problem of how to deal with those
who have not come out of the closet often falls at the center of the dis-
cussion of how to define queer communities” (p. 88). Those who are not
out might be unlikely to participate in queer social networks that would
result in their being found by a researcher and in their subsequent participa-
tion in a research project. Participants reported that coming out caused at
least some temporary if not permanent disruption in their family ties and
relationships.7 In other words, although the majority of participants who
reported having come out to their families maintained ties with their close
family members, most also reported having at least one family member with
whom they no longer have any meaningful interaction or relationship or
with whom they have a difficult or strained relationship, including in some
cases parents and siblings. For example, one participant, Andrés,8 explains
that his father’s reaction to his coming out was a complete rejection. Andrés,
an actor, grew up in Northern California, came out at age 17, and now
resides in Phoenix and Portland, Oregon; his father is from Mexico and his
mother is Anglo from the US:
He said I was the ugliest possible thing I could be in his culture and that
I was never going to amount to anything. I was going to put a shame to
the name—. I said no, I’m going to make a name. You watch. I was just
really defiant. I was going to prove to him. And I did.
When Andrés came out to his parents and told them about the older man
whom he was dating, they pressed charges against the man and a public trial
followed. Andrés legally separated from his parents through the process of
emancipation, but after the upheaval of the trial, he finished high school,
where he began dating a girl, and went to college; he allowed his father to
70 Holly R. Cashman
believe that he was the (heterosexual) victim of a sexual predator rather
than a (gay) teenager who was in love with an older man. Later, his mother
outed him to his father while she was detoxing from an addiction to pre-
scription medicine:
And um so my dad thought I was on the straight and narrow for college,
you know, through college, but I got hired at the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival, and I had broken up with that guy and I had met somebody else
that I was dating and going to Portland with, and I went to my hometown
of— California, and I called mom. I said mom it feels weird that I’m here
and I’m not going to stop by, and “why?” she goes. Because—’s here and
I know how dad feels about him. “Well” she said “well, Andy’s here”
and “What? Why he’s not coming over?” “Because he’s with his friend—”
“Well, why isn’t he coming over?” “Because he knows how you feel about
him”. “No, no, no. Something’s wrong there. What’s going on? What’s
going on?” And she said, when she was coming off of these drugs, “you’re
a fucking idiot if you haven’t known that all these years Andy has been
gay”. And I’ve been dead to him ever since.
Andrés is now over 40, and he and his father still have no relationship.
Despite the estrangement from his father, he maintains a relationship with
his mother, even inviting her to stay with him for months while she recov-
ered from a suicide attempt and detoxed (on another occasion), and remains
close to his sister, who divorced an abusive husband and is currently dating
a woman (and is also estranged from their father).
Like Andrés, Lynn, who is 38 years old and grew up in rural New Mexico,
a southwestern US state directly east of Arizona, has no meaningful relation-
ship with her father; their relationship began to deteriorate in her early teen-
age years when Lynn’s father, who physically abused her, her siblings, and
her mother, refused to accept what she described as her defiant attitude, as
well as her emerging lesbian identity. He threw her out of the house at age 14
and broke ties with her completely. Lynn ended up living on the streets in
California for two years before returning home, determined to do whatever
was necessary to fit in to her close-knit but troubled family.
And so I kind of stayed there for about two years until I was sixteen, um,
and was raising myself on the streets. [Wow] Yeah, and my mom and
I- I’d- I’d call periodically, check in at home. Um call my mom, make sure
you know just so she wouldn’t be worried. Uh and then I came home,
and um, I never had a relationship with my dad until I was twenty-four
[Wow] after that period. So- so- so cuz- [Ten years] Yeah, because he
holds grudges. And he’s very, very macho. And so I wasn’t allowed back
in the home. If- if I’d go visit my mom, once I moved back home, if I’d
go visit my mom, I’d have to watch the time to make sure. “Okay, well,
dad’s about ready to get home off of work” and I’ll take off, because
he was very, very you know- [So he wouldn’t know that you had been
there? And your mom wouldn’t tell him?] Exactly, and she wouldn’t
tell him, yeah, because if that was the case he would- he would be com-
pletely a shithead to her (as well).
A reconciliation with her father ultimately failed, even after Lynn moved
into a residential rehabilitation facility where he was being treated after
having suffered a stroke and cared for him for 3 months. Lynn never became
estranged from her mother, who covertly defied her father’s orders not to
see her. Over the years, Lynn has grown even closer to her mother and one
of her older sisters, who accepted her immediately and completely when she
came out, unlike her other siblings, particularly one of her brothers, who
joins in her father’s mocking of her, calling her “tío Lynn” (Uncle Lynn) to
his children. She reports talking to her mother, who still lives in the house
she grew up in in rural New Mexico with Lynn’s father, on the phone multi-
ple times a day, and her mother even calls her partner of 8 years (separately)
to talk daily and say goodnight.9
Both Lynn and Andrés reject Mexican culture and identity, associating
them with the patriarchal oppression of their fathers, with physical and
emotional abuse, and with a hypermasculinity they call machismo, which
is examined in detail in what follows. They both describe their orientation
toward their fathers as “defiant”, framing their assertion of their sexual
identities as part of a broader resistance.
STAYING SILENT AND MAINTAINING TIES
A small number of the participants in this research have opted to not come
out to their families, and many participants who consider themselves out
are not necessarily out to all family members (such as grandparents, aunts,
uncles, or young nieces and nephews). Diego, who was born in Micho-
acán, Mexico, and has been in the US for 18 years (since the age of 21),
states emphatically that he has no plans to come out to his family. He
explains:
I think that, um, you know, that’s my life, and this- you only share things
with special people. [Mhm] Uh, I think this way, you know, like I think
that my sexuality, or that kind- that part of my life, it’s not like a plate
of food, you know, you put it in the table and people taste it, (tell you)
if they like it or not. You know what I’m saying? This is my life. I don’t
ask you, or I don’t know what other people do when they’re drunk,
you know like ( ) [((Laughs))] Especially, you know, like when, you
know, the straight people are married but they do things on the side. It’s
like, you know, I’m very jealous about that part of my life. [Mhm] You
know, like when I’m gay with the people- even like, you know, like if
72 Holly R. Cashman
you go to a public place that’s not a bar, and people ask me sometimes,
you know, “are you gay?” or something like that. I get so offended.
That’s not your business, you know.
Diego insisted, however, that his family would not reject him if he were to
come out; in fact, his younger brother is gay and is reportedly more open
about his sexuality. For Diego, not coming out is a personal choice that
reflects on him and not his family. Based on his friends’ experiences, he
believes that coming out would result in a loss of respect, even if his family
accepted him:
My brother, he’s more open about those things. He’s like almost ten
years younger than me. [Mhm] So, he’s uh totally different [Mhm] you
know, to me. Uh, you know, because I used to have uh friends that when
they talk with their family about they’re gay, they lose their respect, you
know, after they talk with their family about they’re gay. And the family
say “it’s okay”, you know, “we’re here for you”. That guys change
a lot. They have- or they bring like ten boyfriends in one year. So, for
me, I have a lot of respect for my family and for me too, you know, like
I was with a guy for almost six years, and he never met nobody in my
family ((laughs)).
Despite (or perhaps because of) his sexual silence, Diego considers himself
very close to his family, especially his sister in California and his sister and
younger brother, who also live in Phoenix.
In contrast to Diego, Milagros firmly believes that her family would reject
her if she were to come out. Milagros is from Puerto Rico, is 54 years old,
and has lived in Phoenix for 10 years. She tearfully recounts, roughly three
decades later, an incident from her college days in Puerto Rico when her
mother threatened to disown her, while cautioning her to distance herself
from her “best friend”, who was actually her girlfriend:
One day my mom came out and just bluntly say- she said um “más
vale que tú no andes con esta niña la— esta porque ella es una pata.
Más vale que tú no seas pata porque si tú eres pata, ese día dejas de
ser mi hija”. (You’d better not hang out with this girl this— because
she is a dyke. You’d better not be a dyke because if you’re a dyke, that
same day you stop being my daughter.) [Wow that’s pretty strong.]
And that just took me at heart. [Yeah] I’m like, “Oh my god. What
am I gonna do?” [Yeah, I mean-] So, yeah. So here my mother’s tell-
ing me she’s going to disown me [Yeah] if she ever found out that
I was gay.
When she told me that that one day I was floored. I just couldn’t
believe it. [Yeah] That my mom would disown me for being gay. [Yeah]
I coul- I couldn’t understand that. So, from that point I decided she’s
never going to know, because if that’s the price I’m going to have to
pay- [Yeah] ((begins to cry)).
Milagros says that she has considered coming out to her mother in the inter-
vening years, especially in the last 5 years as she has settled down in a very
happy relationship, but her mother is ill with a heart condition, and she
worries that it will cause her too much stress.
LINGUISTIC CONSEQUENCES OF COMING OUT

(OR MAINTAINING SILENCE)
It is most often the case for bilingual Latin@s in the US that their parents,
grandparents, and members of their generations are the most consistent
Spanish language influences; yet it is precisely these family ties that are most
threatened by when queer Latin@s come out. In a national telephone survey
of US Hispanics, Social Science Research Solutions/National Council of La
Raza (2012) found that subjects’ acculturation correlated with their degree
of LGBTQ acceptance, and, although generation did not correlate with
degree of LGBTQ acceptance, “Generations correlate with acculturation,
such that future generations are far more likely to comingle and be accultur-
ated than earlier ones” (p. 6). Acculturation was measured by adherence to
so-called traditional values as well as Spanish language preference and Span-
ish language skills. In other words, those who adhered to traditional values,
were proficient in Spanish, and preferred Spanish were considered to be
part of the “traditional” group, while those who adhered to less traditional
values, were proficient in English, and preferred English were considered
“acculturated”. In short, the results indicated that:
There are striking differences in moral beliefs by acculturation. Over

half of traditional Latinos believe that kids need a mother and father and
that homosexuality is a sin. Conversely, four out of five (81%) accul-
turated Latinos believe that one should accept all of God’s creations
and not pass judgment about others, rather than love the sinner but
condemn the sin. (Social Science Research Solutions/National Council
of La Raza, 2012, p. 44)
In other words, it is precisely the people who are most proficient in Spanish
who are most likely to react negatively toward LGBTQ people, such as
a son or daughter or other relative coming out. If Spanish-speaking net-
work ties tend to promote the maintenance of Spanish, as has been argued
elsewhere, then it follows that coming out might threaten Spanish language
maintenance among LGBTQ Latin@s.
Among participants who consider themselves bilingual or who considered
Spanish their “mother tongue”, the breaking of ties caused by coming out
can have a major impact on their linguistic trajectory. Andrés, for example,
74 Holly R. Cashman
explains that his father, who was the one Spanish monolingual presence in
his life, was not a major linguistic influence simply because they spoke only
minimally and with a generally negative connotation:
He’d even told me- the most he’d ever spoken to me, because he spoke
Spanish [Mhm] I only spoke- I mean I spoke English, but I could not
speak emotionally or passionately in Spanish, and I couldn’t speak to
my father at all. He was the disciplinary man in my life. He worked as
a- in a sawmill all- all my life, and most of his life, and uh- [and the
strong, strong and silent type] Strong machismo, very machismo, and
could not deal with his emotions. When he found out I was gay, when
my mom told him, he call- he didn’t go to work, and he cried all day.
I was like “What? He cried?” I mean, that was a shock to me, because
you know he never would show that kind of emotion to me.
The rejection Andrés experienced from his father resulted in a loss for him
of the main Spanish-language influence in his family. While his mother
and siblings spoke Spanish, they chose to speak to each other in English.
As an adult, Andrés has used Spanish in his acting career, playing Spanish-
speaking characters, working in a bilingual theater troupe, and even
recording Spanish-language audiobooks, but Spanish is not part of his
daily language practices. Andrés’s social network is 59% monolingual in
English and 41% bilingual. Although a third of his network ties are Latin@,
he has no Spanish monolingual ties. Interestingly, Andrés reports roughly
equivalent proficiency in Spanish and English, due chiefly to the fact that
he lowers his self-assessment for reading in English because of a learning
difficulty (difference). (This does not affect how he sees his Spanish read-
ing skills, perhaps because those were developed later, after he had learned
how to manage his learning difficulty (difference).) Although he may regard
his proficiency in both languages as equal and he considers himself bilin-
gual because “I speak and write both in English and Spanish”, he cer-
tainly sees his language practices as heavily weighted toward English use:
he reports emailing and texting in English “daily”, but “never” in Spanish;
he reports listening to music and surfing the web in English “frequently”,
but “never” in Spanish; in fact, the only activity that he reports doing in
Spanish more often than “rarely” is watching films, and even that is only
“sometimes”.
Like Andrés, Lynn’s relationship with Spanish was greatly impacted by
her relationship with her father. Lynn’s father was authoritarian and abusive,
both physically and emotionally, and this carried over into his enforcement
of the family language policy:
They spoke both languages, but if we- if we were spoken to in Spanish,

we had to acknowledge it. Um and I- like I said, I was the defiant child,
so I would tell my mom “speak to me in English”. My dad would hear
me, and I would get my butt smacked. And I was told not to disrespect
our- our culture, our language.
This family language policy, which required Lynn and her siblings to respond
in the language in which they were spoken to, disproportionately affected
Lynn, the youngest child, who was the least comfortable in Spanish. Her strat-
egy for avoiding physical abuse was to avoid relatives who spoke Spanish:
My grandfather, he’d only speak Spanish, and uh he was- It was really

difficult because I didn’t know Spanish that well. So, to save myself
from getting in trouble because I couldn’t answer it properly, I would
say it in English, and I would- My grandfather would tell my parents,
you know, what a- you know “What a rotten child you have. This child
doesn’t ((laughs)) want to- does not want to learn her language” this
and this and that. So, I would be in trouble all the time. So when my
grandfather would come around, I would just try to avoid him.
This alienation from Spanish, which started very young, was exacerbated by
her exile from the family at age 14, when her father disowned her. Forced to
seek support outside the family social network, Lynn became increasingly
separated from the bilingual social network that was her family. This upbring-
ing left Lynn with what she described as “a sour taste in my mouth for Span-
ish”, but she nevertheless chose to study Spanish formally when she went to
college:
Because I did want to learn my language more. I wanted to be more

diverse in uh language. I wanted to um get more acquainted with my
own culture and find out um- and just learn it. I mean, because it is
spoken so much in my home and in my family, and as I grew up I just
started letting go more of the defiance and accepted I’m- I’m Hispanic.
Lynn sees a connection between Spanish and ethnicity, and has come to
identify Spanish as “my language”. She evaluates her Spanish and English
skills both as “very good”, and she considers herself bilingual. She identifies
English, however, not Spanish or both, as her “mother tongue”, explaining
that “I use English on a daily basis”. She reports using English daily for
everything from watching TV, surfing the web, reading the newspaper, and
listening to music to emailing, and texting; she reports using Spanish daily
to listen to music, email, and text, and she also dances to Spanish music, an
activity she added to the questionnaire.10
Clearly, Lynn and Andrés have not completely erased Spanish from their
lives, but they both use English more than Spanish. Unlike Lynn and Andrés,
whose self-reported proficiency and language use have a lot in common,
Diego and Milagros, the two informants described who opted to maintain
“sexual silence”, are very different from each other. Milagros grew up both
76 Holly R. Cashman
in Puerto Rico and New Jersey, and, while she considers herself bilingual
and her skills in both languages are “very good”, she rarely uses Spanish in
her daily life. Three quarters of Milagros’s social network speaks English
only, one quarter is bilingual, and no one is monolingual in Spanish. Diego,
on the other hand, is Spanish dominant. He evaluates his Spanish skills as
“very good” and his English as “average”. The main difference, however,
is that Diego reports using Spanish and English roughly equally in his daily
life. Although he claims to use English only in his job as a bartender, he
includes one domain in which he uses only Spanish (praying) and one in
which he uses mostly Spanish (socializing with family). He reports using
Spanish only with his relatives including his mother, father, aunts, uncles,
and siblings, most of whom are in Mexico, but with whom he interacts fre-
quently; he reports that 13% of his social network is Spanish monolingual.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have argued that LGBTQ–identified individuals have been

marginalized or neglected in research on language maintenance and shift in
particular, and on bilingualism more generally, and I have attempted to out-
line roughly some of the insights we might gain if we were to include people
who identify as LGBTQ in the study of bilingualism and language mainte-
nance and shift. Specifically, I have tried to address what impact coming out
has had on the social networks of the informants in this study, particularly
with relation to family ties, and I have explored to some degree the (socio)
linguistic consequences of severed family ties for two LGBTQ Latin@s
whom I interviewed. I conclude that for LGBTQ Latin@s, coming out may
result in severed family ties, and that these severed family ties may deprive
people of their primary Spanish language interaction. This could mean
that coming out specifically, and identifying as LGBTQ more generally,
may promote shift to English for some LGBTQ Latin@s. The relationship
between people’s ethnicity and sexuality and the relationship between these
and language is neither simple nor straightforward. While it is impossible
to explore all the nuances of this in a short chapter, it must be noted that
it would be a gross oversimplification if not a complete misrepresentation
to say that closeted Latin@s tend to speak more Spanish and out Latin@s
tend to speak more English. In fact, among the participants in the broader
research project that this chapter draws from, there are also Latin@s who
are out, immersed in their family networks, and predominantly Spanish
speaking. For the purpose of this chapter, however, I found it helpful to
trace the experiences of two interviewees who had come out and faced
alienation from their family as well as the Spanish language, and I chose
to contrast this with two participants who have pursued instead “sexual
silence” in order to illustrate exactly how these decisions can impact queer
bilingual Latin@s without claiming that these two (or four) experiences are
prototypical or universal.
KEY TO TRANSCRIPTIONS
Simplified transcription conventions employed in this chapter include:
— deleted material from the transcript, most often names or place

names
[] comments, often backchannels, from the interviewer
(( )) non-verbal production, such as laughter
() unintelligible speech or to qualify the transcriber’s best guess at
a word or phrase
Italics English translation of Spanish original talk in text
NOTES
1. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Science

Foundation (NSF award #BCS1122948), which funded the fieldwork and data
transcription for this project. I sincerely thank the anonymous NSF proposal
referees who generously gave of their time to provide me with invaluable feed-
back that helped to refine, clarify, and focus the project. Finally, I also thank
the anonymous reader who reviewed this chapter for the edited volume for
her/his valuable feedback.
2. It is important to note that density of social network does not guarantee lan-
guage maintenance; David (1986) and Govindasamy and Nambiar (2003), for
example, find that close-knit social networks are not sufficient to stem the tide
of globalization and promote the maintenance of minority ethnic/immigrant
languages in the face of shift to English.
3. I use this term when describing the greater queer community and when referring
specifically to the participants in the research. I also use “queer” interchangeably
with “LGBTQ” as an umbrella term. This does not mean that all participants
necessarily identify with these specific labels—most (close to 90%) identify with
the term “gay” or “lesbian”, with a much smaller number of participants choos-
ing “bisexual”, “trans(gender)”, or another term.
4. Peña (2004), Sanz Sánchez (2009), and Vidal-Ortiz (2011) are among the very
few examples of research on queer Latin@ language practices.
5. The larger project, under the title Queer, Latina/o & Bilingual: A Critical
Sociolinguistic Ethnography, will be published by Routledge in the Critical
Approaches to Multilingualism series.
6. This is based on comments made by participants after the interviews. One
participant expressed surprise to learn that I am a lesbian while she was fill-
ing out the questionnaire and proceeded to talk to me for over 2 hours “off
the record” after she learned that. Another participant asked me about my
ethnicity after the interview was over and expressed surprise that I was not
Latina.
7. It is important to note that the “out versus closeted” dichotomy is an essential-
izing abstraction, and coming out is not something that one does once and is
78 Holly R. Cashman
then done with. In people’s lived experiences, there is more of a continuum
of outness versus closetedness, and the reality of daily life (at least in more
complex, urban settings) requires people to come out (or not) over and over
again in a variety of ways, small and large.
8. Many participants in this research chose to be identified by their names,
while others chose to use pseudonyms.
9. Please see transcription key at end of chapter.
10. Since the first draft of this chapter was written, both Lynn’s mother and
partner have died, the former after a long illness and the latter in an accident.
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Part II
Emergent Communities
5 The Dynamics of (Im)Mobility
(In)Transient Capitals and Linguistic
Ideologies among Latin American
Migrants in London and Madrid1
Rosina Márquez Reiter and
Luisa Martín Rojo
LATIN AMERICANS IN LONDON AND MADRID
Latin American migrants in the UK are primarily concentrated in London,

in the boroughs of Haringey and Southwark, where most of their circa
113,500 members live. Although the size of the community is similar to
that of other ethnic groups in London (ONS, 2011), the Latin American
community has only recently received official recognition, albeit only in
Southwark so far.2 In spite of their current statistical invisibility, London
now has the largest Latin American population in Europe, second only to
Spain (McIlwaine, Cock, & Linneker, 2011).
Latin Americans started arriving in the UK from the 1970s onward, with
Colombians and Ecuadorians constituting the majority in the 1980s and
1990s, primarily as a result of political unrest in their countries of origin.
Since 2000, Latin American migration to the UK has been principally moti-
vated by economic factors with relatively recent secondary migration from
Spain (McIlwaine et al., 2011).
As part of their lives in diaspora, they have created distinctive commer-
cial and media spaces in the city, particularly in the areas of Elephant and
Castle (Southwark) and Seven Sisters (Haringey), where there is a signifi-
cant degree of ethnic concentration. These transnational spaces specialize in
the selling of homeland products from gastronomic items to quintessential
Latin American fashion and beauty items (e.g., Colombian levanta colas
jeans, placenta-based hair treatments, and so on.) as well as in the provision
of related services such as money transfers and the sale and management of
real estate in Latin America. Indeed, these areas have been transformed into
vibrant Latin quarters and play an important role in urban regeneration
projects (Román Velasquez, 2013). Many Spanish-speaking migrants rely
on them to connect with their homeland and to facilitate social interaction,
given their sometimes irregular status and their general inability to speak
English or access affordable English lessons (Greater London Authority,
2011). Eighty-five percent of Latin Americans are reported to be in work,
although more than half of them occupy elementary positions as domestic
and office cleaners, food preparation assistants, and so on (McIlwaine et al.,
2011). Spanish-speaking Latin Americans report relying on their intraeth-
nic contacts as their primary means of gaining mobility. Indeed, many of
them have obtained employment through a community gatekeeper, typi-
cally a Colombian or an Ecuadorian regular3 migrant who arrived in the
1980s and controls access to the labor market by satisfying London’s labor
demand for elementary occupations with a local supply of ethnic migrant
workforce. For these jobs, therefore, knowledge of English, unlike Spanish,
is not strictly necessary.
On the other hand, Latin Americans are highly visible in Spain, particularly
in Madrid, where, as a whole, they constitute the most populous migrant
group with circa 300,000 registered migrants (Consejería de Asuntos Sociales,
2013). Ecuadorians and Colombians are the most numerous with more than
80,000 and 54,000 nationals, respectively. Other prominent Latin American
communities include Peruvians, Bolivians, Dominicans, Paraguayans, and,
to a lesser extent, Hondurans, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, and Salvadorians
(Consejería de Asuntos Sociales, 2013). These figures, however, do not take
into account irregular migrants or those who entered the country with EU
documents as returned descendants of European migrants or those who have
to date obtained Spanish citizenship; in the 1990s, for example, more than
70% were granted citizenship. Thus, the true figures are likely to be higher.
Similar to the employment situation of Latin Americans in London, most
Latin Americans in Madrid occupy elementary positions with low salaries
and suffer exploitative conditions. However, those who migrated to Madrid
in the 1980s, particularly Argentinians, Chileans, Colombians, and Uruguay-
ans, were able to occupy professional positions, with some of them setting
up small businesses. Recent changes in the Spanish economy have meant that
many of these 1980s migrants have had to find seasonal unqualified work
or return to their countries of origin (García Ballesteros, Jímenez Basco, &
Redondo González, 2009). More than 30% of Latin Americans in Madrid
are reported as unemployed.4
Demographically, they are more widespread than in London, despite
high concentrations of given groups in certain areas (Consejería de Asuntos
Sociales, 2013). The districts of Cuatro Caminos and Tetuán are among
those that have attracted the highest number of Latin American migrants
(de la Fuente Fernández, 2009). They feature an array of Latin American
shops and community associations. Hence, they have been selected for the
purpose of this study. It is worth noting at this point, however, that the com-
parative angle of this study stems mainly from the sites where the data were
gathered. It does not necessarily apply to the migratory or work experiences
of the migrants. Nor does it apply to the languages or language varieties
they speak or to those spoken in the receiving community. Inevitably, how-
ever, our concluding remarks relate to the findings obtained in both locales.
The aim of this chapter is to provide a first examination of the relationship
between language and social mobility in the Latin American communities of
London and Madrid. To this end, we explore the ways in which this relation-
ship is interpreted in the two locales drawing on Bourdieu’s (1986) notion
The Dynamics of (Im)Mobility 85
of capital and the notion of capitalization (Martín Rojo, 2010). According
to Bourdieu (1986), capital is present in three fundamental guises: (1) as
economic capital, which is immediately and directly convertible into money
and may be institutionalized in the form of property rights; (2) as cultural
capital, which is convertible, under certain conditions, into economic capi-
tal and may be institutionalized in the form of educational qualifications;
and (3) as social capital, made up of social obligations (“connections”),
which is convertible, under certain conditions, into economic capital and
may be institutionalized in the form of a title of nobility.
With this in mind, we seek to contribute to a better understanding of the
relationships among language(s), language varieties, and social mobility. In so
doing, we will consider (a) the extent to which the homogeneity of national
linguistic markets is challenged by the increasing visibility of diversity, thus
resulting in the nation-state’s decreasing ability to control linguistic practices,
and (b) whether changes in the assessment of languages in linguistic markets
and given domains can be understood at a local, nation-state, or transna-
tional level or at all three.
METHODOLOGY AND ANALYTIC FRAMEWORK
The London data were collected during the months of November and Decem-
ber 2012 and the Madrid data in January and February 2013. The fieldwork
entailed prior informal discussions with migrants in London and Madrid.
This helped us to devise the interviews and pointed us to potentially rele-
vant observational phenomena. The interviews were coupled with document
analysis and nonparticipant observation with the corresponding field notes
and were conducted in shops and community associations in Elephant and
Castle, Seven Sisters, Cuatro Caminos, and Tetuán. Aided by two Colom-
bian female consultants in London and a Dominican female consultant in
Madrid, we conducted 17 in-depth interviews in London and 7 in Madrid
with (ir)regular migrants, men and women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.
The interviews offered us a window into some of the linguistic and legal
barriers that Latin American migrants face in the receiving society. They also
allowed us to capture the ways in which the migrants feel these barriers inter-
sect with their (previous) values and circumstances and the efforts they make
to gain capital and to integrate.
The analysis of the interviews, understood as situated interactions (see, for
example, de Fina, 2011), focuses on the participants’ discursive representa-
tions, reflections, and rationalizations of their linguistic practices in diaspora
and the ways in which they, either implicitly or explicitly, relate them to
the value assigned to different languages in the linguistic markets in which
they participate. To this end, we draw on concepts from sociolinguistics and
analytic tools from general discourse analysis. In the next section, we offer
an overview of citizenship policies, language valence, and mobility in Lon-
don and Madrid. In the fourth section, we analyze how the interviewees
in their interactions with the interviewers represent the role of language in
societal integration and mobility in the Latin American communities in both
cities. Finally, in the fourth section, we provide some concluding remarks
and discuss some of the key questions raised by this research.
CITIZENSHIP POLICIES, LANGUAGE VALENCE, AND

MOBILITY IN TWO GLOBAL EUROPEAN CITIES
Some of the results of our fieldwork show a contradictory picture in terms

of the importance generally attributed to the migrants’ need for competence
in the official language of the receiving community and the migrants’ own
valorizations and rationalizations of their needs for mobility purposes. Let
us consider some of the complexities encountered in this respect in each of
the locales examined.
London
Latin American migrants’ competence in English is typically linked to their
immigration status and year of arrival. Migrants who arrived in the 1980s
and 1990s, primarily as asylum seekers, were given the right to remain in
the country while their cases were considered and were offered support
throughout this process. This generally entailed free-of-charge English
tuition (ESOL), subsidized accommodation, and often some form of (tem-
porary) income support. Arrivals from the 1980s and 1990s generally have
regular status, at least those from our sample do; they also report having
an (upper) intermediate level of English and occupy positions of leader-
ship within the community, that is, they own, lease, and/or manage small
shops that cater for the needs of the community; in addition, they often have
supplementary jobs, for example, as cleaning or hospitality supervisors out-
side the Latin American community. Nonrefugee migrants from the 1980s
and 1990s report having had to pay for English tuition given their condi-
tions of entry into the UK, declare a similar level of competence in English,
have regular status, and also tend to occupy positions of leadership in the
community.
After the 1990s, on the other hand, arrivals often entered the UK on a
student visa, for which they needed to be enrolled in an English language
school on a full-time basis; under these conditions, they were also allowed
to work up to 15 hours per week. Recent changes in immigration law
have meant that only those students registered on recognized UK degree
courses are allowed to work, typically up to 20 hours per week (www.gov.
uk/recognised-uk-degrees), and those at language schools who wish to then
study at a UK university have to renew their visas on a yearly basis; for
renewal to be effected, progress on their IELTS5 scores and regular atten-
dance are required and monitored. Yet recent secondary economic migrants
from Spain, despite their EU status, report their inability to access affordable
English tuition due to high costs and their need to work on a full-time basis.
In view of these facts, many post-1990s migrants, including secondary
migrants from Spain, have sought mobility through intraethnic contacts
within the community. The majority have had to rely on the community
gatekeepers’ contacts outside the Latin American market for jobs, accom-
modation, and, in the case of many irregulars, the renting of valid national
insurance numbers, without which work outside the confines of the Latin
American diaspora is not often possible.
Madrid
Latin American immigration has a long and important tradition in the
Community of Madrid and, more generally, in Spain. It has gone through
various phases in which the cultural, socioeconomic, and national profiles on
both sides have significantly changed (Ramírez Goicoechea, 1996). The mid
1970s saw increased migration from Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay owing to
political upheavals. In the early 1990s, immigration from Argentina continued
to stand out and, to a lesser degree, from Peru, Venezuela, and the Dominican
Republic. In the middle of that decade, the Argentine presence decreased in the
statistical records, partly because these migrants obtained Spanish nationality
(70% of Argentine residents obtained nationality during that time), and then
migration from other Latin American countries increased, also with a high
rate of nationalization. By the end of the 1990s, the number of migrants from
Ecuador and Colombia increased to the extent that they represented 29.8%
and 17.2%, respectively, of the total of Latin American migrants. Today,
Ecuadorians constitute the most numerous Latin American group. Finally, the
current economic crisis has seen many Latin Americans return to their counties
of origin or migrate toward other countries of the EU such as the UK.
These Latin American flows have evolved at the same time as legislative
changes in relation to regularization and citizenship in Spain. Additionally,
Spain’s entry, alongside other countries, into the EU has resulted in the
tightening of migration in the form of new restrictions, restrictions that had
erstwhile been particularly flexible for migrants from former Spanish colonies.
It is thus difficult to trace Latin American immigration to Spain, particularly
in the 1970s and 1980s. In fact, the pace of nationality concessions to Latin
Americans has resulted in their statistical invisibility.6 This helps to explain
why Latin Americans, although very numerous, are statistically surpassed by
other migrant groups (Martínez Buján, 2003). Additionally, Latin Americans
also have special regularization conditions in that a familial relationship with
Spaniards or with previous Latin American migrants settled in the country,
or even with both, is one of the conditions that facilitates regularization.7
Data available from the last decade show 85.5% of Latin Americans work
in the service sector (e.g., domestic service and care of dependent persons).
Such employment is poorly paid, undervalued, and often reserved for women
(Martínez Buján, 2003). Latin American workers occupy an intermedi-
ate position with a rate of unemployment higher than the locals (30% vs.
18% among locals in 2009), albeit lower than migrants from other counties
(consider the rate of 50% of (un)employment among the Moroccan popula-
tion in 2009, the statistically largest migrant group; see Moreno Fuentes &
Bruquetas Callejo, 2011, pp. 45–46). This is often attributed to a shared
language and culture.8 Although Latin Americans speak different varieties of
Spanish from those spoken by Spaniards and these are judged as lower prestige
in the metropolis, to speak Spanish represents an advantage for schooling and
entering the labor market given that, for now, linguistic competence in the
national language (variety) is not required to obtain citizenship.
Recent years have witnessed an increase in migration from Latin America,
offering us a communicative landscape in which Spanish voices are trans-
formed through contact with other voices in different domains and social
spaces. Latin American varieties are now used to connect with Latino
consumers by Spanish companies (particularly banks and communication
companies). Latino voices are also present in music and arts and among the
youngest generations. What is more, even a new discourse has been produced
by Spanish institutions such as the Royal Spanish Academy of Language
and the Cervantes Institute, in which Spanish is represented as a “common
motherland”. This inclusive view of the language could nevertheless be an
argument to promote the maintenance of the local form of Spanish as the
encompassed and standard variety (del Valle, 2007; del Valle and Gabriel-
Stheeman, 2004; Moreno Cabrera, 2008). When these normative positions
are coupled with assimilation policies, such as the compelling use of local
varieties of Spanish at schools, it is evident that differences between varieties
of the same basic language could have an equivalent or even greater effect
in preventing social or occupational mobility, or both, than other languages.
Having provided an overview of some of the contextual elements affecting
the social mobility of the migrants we interviewed in the two locales, we
now turn our attention to the relationship between language and Bourdieu’s
notion of symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1998), bearing in mind the migrants’
status and entry into the UK and Spain, two of the factors that became
relevant in our fieldwork.
LANGUAGE, SOCIAL INTEGRATION, AND MOBILITY
Despite differences in the speakers’ linguistic repertoires and in their reported

practices as well as in the social and political contexts between the two sites
of this research, significant similarities have been identified, particularly in
the ways the participants exploit their linguistic capital. These include using
it as a means to make connections with others, achieve qualifications, and
obtain employment—in short, to acquire a social position. This is not sur-
prising given that, as part of the migration process, people who settle in a
new land need to access the labor market, social services, and education. It is
here that language demands become socially relevant (Martín Rojo, 2010).
Linguistic differences between one language, variety, or accent and
another, that is, between English and Spanish and between varieties of Span-
ish, can become differences in symbolic capital. In other words, their use will
be demanded and legitimate within a given social field (Bourdieu, 1998),
such as the job market, service provision, trade, and the like. Therefore,
in this chapter, we seek to shed light on the linguistic resources seen by the
participants as capital and as legitimate resources in given social fields.
Fragmented9 Linguistic Markets

London
As revealed in the London interactions, migrants in positions of leadership
conceive of bilingualism in English and Spanish as a form of capital. Knowl-
edge of English is seen as instrumental for mobility, in particular to liaise with
the outside market so as to maintain financial prosperity at home and within
their (diasporic) community. This valorization is, however, eroded in the case
of their interpersonal relationships given the cultural segregation of the com-
munity.10 In these cases, the importance of Spanish, unlike English or indeed
bilingualism in English and Spanish, is articulated as an essential resource for
group membership and internal financial networks, that is, as social capital.
This is illustrated in Extract 1, where Pedro, a Colombian who came to
London in the 1980s and who now owns a butcher shop, regards bilingual-
ism in English and Spanish as capital primarily within the field of business.
Extract 1
R = researcher
I = interviewee
1 R: Y por qué le parece importante seguir estudiando inglés,

Why do you think it’s important to continue studying English,
2 I: Uh porque se puede uno desempeñar y avanzar más (.) no, de pronto
Um because you can perform and progress more (.) right, perhaps
(a client comes into the shop and the shop owner serves him)
3 I: Se puede tener unos negocios más (.), pensar en ampliaciones (.) yo
manejo más que todo latinos (.) pero se
4 puede ampliar el negocio (.) uno monta un negocio grande para
5 todos (.) porque las relaciones comerciales tienen también que mejorar
(.) entonces,
You can have more businesses (.) think about expanding (.) I principally
deal with Latinos (.) but the business could be expanded (.) you can set
up a bigger business for everyone (.) because business relationships have
to improve (.) as a result,
English is the language that allows you to progress (“desempeñar y avanzar
más”), to orient yourself professionally and go beyond your existing networks
to “expand your business”, and improve “business relationships”. Thanks to
Pedro’s successful migratory experience, he now runs his own business in an
area and shopping center where Latin Americans make up the majority of cus-
tomers. English is the language used to communicate with his suppliers, but
his profits primarily come from his Latin American customers. In other words,
as a tradesman, he has not managed to establish his business outside a closed
and to some degree segregated market. Pedro is aware that, in order to grow
economically and be able to supply the needs of clients from the local commu-
nity as well as those of the Latin American migrants, he needs to increase his
linguistic capital, and English is seen as the instrument for doing so.
The question of linguistic capital is thus closely related to that of value
because, just as in the currency markets, in the linguistic market, dialects,
styles, and languages themselves do not share the same exchange value. In
Pedro’s example (Extract 1), the value of English is clearly portrayed by its
exchange value: It gives access to an extended market and more clients. The
scaling (Irvine & Gal, 2013) that Pedro refers to by means of comparative ele-
ments, such as “more” and “bigger”, indexes a connection between the ability
to speak English well and increasing business opportunities. In fact, in the
course of the interviews, the participants demonstrate that they are fully aware
of the value of languages in London’s linguistic market, at least in the fields of
business and work. Their linguistic choices and reported practices can be seen
to be shaped by this knowledge. As Extract 2 shows, Carolina, a Colombian
1980s migrant who owns and runs a repairs and alterations shop and claims
to be bilingual in English and Spanish, albeit with only working competence
in English, speaks of a labor market stratified by language. Accordingly, the
cleaning sector holds the lowest status and, from there up, higher positions
require competence in English. Put differently, she relationally maps Spanish
and English with occupational mobility and progression, respectively.
Extract 2
1 R: usted cree que para tener un trabajo mejor hay que hablar inglés,
Do you think that to get a better job one needs to be able to speak English,
2 I: Claro
Of course
3 R: que los trabajos de la gente (.) qué trabajos pueden hacer,
That people’s jobs (.) what types of jobs can they have,
4 I: los trabajos como no sea a limpiar (.) si yo tengo que hablar inglés (.) qué
5 trabajos puede hacer como no sea limpiando (.)
jobs unless it’s cleaning (.) yes you have to speak English (.) what jobs can
be done unless it’s cleaning (.)
6 O sea donde uno vive tiene que hablar la lengua (.) that’s it↑(.)
I mean you have to speak the language of the place where you live (.) that’s
it↑(.)
If, for Pedro in Extract 1, English was associated with “business” and seen
as an instrument to gain further mobility, for Carolina, it is associated with
“work”. Monolingualism in Spanish reduces one’s options (“como no
sea limpiando”—Extract 2, L.5). “Como no” introduces an exception to
an implicit rule: Without English, it’s impossible to work/get a job. Both
examples 1 and 2 present an opposition between moves in interviewees’
trajectories—expansion and mobility versus blockage, associated with
English competence versus lacking competence—in getting access to an
open market in commercial activities and to higher status in a stratified labor
market. So the speakers are aware of the values of Spanish and English in
the receiving community and consider English to be a prerequisite for both
social and further occupational mobility (“donde uno vive tiene que hablar
la lengua”—Extract 2, L. 6).
Extract 3, taken from an interview with Nora, a recent secondary migrant
from Spain, further illustrates the ways in which competence in the language
of the receiving society is viewed as capital. Nora, who works as a cook for
a restaurant in one of the Latin quarters, is in a regular position given her
status as an EU citizen and can thus, theoretically speaking, access the exter-
nal labor market outside the Latin American community. Despite this, she
explains that her main constraint toward achieving further mobility resides
in her inability to speak English.
Extract 3
1 R: Y dime aquí te parece que necesitas inglés para trabajar,
And tell me do you think you need English here to work,
2 I: Sí claro que sí (.) porque si supiera el inglés tendría un trabajo mejor
que este,
Yes of course (.) because if I spoke English I would have a better job
than this,
3 R: Aha cómo qué (.) por ejemplo qué harías,
Um like what (.) for example what would you do,
4 I: Pue: s trabajaría en- en- me han salido [trabajos],=
So: I’d work in-in-I’ve been offered [Jobs],=
5 R: [Aha]
6 I: =Pero me han exigido el inglés y como no sé hablar[el inglés pues]
=but they required English and as I cannot speak [English then]
7 R: [Como qué] trabajo por ejemplo (.) para que necesites el inglés,
8 [like what] job for example (.) for
You to need English,
9 I: Me han salido- para trabajar en por ejemplo en- una oficina de limpieza
pero así me exigen el- el inglés,
10 por ejemplo . . . si yo supiera el inglés (.) Que podría trabajar,
I’ve been offered- to work for example in-cleaning an office but in any
case they requireEnglish, for example . . . if I spoke English (.) I could
work,
For Nora, therefore, English is considered to be economic capital. Compe-
tence in English, beyond any of the qualifications she may or may not have,
is seen as the main means of obtaining a better life in the city, as an essential
tool for tapping into the economic resources that London has to offer. Mas-
tering English is presented as a compelling demand in the labor market, but
one she cannot meet: they required English and as I cannot speak . . . And, as
in examples 1 and 2, the mobility limitation effect associated with the lack of
English capital is also confirmed in this example: if I spoke English I would
have a better job than this. Given the exchange value of the English language,
she would be empowered if she had access to this capital: I could work. Nev-
ertheless, this requirement needs to be added to that of having resolved her
legal situation.
In Extract 4, Viviana, who had lived in Spain for a number of years,
although not long enough to be granted a work permit, now finds herself
in the UK in an irregular position without having achieved a good level of
English. Thus, she had to resort to her social capital within the Latin Ameri-
can community to gain occupational mobility.
Extract 4
1 R: hablabas inglés cuando viniste,

and did you speak English when you arrive,
2 I: No (.) es que sabía ni decir hola (.) (no es que ahora hable mucho)
No (.) I didn’t even know how to say hello (.) (not that I speak much now)
3 R: y fue un problema eso para encontrar trabajo lo de:,
and was this a problem to find work as:,
4 I: eh . . . no para encontrar trabajo realmente no (.) no lo ha sido (.) porque
bueno realmente siempre trabajé en
5 medio de latinos (.1) de hecho mi jefe (.) la chica para la que trabajo es
latina (.) o sea yo no
6 tengo ningún problema en cuanto a eso (.1) trabajos en casas donde los
dueños de las casas son ingleses (.)
7 son americanos (.) o bueno son de por acá de Europa pero (.) o sea gente
que no habla español (.) pero igual no
8 tengo problema porque normalmente no los veo (.1) y si los veo es
9 solamente el saludo (.) de pronto me piden cosas que ya son básicas
10 um . . . no not really to find work (.) it hasn’t been a problem (.) because
in fact I’ve always worked surrounded by Latinos (.) in fact my boss (.)
the girl I work for is Latin (.) so I don’t have a problem in that respect (.1)
jobs in households where the owners are English (.) American (.) or even
from here Europe but (.) I mean they don’t speak Spanish (.) but in any
case I don’t have a problem because I normally don’t see them (.1) and if
I see them I simply exchange hellos (.) sometimes they ask me to do things
but they are basic
In Extracts 3 and 4, we see how both interviewees, Nora and Viviana,
are relegated to the lowest rungs of the work ladder because they do not
comply with either of the two requirements (linguistic capital and legal
status). In spite of this, both have a job and have reached a position of
subsisting in a submarket within the community. Spanish, then, is, for
them as well as for all the migrants interviewed, regarded not only as
social capital in that it is a sine qua non for group membership and social
networking but also as an enabler for job performance in an in-group and
delimited market, which seems to exist within the nation-state labor mar-
ket. In the same way, the use of Spanish allows Pedro (see Extract 1) to
have a profitable business, although his customers were socially compart-
mentalized (I principally deal with Latinos). Within the Latino universe in
London, in different social fields such as the business and the labor mar-
ket, Spanish is also a source of economic resources, which is convertible
into economic capital.
The exchange value of Spanish as economic capital raises significant
questions within current debates about the nature of the linguistic mar-
ketplace in late modernity, particularly in relation to the decreasing ability
of the nation-state to control diversity and in relation to global changes
in local places (Heller, 2011). For Bourdieu, there is a relatively unified
linguistic market, which coincides with the nation-state and configures
a hierarchical discursive space: languages valued more or less highly, dia-
lects, and uses can be employed in some spheres but are rejected in oth-
ers (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 45). Nevertheless, in every field of activity and
depending on the power of the field, this order can be readjusted. How-
ever, increased mobility coupled with a heightened demand for elemen-
tary positions in developed capitalist economies have played an important
role in (further) isolating and ghettoizing the lower-end submarket. In this
distribution, the impact of an international division of core and periph-
ery labor can be observed as it overlaps with national labor markets and
places migrants in lower positions. Labor markets have become racially
and ethnically stratified in metropolitan global cities (see, for example,
Grosfoguel, 2011).
Our examples reveal how local labor and linguistic markets are shaped
by global economic processes and mobility. They show how transnational
workers are accommodated in local economies at the lower ends of the labor
hierarchy through the compelling demand of the requirements of linguistic
capital and legal status. In this context, new spaces for economic and linguis-
tic exchange are seen to emerge as subfields (such as in-group markets and
commercial malls). These enclaves thus become sites for the maintenance of
the migrants’ way of life through their social networks, as well as places where
individual businesses flourish. They thus offer a subsidiary labor market in
which Spanish, a migrant language, which has no visibility in the nation-
state linguistic market, emerges as a new, less valued but convertible capital.
In other words, it becomes an economic capital in that it is a job enabler
and a social capital in as much as employment opportunities are obtained
through social networks. What seems to be especially significant, however,
is that, in the sites we examined, the logic of the market and the valuation
of the languages both reproduce two different logics: that of the receiving
country, by means of which English is the most valuable language, and that
of the country of origin, Spanish (in several varieties), which is not only social
but economic capital in all the economic activities produced and organized
around the mall. The distortion in the national logic is illustrated by some
of our participants’ valorization of what is understood as Paisa and Caleño
Spanish among Colombians in London, over Bogotano Spanish and other
prescribed prestigious varieties.
It is evident that not all members of the Latin American community in
London enjoy the same linguistic capital; neither do they find themselves
sharing the same starting point in terms of improving these resources. Thus,
they do not have the same opportunities for capitalization (Martín Rojo,
2010).
The observed inequality in the distribution and access to capitals does
not always seem to be acknowledged in the interviews. On the contrary,
those who have enjoyed a successful migratory trajectory consider the
difficulty of combining work and the study of English to be a weakness or
a mere excuse. These criticisms are based upon an individualist ideology
that supposes that prosperity, success, and upward social mobility can
be achieved through hard work. Carlos (Extract 5), a communications
graduate who works as a butcher and owns a number of shops in the
shopping center and is responsible for managing an overnight cleaning
service for which several of his compatriots work, provides a pertinent
example.
Extract 5
1 I: Hay que hacer las dos cosas a la vez (trabajar y estudiar).

One has to do both at the same time (work and study).
2 R: Es que algunas personas nos dicen que no consigue reunir las dos cosas
3 (.), trabajar y estudiar.
Some people tell us that it’s not possible to do both (.) to work and
study
4 I: Es mentira (.) querer es poder y cuando se quiere se logra los objetivos.
It’s not true (.) where there’s a will there’s a way and when you want
something you achieve it.
What Carlos insinuates here is that those who failed did not invest enough,
and they simply didn’t try hard enough (“es mentira”—Extract 5, L.4).
In a number of interviews with migrants in positions of leadership, we
encounter the same reference to the “lie”, allegedly told by those with
difficulties, but there is not a single example containing reference to the
different kinds of justifiable obstacles, such as lack of financial means
or a weak economic position. Neither did the interviewees acknowledge
the effects of discrimination or restrictive immigration policies, which,
over the years, have become tougher and increasingly demanding in terms
of legal requirements. Inequalities of social class, both in the country
of origin and in the receiving society, are voiced within the group itself,
again from the standpoint of the distribution of linguistic resources. Such
inequalities can be seen to be legitimated and naturalized in discourses
that represent them as the consequence of individual success or failure (see
Heller, 1992, 1995).
Madrid
Our observations and interactions in Madrid indicate that the economic
principles of market segmentation also operate in the Spanish capital,
although knowledge of the language of the receiving society should not,
in this case, constitute an obstacle to mobility given that Spanish-speaking
Latin Americans speak the same basic language (Márquez Reiter, 2011).
Notwithstanding this façade of commonality resulting from colonial-
ism, the nuances of the standard varieties of Spanish spoken by Latin
American migrants in Madrid are generally reported as one of the vari-
ous elements of difference, mobilized by the locals, to rationalize the
segregation and exclusion from positions many migrants feel they are bet-
ter qualified to occupy than the locals. They are also identified by the
migrants to rationalize the multiple exclusions they encounter in their
daily lives.
The linguistic advantage (i.e., the sharing of a basic language) they
thought they had, prior to migrating to Madrid, is not activated in diaspora.
It is in fact eroded, as it is not associated with a speech style or indeed a
Spanish dialect with trading currency in the receiving society. It is positioned
by the locals as an emblem of linguistic error or impreciseness or both and
is often linked to backwardness and typically constructed as a barrier to
mobility. This was particularly salient in jobs in which language transmis-
sion played a strong role as Juan, the interviewee, explained in Extract 6.
Juan is a regular Dominican migrant who occupies a position of responsi-
bility within a Centro de Participación e Integración de la Comunidad de
Madrid (CEPI), primarily oriented toward the Dominican community. A
reported lack of legitimacy in language transmission was also articulated in
Extract 7 by Dora, an irregular Honduran migrant who was employed as
a nanny because of her competence in English and the fact that she was a
qualified schoolteacher back home.
Extract 6
1 I: Sí. se llama María °la profe esa.° (.) me dijo una vez en la clase era de:-
2 (1.0) de habla. de habla y me dice: (.) es que tú tienes que <vocalizar
3 más>así como una forma de burla, o sea- y- yo me sentí totalmente fatal,
4 (.) °y yo° y usted<tiene que entenderme más> (.) así que ahora me voy
5 de >aquí ahora< ((risa)) (.) y todo el mundo eh::: pero vamos en plan de:-
Yes her name is Maria° that teacher°. (.) she’s told me once in the lesson
was about-(1.0) speech. About speech and she says to me: (.) you have
tu <vocalise more> like that like making fun o me, I mean-I-I felt really
bad, (.)۪and I̥ and you<have to understand
Me more>(.)so now I’m leaving>right now<((laughter))(.) and everyone
Oy:: come on like:-
Extract 7
1 I: Dora me decían a mí cuando estaba trabajando (.) tienes que pronunciar
2 la ce la zeta porque si no mi hijo va a hablar como tú me decía y yo,
3 (1.0) pero >si usted me contrató sabiendo que yo era hondureña y que yo
4 hablaba distinto<, (.) o sea yo cuando leo con el niño, yo le pronuncio (.)
5 bien porque lo sé. (.) o sea sé que así se pronuncia (.) pero en mi dialecto
6 y en mi forma de ser >yo jamás voy a decir eso<. (.) o sea, ella me decía
Dora esta cosa< OK (.) no. se dice vale. (.) vale.
Dora they said to me when I was working (.) you need to pronounce the
ce the z because
Otherwise my son will speak like you she told me and I, (1.0) but >if you
hired me knowing that
I was Honduran and that I speak differently <, (.) I mean when I read to
the child, IPronounce (.) correctly because I know it. (.) I mean I know
that this is the way it’s pronounced (.) but in my dialect and in the way I
am>I will never say that<(.) I mean, she told me Dora this<OK (.) no you
say vale. (.) vale
That Juan is Dominican and does not speak the local standard variety
endows him with a necessary credential to perform his job at the CEPI
(called CEPI Hispano-Dominicano) where he works. Indeed, Juan provides
us with an example of the way in which symbolic capital is converted into
institutional cultural capital. Put differently, Juan’s ethnolinguistic identity
is a source of commodification in the receiving community.
The experiences of both Dora and Juan (Extracts 6 and 7) bring to light the
ways in which varieties of Spanish that are seen to “deviate” from the local
standard are not conceived of as capital in the field of education. Instead,
they are seen as disabling access to a desired mobility. They also show that
the process of notification of the ex-colonial language (see, for example,
Anchimbe & Mforteh, 2013), where Spanish is in Latin America the legiti-
mate official language the majority have to manipulate in their day lives, is
in fact challenged and ridiculed by citizens in the metropolis. Ex-colonized
citizens are not considered legitimate speakers of their own language and, as
result, they do not have the right to transmit it (cf. Pennycook, 2007).
As it emerges in our fieldwork, this partly stems from the continual
reestablishment by the locals of hegemonic linguistic ideologies in the migrants’
everyday activities and the migrants’ own reinscription of these very ideolo-
gies in diaspora, resulting from their formal education back home. It also
corresponds to the centripetal forces exerted by many of the Spanish institu-
tions and affiliated partners in former Spanish colonies allegedly linked to
Spain by the unifying force of a language in common (cuando leo con el niño,
yo le pronuncio bien porque lo sé o sea sé que así se pronuncia—Extract 7,
L.3–4). The delegitimatization of the migrants’ standard Spanish varieties
and, by default, of their personae is evidenced in their daily working and
leisure activities. More frequently than they care to remember, some of our
participants report either being corrected by the locals or being subjected to
forms of verbal public abuse or being exposed to both.
As shown by Dora and Juan, Latin American migrants are not only con-
scious of this exclusion and of (latent) forms of colonial racism but also of
the fact that they are reactivated by increasing human mobility and the estab-
lishment of ex-colonized “subjects” in the heart of the metropolis (Gros-
foguel, 2011). Furthermore, they recognize the role that racism plays in the
stratification of the labor market and the ways in which it disables their
desired social mobility.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The analysis of the interviews shows how linguistic and migratory paths
overlap, opening up a multitude of options.
Latin American migrants in London and Madrid are able to navigate
the linguistic markets of the various social fields in accordance with their
own social position and the economic and symbolic capitals at their dis-
posal or within their reach. In the extracts from the interviews examined,
the participants reflect upon how these impact on their own experiences,
on the social networks of which they are part, and on their participation in
the labor market. Thus, some migrants report becoming bilingual in English
and Spanish, while others report speaking only one of these languages. Yet
others, like Dora and Juan, report using a language variety devoid of trading
currency in certain social fields such as education, albeit varieties that are
(potentially) commodifiable in the area of migrant service provision.
In line with some of the research conducted in North America (see, for
example, Goldstein, 1997; Portes, 1995) and Europe (see, for example,
Duchêne, 2011; Hewitt, 2012), we have seen how speakers of certain lan-
guages and language varieties tend to populate certain jobs but not others.
What is more, we have observed the ways in which Latin American Spanishes
are considered to be legitimate in niche markets primarily resulting from
globalization and the new economy (e.g., servicing the needs of migrants
in Madrid, populating elementary jobs with an intraethnic workforce that
require knowledge of the language).
We have also seen that the nation-state and local logics are insuffi-
cient to explain the valuation of languages in particular social fields and
subfields, such as the malls, where we conducted some of the interviews,
and in the economic activities produced around them. In both London and
Madrid, the logic of the market and the valuation of the languages repro-
duce the logics of the receiving country while they distort the national log-
ics. Thus, we have seen how Spanish represents not just social and cultural
capital but also economic capital in the field of business within the intra-
ethnic community. Thus, “the limits of the nation-state are stretched, but
not (yet) undone” (Heller & Duchêne, 2011, p. x). As we have shown, this
is primarily due to the interwoven relationship between market and cul-
tural segregation. This is because migration is associated with globalization
and with increased mobility that shapes and is shaped by transformations
in the national language markets, equivalent to those that occur in other
economic, social, and cultural areas. Lacking the required language capital
and legal status gives access only to low-skill, menial work or to a posi-
tion of subsisting in a submarket within the community. These constraints
encourage the emergence and maintenance of a hierarchically organized
labor market.
The discourses produced in the interviews show a situation of discrim-
ination and marginalization, and the migrants’ perceptions of where and
for whom this inequality is reinforced or diminished. Thus, we have seen
how linguistic and legal barriers intersect with migrants’ previous personal
circumstances and values and their current individual efforts to gain new
capital and to integrate. Consequently, market dynamics logics are still
bound to socioeconomic inequality. Indeed, our interviews reveal that that
not everyone has had the same opportunity to acquire the linguistic variet-
ies and/or forms with the highest market value. The process of determining
the value of bilingualism and of English and Spanish as an asset has been
differently conceived of with reference to regular and irregular migrants
and well-established and wealthy versus less-well-off migrants. For those
who have access to education and relatively highly valued jobs and to social
and labor networks beyond the intraethnic community—wealthier and
regular migrants—hierarchicalized bilingualism is seen as an unavoidable
requirement where the national language(s) or standard variety of the receiv-
ing country seem to be assigned value as a source of profit.
We have also seen how access to this form of asymmetric bilingualism gen-
erates inequality and tensions within the Latin American minority. A common
denominator across the London migrants, irrespective of their immigration
status or year of arrival or both, is their management of Spanish as symbolic
capital. Nevertheless, its “conversion” into cultural, social, and economic cap-
ital would appear to depend on the level of access that the speakers have to
the market in question.
NOTES
1. This research was made possible thanks to the funding provided by the Span-
ish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación within the Plan Nacional de I+D+I
2008–2011 to the project “New speakers, new identities: Linguistic practices
and ideologies in the post-national era” (NEOPHON; ref. FFI2011–24781),
led by Joan Pujolar (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya). This research has also
benefited from the contributions of colleagues involved in the ISCH COST
Action Network IS1306 “New Speakers n a Multilingual Europe: Opportuni-
ties and Challenges”.
2. www.southwark.gov.uk/news/article/953/southwark_becomes_first_council_
to_officially_recognise_its_latin_american_community, accessed on 14/09/2012.
3. The term (ir)regular is used instead of (i)llegal to denote a stance. “(Ir)regular”
has of late been used in migration studies much in the same way as
“(un)authorised” seems to gaining ground on the other side of the Atlantic.
4. www.publico.es accessed on 12/09/2013.
5. The International English Language Testing Service (IELTS) is the most recog-
nized standard language proficiency test for study and work in the UK.
6. Migrants from former colonies could obtain Spanish nationality after legally
and continuously residing in Spain for a period of 2 years. Spanish nationality
can be acquired by residence in Spain. To apply for naturalization by residence,
it is necessary for the individual to have lived in Spain for 10 years, or 5 years if
the individual is a refugee, or 2 years if the individual is a national of a country
of Iberoamerica, Andorra, Philippines, Equatorial Guinea, or Portugal, or if
the individual is a Sephardi Jew (Spanish Civil Code, 2002: article 22).
7. In fact, authors, such as Martínez Buján (2003) consider these special con-
ditions are part of an intent of favoring Latino American immigration over
Maghrebian workers, a highly stigmatized group in Spanish society.
8. In contrast with this unemployment rate of the 30% among Latin Americans
in 2009, the rate among locals was 18% in 2009. This rate was significantly
higher in the case of Moroccans and workers from other African countries
(around 50%) and higher than the rate among migrants from Asia. In this case,
the unemployment rate is even lower than in the case of nationals. Research-
ers explain these differences with reference to the kind of activities migrants
develop, their educational trajectories, and the impact of racism and ethnic
prejudices in the receiving society (Moreno Fuentes & Bruquetas Callejo,
2011). Unemployment rates among immigrants in December 2009 were as fol-
lows: Morocco 3.14%; Rumania 2.07%; Ecuador 1.52%; Colombia 0.96%;
and Argentina 0.33%. Source: Data from the State Agency for employment,
in Moreno Fuentes and Bruquetas Callejo (2011, p. 61).
9. “Fragmented” refers to economic spaces split along ethnolinguistic lines
(cf. Cachón Rodríguez, 2002; Restifo, Roscigno, & Qian, 2013).
10. An example of cultural segregation emerged in an interview with a second-
generation migrant who, unlike many of those in our sample, had a UK
degree in accountancy and had secured a job at a global bank in the City of
London in that capacity. In spite of this, she reported that none of the work-
mates with whom she used to socialize were White Britons but were instead
British Asian and/or British Nigerian.
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6 On Being Colombian in La
Sagrada Familia Neighborhood
The Negotiation of Identities and the
Construction of Authenticity
Adriana Patiño-Santos
INTRODUCTION
My interest in Colombians in the Sagrada Família area of Barcelona started

in 2009 when I, a researcher of Colombian origin, came to live in the neigh-
borhood. Since my arrival in 2001, I had lived in other areas of central
Barcelona, where the presence of people from a variety of backgrounds
was much in evidence. These included Pakistanis, Chinese, and Italians, but
not Latin Americans, and even less so Colombians. Basically, it was the
high presence of Latin American restaurants and shops labeled Latino that
attracted my attention and led me to inquire into who these people were
and why and how they did business in the shadow of the famous basilica,
universally regarded as the emblem of Barcelona.1
La Sagrada Família came to public attention in the 1960s with the resur-
gence of interest in the work of Gaudí, and this has made the area one of
the most transited in the city. An unending stream of tourists from all over
the world can be observed mixing daily among a local population of equally
diverse origins, many from Thailand, Pakistan, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia,
and from Catalonia itself. The main purpose of this study is to focus on
migrants of Colombian origin, one of the biggest visible groups to have
settled in the neighborhood, in order to study the identities and positionings
they display (Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004) within the local community, as
well as the social and interethnic consequences of these positionings.
Ethnographic participation, not only as a researcher but also as a customer,
has allowed me to identify some of the ways the group members drew on
certain symbolic and material resources in order to establish themselves eco-
nomically. One such way is the commodification of Colombian or Latin
American identities through a “gastronomic network”, where restaurants
and bakeries with names such as La pastelería colombiana or El arepazo
emerge as places where people recreate practices from their regions of origin
while, at the same time, offering “authentic Colombian” products to tour-
ists and the local community. In these places, alongside the construction of
“authenticity”, language plays a central role in the service encounters taking
place between sellers and customers and in the interactions with peers.
On Being Colombian in La Sagrada Familia Neighborhood 103
For the purpose of this study, therefore, a sociolinguistic ethnographic
approach is adopted in order to examine the ways participants negotiate
their identities and positionings and to observe the concomitant tensions
that emerge. Thus, the negotiation of identities in interviews is compared
with that recorded in the observation of daily exchanges. The results are
then analyzed in an attempt to clarify the reasons people choose to partici-
pate by constructing an imagined community, shaped by ideas of what it
means to be a Colombian in Barcelona.
CONTEXT OF RESEARCH
It is necessary to consider two important issues in order to reconstruct the

ideas of Colombianidad that are created and transmitted in this particular
context. The first is the complex sociolinguistic situation in Catalonia, of
which new Latin American migrants are usually unaware (Codó & Patiño-
Santos, 2014). The second is the profile of those Colombians who emigrate
as workers to Catalonia and to Spain in general.
The Sociolinguistic Situation in Catalonia

Catalonia is a bilingual region where Catalan and Spanish are co-official
languages. For historical and political reasons, this autonomous region has
at times maintained conflictive relations with the central government in
Madrid. Language has been at the core of the definition of national identities
and, consequently, has been an issue for ethnic and socio-political struggles
(Pujolar, 2007; Woolard, 1989).
Even though the people of Catalonia speak both languages, the Catalan
national project has focused its national identity on the reestablishment
of Catalan after Francoism (the period of dictatorship between 1939
and 1975 that forbade the use of minority languages in Spain). Language
policies, such as the normalització lingüística (language normalization) dur-
ing the 1980s, were aimed at making the use of Catalan “normal” within
daily life by offering language courses for adults and linguistic support for
public and private institutions and at promoting its use in the academic and
scientific domains. These policies were meant to promote, in particular, the
use of Catalan by Spanish speakers who arrived in Catalonia as a result of
internal migration flows from different regions of Spain during the 1950s
and 1960s. Since the mid 1990s, however, the arrival of newcomers from
different parts of the world (North and West Africa, Asia, and Latin Amer-
ica) has reframed the language issue (Pujolar, 2010; Siqués, 2008).
Today, despite the Catalan government’s promotion of Catalan as the lan-
guage of social cohesion and integration, the reality of the use of that language
is in practice more complex. Different linguistic ideologies circulate and bring
a set of tensions to the forefront of public debate. According to Pujolar (2010),
104 Adriana Patiño-Santos
in some cases, the discourses and practices that migrants receive are contradic-
tory: on the one hand, Catalan institutions present Catalan as “the common
language” and, on the other, members of the community typically address
them in Spanish. Pujolar further contends that this “is also the reason why
immigrants generally learn Spanish first throughout the Catalan territory,
and why Spanish becomes indeed the practical lingua franca amongst them”
(2010, p. 231).
Colombians in Barcelona
The presence of people with Colombian backgrounds coincides with the
arrival of various groups of Latin Americans in Spain. This has been an
ongoing phenomenon since the beginning of the 1990s and is a product
of Spain’s participation in the new global economic market. A detailed
profile of this group can be traced from studies carried out in different
stages of this period in Spain and Catalonia (see what follows), as well
as from my research on narratives (Patiño-Santos, 2003) of Colombi-
ans in Madrid and Barcelona. My personal experience as a Colombian
migrant in Barcelona also helps me to interpret some of the outcomes of
the research.
Aparicio and Giménez (2003) reveal that there were 7,207 Colombi-
ans officially resident in Spain in 1993 (1,180 of them in Barcelona) and,
from 1993, there was a gradual increase until the year 2000, when the num-
ber officially resident in Barcelona doubled from 2,972 in the previous year
to 6,040. Numbers continued to increase until 2010, when reports from local
government entities show the start of a decrease in the number of people of
foreign backgrounds in Catalonia (Garrell, 2013), with 46,207 inhabitants
of Colombian origin currently living in Catalonia, 12,328 of these in
Barcelona.
These figures should be viewed in relation to a series of social phenomena
that shed light on certain situations that Colombians have faced during their
time in Spain. The first increase in migration rates, until 2000, should be under-
stood in the context of the economic recession in Colombia (1995–2002).
The regions most affected were those of the central Andean range, Cundina-
marca, and the area known as the coffee-growing zone (la zona cafetera),
which witnessed a fall in the price of coffee beans and sugar cane in the Valle
region in particular, and also in Risaralda, Caldas, and Quindío. At the same
time, these regions also faced security issues, most notably in the department
of Antioquia, “where the fight against drug trafficking [was] undermining
an important source of income for part of the population that does not have
alternative sources”2 (Aparicio & Giménez, 2003, p. 41). Both these situa-
tions explain the high presence of people from these areas in those Spanish
cities, such as Barcelona, that are generally favored by Colombians.
A second surge in the official number of Colombians living in Spain in the
year 2001 is related to the imposition by the Spanish state of entry visas for
people of Colombian citizenship. Before January 2002, Colombians could
enter Spain as tourists with the right to be in the country for a period of not lon-
ger than 3 months. Later regularization processes would give the opportunity
to many “illegal migrants”, who arrived on such visas but remained in the
country beyond their validity, to apply for residence (García, 2007; Patiño-
Santos, 2003). Thus, 70% of Colombians were in an “irregular” situation
between 2000 and 2002, but by 2008, only 14% were “illegals” (Ech-
everri, 2011). Subsequent migration flows up to and including 2010 seem
to result from family reunifications and the arrival of contingents of workers
with contracts to work in Spain (Echeverri, 2011).
The same studies show that the Colombian population in Spain is
heterogeneous in respect of regional origin, social class, age, gender,
education level, and reasons for migrating. According to Aparicio and
Giménez (2003), 8,755 Colombians were living in Barcelona in 2002.
The majority (66.35%) were between 24 and 44 years old and, there-
fore, of working age. Half of the group (51.2%) lived with their children,3
and 43.3% reported having studied at secondary school level, where some
had had vocational training. Figures also revealed a slightly higher number
of women (56.29%). Most people do not do the same work as they did in
Colombia, and there is a difference in working trajectories according to gen-
der. Thus, 48% of women were working in domestic service before 2002,
a figure reduced to 27% in 2007. It is important to note that “domestic
service” attracted a lower rate of Social Security payments, so some of those
who registered as working in this sector were actually employed in other
areas (Patiño-Santos, 2003). Women were also working in the hotel indus-
try (21% in 2007). For men, construction (33–35% until 2009), together
with agriculture (3% in 2005), were the predominant sectors. Currently
this group, as is the case with migrants in general, is suffering the conse-
quences of the financial crisis, which began to affect Spain in 2008 and
which has been manifested in high levels of unemployment.
To this general profile, it is useful to add certain ideas that circulate regard-
ing Colombians in Spain. These give us a clue as to some of the challenges
this group has had to face in their new home. Rettis (2004) observes that
each Latin American group resident in Spain has been classified by the media
according to specific features. In the case of Colombians, “what’s mostly per-
ceived is an image of violence, in the news of their country of origin as well
as in the news about its immigrants: sicarios (hired assassins), drug dealers,
petty criminals, prostitutes, and other occupations related to social conflict
are seen with a terrified and distrustful Spanish gaze”4 (Rettis, 2004, p. 2).
THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND DATA
The context described earlier has led to the present inquiry into the motiva-
tions of and consequences for those who have decided to open businesses
with the label “Colombian” on the shop front in the Sagrada Familia
neighborhood and thus to the following research questions:
• What identities do Colombians display and how do they negotiate

them in order to participate in their everyday working activities?
• How and to what ends is “Colombian authenticity” constructed?
• What can this case study tell us about the processes of social integration
within the global economy as manifested in Barcelona?
From first arriving in the neighborhood in September 2009, I started to

patronize restaurants and small food outlets, with labels such as “Colom-
bian”, “Peruvian”, “Ecuadorian”, or “Latino”. I was surprised and delighted
to find food that I had not previously consumed during my years living in
Spain. Frequent visits made me familiar with owners, assistants, and waiters
and also with fellow customers. In October 2011, I started fieldwork in order
to gather interactional data and observe these people in their daily activities.
Even though I observed five businesses, two shops and three restaurants,
for the purpose of this chapter, the data that I analyze come from two spe-
cific eateries (described in the third section) in the form of field notes and
transcriptions. Owing to issues of confidentiality and given the “irregular”
situation of some of the participants in terms of their residence status, audio
recordings of service encounters were not possible. In light of this, and with
the express consent of the participants, I recorded interviews and infor-
mal conversations with five workers of Colombian origin, five customers,
and two non-Colombian bosses, and the communicative practices between
employees during working hours. The fieldwork lasted until April 2012.
The study focuses on identity construction and negotiation in local
practices and follows a sociolinguistic ethnographic perspective (Blom-
maert, 2010; Heller, 1999/2006; Martín Rojo, 2010, among others), which
implies observing how participants are categorized in language practices
by their peers and the local people and in what ways they respond to such
categorizations, that is, whether they assume or contest assigned identities
(Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004). A sociolinguistic ethnography conceptual-
izes language as a situated social practice. Its main concern is to understand
how everyday activity is organized and the way in which people construct
their world. Local interactions and social positioning are constrained by
arrangements of activities that are ritualized according to particular “logics
of practice” in connection with broader sociopolitical/economic processes of
change (Heller, 2003). The ways in which social actors organize themselves
in local practices are therefore treated as indexes of social (that is, concern-
ing identities), moral, and linguistic configurations, which result from the
structuration of those material and symbolic resources available, in this case,
in the context of the new global economy and mobility. In language practices,
therefore, attributes regarding who people are and how they behave are nego-
tiated. Such negotiation has consequences for the social image of the migrants
in this study who endeavor to fit in with “what’s going on”, according to their
own interpretation, in the communicative situation but at the same time seek
to fulfill certain individual goals. It is for this reason that the ideas and expla-
nations of Colombians of their own linguistic behaviors should be taken into
account in the present analysis. Wider observation of the different areas of
the workplaces of these people are complemented with the analysis of inter-
actional data, mostly interviews, as well as with the presence of multimodal
elements, mainly images and artifacts, that are part of the ongoing practice.
This helps in the observation of ideas on Colombianidad that are constructed
and circulate within the different businesses observed, as well as on Latini-
dad, a concept that emerges as synonymous for the participants interviewed.
THE SITE AND PARTICIPANTS
A glance at the shop fronts of the businesses located in the shopping area
surrounding La Sagrada Familia immediately reveals the multicultural com-
position of the neighborhood. There are signs primarily in Catalan, Spanish,
and English, but also some in Russian, Polish, and Chinese. Particularly
striking, however, is the high presence on the fronts of businesses, within
a radius of a quarter of a mile, of references to Latin American nationalities
or with the Pan-American label “Latino”, which, according to the owners,
means “we are all from South America”.
The two focal places chosen for this study are La Pastelería Colombiana
and El Pincho Rico,5 located within the Sagrada Familia neighborhood.
These were of particular interest because, contrary to my initial expectations,
their owners are not of Colombian origin. Román (65), the owner of the pas-
try shop, is from Spain, but he has lived in Latin America at different times
in his life, including his childhood. Meanwhile, the restaurant was started, in
co-ownership, by a British woman, Karen (33), and her ex-husband, Carlos
(40), a Colombian from Antioquia who has moved back to Colombia in
order to expand the business while his ex-wife runs the restaurant in Barce-
lona. In both cases, the fact that the owners were from countries different
from that of their employees, all Colombians, was relevant when observing
the negotiation of identities and the construction of “authenticity”.
The pastry shop was founded in 2001, after Román decided to sell his
first business, “the first Latino supermarket in the city”. In fact, he considers
himself the pioneer of such a brand in Barcelona, as can be seen in Extract 1:
Interacción 1: Entrevista Con El Propietario

De La Pastelería Colombiana
Adriana: cómo es que decidiste abrir una pastelería colombiana\
Román: yo inauguré la primera tienda latina en Barcelona (.) que era la
“Plaza Latina” y entonces resulta que al cabo de un tiempo fui
a Colombia (.) me gustó mucho el país (.) me quedé enamo-
rado de Colombia (.) del país y en Barcelona no había (.) no
había ninguna tienda latina (.) o sea ninguna tienda latina y
pastelería (.) tampoco (. . .) con la pastelería llevamos once
años y la tienda latina se abrió en el 95 (.) con la Plaza son dos
negocios pioneros en su estructura
Extract 1: Interview With the Owner of La Pastelería Colombiana

Adriana: what made you decide to open a Colombian pastry shop\
Román: I opened the first “Latino” shop in Barcelona (.) which was
called “Latino Square” and then, after a while I went to
Colombia (.) I like the country a lot (.) I ended up in love with
Colombia (.) with the country and in Barcelona there was
no (.) there were no “Latino” shops (.) I mean no “Latino”
shop or pastry shop (.) either (. . .) with the pastry shop we’ve
been going eleven years and the “Latino” shop opened in 95
(.) with Latino Square they are two pioneering businesses in
terms of their set-up
As illustrated in this excerpt, the idea of Latinidad emerges from the

interpretation that Román gives to my question. I ask him about “Colom-
bia” as a brand name, but he reformulates it into “Latino”. It would seem,
therefore, that he uses “Latino” and “Colombian” synonymously. However,
the relevant issue from his statement is that “Latino” and “Colombiano”
were concepts to be exploited commercially. For both owners, the neigh-
borhood turned out to be the best location because of its central location,
its connection to the rest of the city by three metro lines and several bus
routes, and because they considered the place to be safe. In the owners’
words, their businesses are aimed at Colombian and at Latin American
customers in general. Even though they have the same target group, they
consider that they are not competing overtly because each offers distinct
products.
The pastry shop is a typical reproduction of any pastry shop from the
El Valle region, whose main city is Cali. In fact, this is the origin of most
of the workers at La Pastelería Colombiana. Jennifer (40), one of the wait-
resses, is from Palmira, a small city in El Valle region, Patricia (37), a sec-
ond waitress, was born in Tuluá but grew up in Cali, and Daniel (42),
the baker, is also from Palmira. All of them arrived during the period that
has been described as a second surge in Colombian migration flow (see
“Colombians in Barcelona”). The owner reported that even the builders
who fitted out the establishment were from Cali. Although most of the
products sold at La Pastelería Colombiana are from the El Valle region,6
there are also products from other regions of Colombia, for example, Cun-
dinamarca, central Colombia, and Antioquia.
Meanwhile, El Pincho Rico is a small restaurant that functions in nar-
row premises of one floor with a mezzanine level. The place has a license as
a restaurant but also functions as a fruit shop and has a juice bar in the main
entrance. One of the waitresses is in charge of informally offering the custom-
ers, as they are eating, products that might not be expected to be for sale in
a restaurant, and these range from women’s clothes to pirate DVDs of Colom-
bian films and soap operas. The place functions as a social hub and offers
main meals, lunch and dinner, and fruit salads, as well as juices which, it is
claimed, are made from “exotic” fruits. Most of the customers usually come
for lunch during the week and for a fruit salad with ice cream, cheese and fruit
sauce, “Colombian style”, on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?: “COLOMBIA” AS A BRAND
As explained, since their arrival, Colombians have tended to figure in the

Spanish media in association with drug dealing, kidnapping and robbery
(Rettis, 2004). These categorizations, sometimes accepted by members of
the Colombian community itself, caused some of them to try to deny or hide
their place of origin or even avoid including other Colombians in their social
circles (Patiño-Santos, 2003).
Such assigned identities could lead to the belief that investing in Colom-
bian migrants is risky or even that “Colombia” could never be a successful
commercial “brand”. Nevertheless, the two owners of the establishments in
this study decided to use it and create a brand addressed to Latin American
customers. As Román, the owner of La Pastelería Colombiana, explained
(see Extract 2), he realized from the very beginning that conflicts and racism
come from the establishment, but “in daily life people just want to work”:

Adriana: no te parecía riesgoso poner el nombre colombiano en la pas-
telería\
Román: (. . .) hace más ruido lo malo que lo bueno (. . .) si tengo que
hacer una queja es que me han obligado a cambiar el nom-
bre de pastelería en catalán (.) tienes que rotular en bilingüe.
(. . .) pastisseria(.) me han puesto multas por estar en espa-
ñol (.)y creo que es más el racismo. el racismo viene por las
altas (.) por los que tienen el poder (.) porque siempre tienen
que buscar algo para poder cobrar de alguien que no por la
gente normal de la calle (.) la gente normal de la calle no se
mete en esas tonterías (.) el que tiene ya (.) digamos que su
preocupación por trabajar (.) e hacer (.) gastar (.) normal (.)
ese no se mete en esas tonterías (.) si se meten en las tonterías
es porque los de arriba (.) o los que están en el gobierno les
interesa que haya problemas de esos para estar allí

Adriana: didn’t it seem risky to you to call the pastry shop “Colombian”\
Román: (. . .) you always hear about the bad things more readily than
the good things (. . .) if I have a complaint it’s that they have
forced me to change the name of the pastry shop to Catalan (.)
you have to name everything bilingually (.) (. . .) pastisseria. they
have fined me for having it in Spanish (.) and I think it’s really
just racism (.) racism comes from those on high (.) from those
with the power (.) because they’re always looking for an excuse
to get money out of someone it’s not from the normal people in
the street (.) normal people in the street don’t get involved in such
nonsense. just what’s relevant now (.) I mean their concern is to
work (.) and do stuff (.) spend (.) normal (.) those people don’t get
involved in that sort of nonsense (.) if they get involved in such
nonsense it’s because those in charge or those who are in the gov-
ernment want there to be problems like those in order to be there
This example reveals how the participant emphasizes the gap between the
local and the wider social contexts and how he categorizes as normal what
people do in their day-to-day activities. For him, a “normal” way of life is
defined in terms of working and shopping. Thus, it is the logic of this every-
day practice that made him invest in the “Latino” and “Colombian” labels
as a way to attract the attention of his potential and now current customers.
This commodification of Colombian identity then caused investors to draw
on various strategies to create a certain “authenticity” in order to attract
a target clientele. This “authenticity” has been constructed on the basis of
the dichotomy of assigned-assumed identities of what a Colombian person
is or should be. It is only by accepting certain assigned identities, ethnic and
indeed linguistic (as shall be seen), considered legitimate in this particular
context, that “authenticity” can be established.
ACHIEVING “AUTHENTICITY”
Several assigned-assumed identities, embodied in practices that facilitate the

making of “Colombia” and “Colombians” a brand to invest in, have been
identified in the data, but this analysis concentrates on only two, namely,
that Colombian people like to feel at home and Colombian people preserve
their ways of speaking.
The acceptance and acting out of these assigned identities allow Colombians
who work and interact in both eateries to navigate known social networks
easily while allowing them to display an agency by challenging and contesting
represented social discourses about Colombians in the Spanish media. Unfor-
tunately, this agency has other social consequences for them in as much as it
results in obstacles to their participating in social networks outside their own
community. Their distance from the local people and their refusal to learn or
to speak Catalan are, as the analysis reveals, the root causes of these barriers.
We Feel at Home
In catering to a target customer, a Colombian or Latin American, owners of
both establishments have created spaces conforming to what they consider
to be Colombian tastes, employing a specific decorative style, the supply of
certain Colombian products, and the recruitment of a staff of Colombian
employees. These places have been constructed around the owners’ ideas of
what Colombian customers expect to find in a place designed for them. Such
assigned identities (see Extract 3) are the foundation for what is considered
to be “authentic” in these contexts:

Adriana: ¿Cómo es que hiciste una pastelería así, como una de Cali?
Román: a la gente le gusta porque porque se encuentra como en su
tierra (:) es una cosa ahí (.) y claro (.) si pones un panadero
col- (.) español (.) o dependencia española (.) la gente no entra
tanto en conversación (.) no se encuentra tan a gusto (.) y
pues pueden hablar del pueblo (.) a lo mejor a veces son veci-
nos o se conocen de estar allí (.) que muchas veces pasa

Adriana: How come you made a pastry shop like this, like one from
Cali \
Román: people like it because they feel as if they’re in their home-
land (:) it’s something like that (.) and of course (.) if you
put in a Colo- (.) Spanish baker (.) or Spanish assistant (.)
people don’t tend to get much into conversation (.) they don’t
feel quite so comfortable (.) and so they can talk about their
hometown (.) maybe they’re neighbours or they knew each
other from back there (.) which often happens
“Authenticity” is based on the ethnic identity of the employees. Thus, in this

example, Colombian people are categorized as different from Spanish peo-
ple because they have distinct communicative styles: according to Roman,
a person from Spain does not initiate a conversation in the same way. As
Figure 6.1 Some Colombian products sold at La Pastelería colombiana.
reported by Jacobs-Huey (2006) in her study of African-American women

workers at a beauty parlor, certain language uses and topics with customers
are key to making them feel as if they were back home.
A second element that contributes to “feeling at home” is the Colombian
products sold in both places.
The pastelería is well known for its Colombian-style cakes, made with
a caramel mixture, which are eaten on special occasions, such as birthdays
and the “fiesta de quince años”, the special celebration for girls when they
reach their 15th birthday. According to Patricia (see Extract 4), the demands
of Colombian customers can be classified according to their region:
Interacción 4: Entrevista Con Patricia, Empleada

Adriana: por qué crees que viene la gente
Patricia: pues yo digo que es porque se sienten como en casa (.) rela-
cionados (.) de que vienen y se van a comer (.) cuando llegan
dicen \ ay parezco en Colombia/
Adriana: sí\ (.) te lo dicen\
Patricia: claro porque ven lo que se van a comer y ay mira que estos
son los que- (.) me provoca llevarme todo y algo comen (.)
por ejemplo los de allí de tu ciudad [Bogotá] (.) ellos son los
clientes de las almojábanas y nosotros del Valle (.) los pan-
debonos (.) entonces asi cada cual (.) los paisas vienen por sus
arepas
Extract 4: Interview with Patricia, employee from

La Pastelería Colombiana
Adriana: Why do you think people come\
Patricia: Well I’d say that it’s because they feel at home (.) connected
(.) that they come and they’re going to eat (.) when they arrive
they say \ “hey I feel like I’m in Colombia/”
Adriana: Really\ (.) they tell you that\
Patricia: Of course because they see what they’re going to eat and “hey
look these are the ones that- (.) I fancy (.) I´ll take the lot”
and they eat something (.) for example those from there from
your city [Bogotá] (.) they are almojábanas customers and we
from the Valle (.) the pandebonos (.) so that’s how it is each
to his own (.) the “paisas” come for their arepas
In both her turns, Patricia uses footing (Goffman, 1981), and in this way
becomes the animator of the customers who “feel like [they’re] in Colom-
bia” not only because of the decoration of the place but also because of the
products they recognize and enjoy (“hey look these are the ones that- (.)
I fancy (.) I´ll take the lot”). In turn 2, she includes me in her classification
by identifying me as a person from Bogotá who likes almojábanas. Footing,
in this case, is used as a resource for legitimating the constructed authentic-
ity in this specific environment. By bringing to the fore the voices of her
customers, she validates her claim that people feel they are in Colombia.
The same environment is recreated at El Pincho Rico, where the atmo-
sphere of a restaurant in central Colombia at lunch time is recreated. Salsa
music is played simultaneously with the TV, which is showing the Colom-
bian cable channels offering news, soap operas, game shows, football, and
the like. As a customer of El Pincho Rico explains, “You feel at home, you
even think you’re going to go out on the street and find yourself in the
middle of a typical traffic jam in Bogotá.”
Figure 6.2 Advertisements in a Colombian restaurant in Sagrada Familia.

The decoration of both places plays a central role in the construction of
their “authenticity” (as shown in Figure 6.1). Most such restaurants exhibit
on their walls small posters with humorous sayings from the “paisa” region
of Colombia.
Other elements that complete the decoration are the “chivas” (small
model wooden trucks loaded with produce), Colombian flags, and dolls in
traditional costumes. Publicity for Colombian products is also part of this
construction of “authenticity” (see Figure 6.2).
Colombians Speak Colombian

“Speaking like a Colombian” is essential when it comes to creating “authen-
ticity”. Conversational gambits are key to making customers feel at home (“if
you employ a (. . .) Spanish assistant, people don’t enter into a conversation—
they don’t feel as comfortable”). In La Pastelería Colombiana, as mentioned
in the previous section, most of the employees are from El Valle, while those
at El Pincho Rico are from El Quindío (zona paisa). Therefore, language vari-
eties from these regions predominate in the interactions in each eatery.
As can be appreciated in Extracts 5 and 6, short exchanges between
workers and between waiters and customers reproduce the kind of linguis-
tic practices one would expect to find in restaurants in central Colombia:
Ejemplo 5: Interacción Entre Trabajadores En El Pincho Rico
Fabio (waiter): Dónde dejo esto? (un plato con queso rallado para las
ensaladas de frutas)
Dora (waiter and fruit salad maker): Déjelo ahí (sobre el mostrador)
Extract 5: Interaction between workers at El Pincho Rico

Fabio (waiter): Where shall I put this\ (a plate of grated cheese)
Dora (waiter): Place it there, good sir [courteous Latin American style]
(on the counter)
Ejemplo 6: Interacción entre una camarera y una cliente
del El Pincho Rico
Cliente: Tiene sopita? (a Dora, la persona que hace las ensaladas de
fruta)
Dora: Sí señora, siéntese que ya la atienden.
Extract 6: Interaction Between Waiter and Customer at
El Pincho Rico
Customer: Do you have a little soup\ (asking Dora, using very polite lan-
guage and employing a typical Latin American diminutive
form)
Dora: yes madam (.) if madam would take a seat, you´ll be served
right away
The use of “usted” (in both extracts) to address a colleague (Extract 5) and
a customer and employee (Extract 6), the use of diminutives and Dora’s very
polite response to the customer are marks of the West-Central Colombian
variety of Spanish (Montes, 1995). Other ways of opening the service encoun-
ter, recorded in the data, mix Colombian and Spanish modes, as in:
“Mi niña, tiene una servilletica, cuando pueda?”
In this case, “mi niña” is a friendly Colombian appellative, while “cuando
pueda” is a typical Spanish form used to mitigate an order.7
Language awareness and language ideologies emerge in interviews when
participants are invited to talk about their own communicative practices:
Interacción 7: Entrevista Con Jennifer, Empleada

Adriana: cuando tú llamas a Colombia notan que has cambiado tu forma
de hablar\Alguien te dice pero usted por qué habla así (. . .)
Jennifer: no .solamente ayer que llega una chica y me dice (.) dizque
no (.) que yo hablo como los de aquí y yo (.) no me diga eso
que yo no hablo como los de aquí (.) yo hablo (.) yo hablo MI
colombiano/ pero no me diga que yo haya cambiado (.) me
dijo pero sí (.) usted habla español
Adriana: pero en qué lo notaba ella
Jennifer: yo qué sé/
Adriana: pero porque dijiste alguna palabra
Jennifer: lo normal (.) lo normal dee yo hablar (.) no más (.) que yo ya
hablo español (.) y yo no hablo español (.) mi idioma sigue
siendo colombiano (.) a ver si uno trabaja con español tal vez se
le pega algo porque TIENES que pegársete algo no\(.) cierto\(.)
pero de resto (.) como yo llevo nueve años trabajando siempre
con colombianos con colombianos (.) y el modo de comer tam-
poco lo he cambiado (.) siempre comida colombiana
Extract 7: Interview With Jennifer, an Employee from

Adriana: when you ring Colombia do they notice that you talk in a dif-
ferent way\Does anyone say but why are you talking like that\
(. . .)
Jennifer: no (.) just yesterday a girl came and she told me (.) just imag-
ine (.) that I speak like people from here and I’m (.) don’t tell
me that that I talk like people from here (.) I speak (.) I speak
MY Colombian! (.) but don’t tell me I’ve changed (.) she told
me but yes (.) you speak Spanish
Adriana: but in what aspect did she notice it\
Jennifer: don´t ask me
Adriana: maybe because you said some word or other
Jennifer: just normal (.) the normal I speaking (.) nothing else (.) that
I speak Spanish now and I don’t speak Spanish (.) my lan-
guage is still Colombian (:) I mean if you work with Spanish
people maybe something sticks because something HAS TO
[she uses a Peninsula Spanish verb form (badly) apparently
(and ironically) without realising it] rub off, doesn’t it\ (.)
right? (.) but on the whole .with me working nine years now
always with Colombians with Colombians (.) and I haven’t
changed my eating habits either (.) always Colombian food
What is noteworthy in this example is that the West-Central Colombian

Spanish spoken by this informant is regarded by some participants as an
independent language, different from the Spanish spoken in Catalonia. It
is also interesting to note that Jennifer, from El Valle region, where “vos”
rather than “tú” is used for familiar interactions, while vigorously deny-
ing that she speaks anything other than “HER Colombian”, slips into the
Iberian Spanish use of “tú” when she speaks with Colombian customers
[interactions registered in field notes].
CONSEQUENCES OF CERTAIN WAYS OF NAVIGATING

THE NEW SOCIAL NETWORKS
The fact that the workers in these places are Colombians who work with
other Colombians causes them to recreate practices as if they were in their
country of origin. Appadurai (1996) explains that some of the reasons for
mobility in the global era come from the role of imagination in the desire to
be in other places. Contrary to this idea, these Colombians behave as if they
were still in Colombia. In most cases, they are in Catalonia, but they do not
want to be. If they could, they would go back to Colombia.
Though the Catalan people would generally identify themselves as
different from people from other parts of Spain, Jennifer seems to draw
no distinction, seeing them all as one local group: “los españoles” (“the
Spanish”), “ellos” (“them”), “hablan su idioma” (“they speak their lan-
guage”), even when the language referred to is another variety of Spanish
[taken from field notes], as illustrated in the following excerpt:
Interacción 8: Entrevista Con Jennifer, Empleada

Adriana: por qué crees que el catalán no es importante para ti \
Jennifer: porque tal vez yo no trabajo en otro sitio que no sea colombiano
(.) tal vez por eso (.) si yo estuviera trabajando con personas
españoles (.) me tocaría hablarlo (.) no\ (.) aprenderlo
Adriana: en tu barrio
Jennifer: no trato con esas personas
Extract 8: Interview with Jennifer, an Employee from

Adriana: why do you think Catalan isn’t important for you\
Jennifer: Maybe because I don’t work anywhere that’s not Colombian
(.) maybe that’s why (.)if I were working with Spanish people
(.) I’d have to talk it (.) no\ (.) learn it
Adriana: round where you live
Jennifer: I don’t have anything to do with those people
Even Patricia who, a professional accountant in Colombia, came to Spain

with high expectations, deprecates Catalan as a language and complains
of its imposition when applying for Spanish residence as expressed later in
the interview, “Catalan is not a language and it’s nothing”. In her case, she
is awaiting her second Spanish ID card and requires a basic qualification
in Catalan that she does not want to take. Similar comments have been
reported by Marshall (2006) and have been collected in research in prog-
ress where Latin American parents are interviewed about their expectations
regarding their children’s performance at Catalan schools. The group of
Colombian workers in our study, in common with said parents, consider
that integration is a matter for their children and not themselves. All of them
acknowledge that as their children are enrolled in the Catalan education
system or, because they were born in Catalonia, they speak “good” Catalan
(Patiño-Santos, 2013).
The lack of interest in integrating manifested by the informants in this
study and the Colombian capsule that their place of work represents make
them an isolated group who interact only among themselves.
DISCUSSION
That language and identity are commodified in the global economy is

not a new phenomenon in the studies of the Latino diaspora (Urcioli,
1996) or the sociolinguistics of globalization (Coupland, 2010). Relevant
from this particular study are the tensions that emerge in local processes
when negotiating identities in a migratory context, as is the case of cer-
tain Colombians in Barcelona. Agents participate in specific social spaces
but at the same time are excluded from others. The resources they draw
upon, including their assumed identities as traditional and as speakers
of Colombian Spanish (translated into ideas such as “a Colombian lives
as a Colombian, speaks as a Colombian and behaves as a Colombian”),
allow them to navigate local social networks with ease and deny assigned
identities from wider social discourses, mainly from the media and edu-
cation, but prevent them from discovering new forms of interaction and
social mobility.
As Vertovec notes (2001), there are groups of migrants that construct
their identities on the basis of what they perceive themselves to have in
common in terms of places of origin and the cultural and linguistic traits
associated with them. The commodified Colombian identity in Barcelona
is based on the homogenization of difference. Colombians in this con-
text, from different regions, with diverse cultural traits and social classes,
trade a set of supposedly shared rituals and conventions—including the
ways in which they use language—and what we might call, following
Hosbawm (1983), invented traditions that are produced and reproduced
to realize an imagined community and in order to establish themselves
economically.
The negotiation of these identities allows us to reflect on the position-
ings of immigrants in a region whose national project is based on the idea
of Catalan, the minority language, as the language of social access and
cohesion. This Colombian community finds itself in the comfortable situ-
ation of not being expected to change their lives. Everyone interviewed
reported their desire to return to Colombia and hence did not feel they
needed to learn Catalan or open up their social networks to local people.
Social mobility was for their children, a second generation, who “will
speak Catalan”.
TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS
Juan: participant
Reg: Spanish language
Curs: translation into English
(.): short pause
(:): long pause
[ ]: observer’s comments or non linguistic actions
ee: vowel lengthening
ss: consonant lengthening
. . . : continuing intonation
\: question intonation
/: exclamation int.
MAY.: emphatic stress
( )º: whisper
(laughter)
- self interruption
(( )): inaudible
NOTES
1. Barcelona City Council web page. Places of interest. http://w110.bcn.cat/

portal/site/Turisme/?vgnextchannel=0000000543997029VgnV6CONT00000
000000RCRD&lang=en_GB.
2. “donde la lucha contra el narcotráfico viene minando una importante fuente
de ingresos para parte de la población, que no cuenta con fuentes sustitutivas”
(Aparicio & Giménez, 2003, p. 41).
3. For a detailed profile of the children of Latin American and Colombian work-
ers in the Catalan education system, see, for example, Corona, Nussbaum,
and Unamuno (2013); Newman, Patiño-Santos, and Trenchs-Parera (2013),
and Trenchs-Parera and Patiño-Santos (2013).
4. “(. . .) de los colombianos, se [percibe] más la imagen de la violencia tanto en
las noticias del país de origen como por las informaciones sobre sus inmigran-
tes: sicarios, narcotraficantes, delincuentes comunes, prostitución y demás
temas ligados al conflicto social y que son vistos con una mirada española
aterrorizada y desconfiada.”
5. Both names have been changed.
6. Products from El Valle region are the “pandebono”—dry pastries made from
corn flour with cheese—“el aborrajado”—roasted green plantain, stuffed with
cheese and guava paste, as well as traditional biscuits. Products from other
areas of central Colombia include “almojábanas”, a pastry made with cheese
and milk; “empanadas”, savory pasties stuffed with meat and rice; “buñue-
los”, round fried puffs made with corn flour; typical Colombia snacks, very
popular in the area; “patatas rellenas”, stuffed potato; and, from Antioquia,
“arepas”, a savory pancake made from corn flour.
7. For a detail study of interactions between Spanish speakers of different
varieties, see Márquez-Reiter, R. (2011). Mediated business interactions.
Intercultural communication between speakers of Spanish. Edinburgh: Edin-
burgh University Press.
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Coupland, N. (Ed.). (2010). Handbook of language and globalization. Malden, MA/
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7 The Use of Deixis in the Oral
Narratives of Latin American
Immigrants in Italy
Maria Vittoria Calvi
INTRODUCTION
This paper is based on field research carried out over recent years at the
Dipartimento di Scienze della Mediazione linguistica e di Studi interculturali
(SMeLSI), University of Milan,1 into the contact between Italian and Span-
ish. This contact is the result of the presence of a consistent Latin Ameri-
can immigrant population of different origins, particularly Peruvian and
Ecuadorian, which makes Spanish one of the major languages of Italian
immigration today. The research is in line with the linguistics of migration
(Zimmermann, 2009), which conceives the phenomena of contact not simply
as reflections of social reality but as constituent elements of such reality itself.
The first step was to conduct interviews in Italian with a view to confirm-
ing the results of Vietti’s (2005) research, which testifies to the formation of
an “ethnic variety” of Italian, namely, a language variety characterized by
variable elements standing for ethnolinguistic identity (p. 89). As a result of
the marked resemblance between the languages involved, this variety shows
strong hybridization at all levels (Bonomi, 2010; Calvi, 2010). In a second
phase, starting in 2009, we began to collect biographical interviews in Span-
ish from both adults and children with the aim of assessing the phenom-
ena of variation that had taken place in the first language (L1), and the role
of language in creating new “mixed”, or “transnational”, identities (Boc-
cagni, 2009; Calvi, 2011; Caselli, 2009).
The corpus collected so far2 consists of 135 interviews with Latin Ameri-
can immigrants of different origins, mostly Peruvian and Ecuadorian but
also Bolivian, Venezuelan, Argentinian, and El Salvadorean, among other
nationalities. Of these interviews, 92 involved adults who had resided in
Italy for periods ranging from a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 18 years
at the time of the interview, the majority being women. Among these, there
were some “reunited” children who had migrated during childhood (gen-
eration 1.25 or 1.5).3 This group of children includes samples of different
generations, including 2.0. This entirely qualitative work relies primarily
on interviews with adults but also comprises some fragments taken from
interviews with teenagers.
Deixis in the Oral Narratives of Latin American Immigrants 123
The focus is specifically on the use of deictics, linguistic elements whose
referential interpretation depends on a point of origin, which coincides
with a person, a speaker, or an epistemic center (see, for example, Volk-
mann, 2009, p. 23). From among the various categories of deixis,4 the study
concentrates on spatial deixis, with the aim of capturing the role of this lin-
guistic resource in the construction of identity that takes place in the course
of a biographical interview: by way of deictics, the interviewee establishes
his or her positioning in the social context where s/he is relating it to the
world from which s/he comes.
LATIN AMERICAN IMMIGRATION IN ITALY
This section begins with an overview of Latin American immigration in Italy

today. In recent decades, Italy has become a destination for important migra-
tory flows from a number of sources. Of the 4.5 million immigrants (6.5% of
the population), 53.6% are from Eastern Europe, 22.4% from Africa, 15.8%
come from Asia, and 8% are from the Americas. Altogether, there are approx-
imately 350,000 Latin American residents in Italy today, with Peruvians and
Ecuadorians making up the majority, followed by Brazilians, Dominicans,
Cubans, Colombians, Bolivians, Argentinians, El Salvadorians, Venezuelans,
and so on. It is also worth mentioning that Latin American immigration is one
of those categories that have recorded the highest increases over the past two
decades. The Peruvians, for example, went from 6,163 individuals in 1993
to 46,964 in 2003, then rose to 109,374 by the end of 2012. The Ecuadorian
case is even more striking, because this group, which in 1993 consisted of
only 1,280 people, reached 45,859 by 2003 and 90,300 by 2012.5
The percentages are higher in certain regions, such as Lombardy and
Liguria, where a sizeable proportion of the country’s Latin American immi-
gration can be found. As Table 7.1 shows, the data for Lombardy place
Peruvians and Ecuadorians among the 10 most numerous groups, with a
particular concentration in the city of Milan. Taken together, these data
reveal Spanish to be one of the most visible minority languages in Italy’s new
multilingual landscape. It is worth bearing in mind that Italy is, after Spain,
the European country of choice for Latin American immigrants; the linguis-
tic affinity between Spanish and Italian, among other cultural factors, is no
doubt one of the primary attractions (Boccagni, 2009, pp. 62–63).
The Latin American communities in Milan enjoy a good level of integra-
tion in the labor market and share a tendency to get together in regular
meeting places, forming groups and holding celebrations, not just to keep
alive the festive customs of their countries of origin but also to take part
in the life of the host society: their participation in the activities of existing
associations is significantly higher than that of other immigrant groups, and
this is seen as a way to enter into a relationship with the institutions of the
host country (Caselli, 2009). On the other hand, one of the most visible
124 Maria Vittoria Calvi
Table 7.1 Origins of foreign population in Lombardy (December 31, 2010;
source: Fondazione ISMU Iniziative e Studi sulla Multietnicità)
Men Women Total
Romania 67,359 70,359 137,718

Morocco 60,892 48,353 109,245
Albania 53,654 46,139 99,793
Egypt 45,210 19,278 64,488
Philippines 21,274 27,094 48,368
India 27,523 18,849 46,372
China 23,491 22,532 46,023
Peru 17,223 25,138 42,361
Ukraine 8,326 33,296 41,622
Ecuador 17,653 23,453 41,106
aspects of their presence, from the perspective of the host society in cities
like Genoa and Milan, is the presence of pandillas, gangs of Latin American
youths, who commit acts of violence, the seriousness of which is often exag-
gerated by the media (Cannarella, Lagomarsino, & Queirolo Palmas, 2007).
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Like others already completed since this research began, the present study
focuses on certain discursive aspects that emerge from the material collected
and, as already mentioned, is based on a constructivist approach to lan-
guage contact, understood as a process in which the relationship between
the social and contextual factors, though close, is not always predictable or
determined a priori. Situations of contact actually constitute the crossroads
where a complex series of factors converge—language attitudes, sociolin-
guistic perceptions, prestige, and so forth (Moreno Fernández, 2013).
This analysis is, moreover, based on a nonessentialist view of identity
from a theoretical framework that takes in social constructivism (Gid-
dens, 1979; Hall, 1992) and studies on the relationship between language
and identity (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005; De Fina, Schiffrin, & Bamberg, 2006).
It is a tenet of this study that the function of language in the construction of
identity is realized through discourse, that is, in the process of articulation
that relates language to context (Charaudeau, 2009).
The centrality of language in the processes of construction of identity is
even more evident in migratory situations, in which two (or more) different
codes are brought into play, thus favoring the creation of “new identities”,
or “new ethnicities” (Hall, 1996 [1988]), which are cross-cultural or trans-
national: “Mantener a la familia acá y allá” (“Maintaining the family both
here and back home”), as some of our respondents put it.
In this process, the importance of narrative, understood as relating per-
sonal experiences (Labov, 1997), is also accounted for: “shifting identities”
are defined, albeit provisionally, through personal accounts of events during
which the subject positions her- or himself, as well as through the configura-
tion of space-time relations (Hall, 1992).
Finally, for this study, an interview is regarded as a discursive practice, that
is, as a social practice based in discourse (Fairclough, 1989, quoted in De
Fina, 2007, p. 274), in which the construction of identity becomes a cocon-
struction, helping to negotiate and modify social relations (De Fina, 2007,
p. 274). In this way, the observer is assumed to be integral within a practice
that can be conceived as a form of mediation and as a cognitive model of
interaction (Ciliberti, 2007; Moreno Fernández, 2013).
Excerpt 1 contains an example of negotiation in which the respondent
tends to anticipate the questions but soon resumes his discursive identity as
interviewee, allowing the interviewer to take the initiative:
Excerpt 1
Yo me llamo [. . .], soy peruano, vivo en Italia desde hace once años,
eeh++ bueno, actualmente trabajo y estudio eeh++ vine++ bueno, la
razón++ no, ¿me haces preguntas tú? Ya.6
My name is [. . .], I’m Peruvian, I’ve been living in Italy for eleven
years, right?++ well, right now I’m working and studying you know?++
I came++ well, the reason++ right?, you’re gonna ask me questions? Ok.
It is worth noting that the interview, unlike other more interactive discursive
practices, minimizes the problem that Labov (1997) defines as reportability,
that is, the greater social space required by narrative within a conversa-
tional exchange. This allows for the collection of a great deal of useful data,
despite the “artificiality” of the discursive situation.7
CONTACT PHENOMENA, LINGUISTIC MAINTENANCE,

AND IDENTITY
“Entre Nosotros Hablamos Siempre Español” (“We Always

Talk in Spanish Amongst Ourselves”)
This section begins with a brief outline of the sociolinguistic profile of the
group upon which our observations are focused. In keeping with the helpful
role, in terms of integration, played by linguistic affinities (Moreno Fernán-
dez, 2013), the contact between Spanish and Italian favors the learning of
the second language (L2) and its use in many communicative situations.
Among adults, several interlanguage stages in Italian (Vietti, 2005) were
observed; in contrast, knowledge of the language of the host country had
progressed more rapidly in the children, with a consequent change in their
roles within the family, given that sometimes the children would come to
act as mediators between school and home.
Several studies on language use by Latin American immigrants in Italy
(Bonomi, 2010; Chini, 2004) highlight the Spanish-Italian bilingualism in
adults, with a progressive abandonment of the home language in the sec-
ond generation. In Excerpt 2, a young Peruvian (24), in Italy since his 18th
birthday, summarizes his family’s preferences in the choice of language for
interaction:
Excerpt 2
con mi madre más que nada hablo en español, con mis hermanos, sobre
todo con el menor que tiene el mismo tiempo que yo acá, hablo más
que nada en italiano, y con mi hermana también un poco de los dos,
italiano y español
with my mother I speak mostly Spanish, with my brothers, especially
the youngest who has been here as long as I have, I speak mostly in Ital-
ian, and with my sister too a bit of both, Italian and Spanish
In contrast, some parents choose Italian to speak to their children, partly to

help them learn the new language in cases of family reunification and partly
to promote integration into the labor market and social mobility, given the
economic importance of Italian.
That the Spanish spoken by these immigrants can be permeated by Italian
is also worthy of note. This often happens when these two related languages
are in contact, determining various hybridization phenomena, albeit without
any fixed, stable varieties of mixed languages (Schmid, 2008). Many borrow-
ings are recorded that are adapted to Spanish phonetics. Examples include
words like [ba’dante] badante [elderly caregiver], [per’miso de so’dyorno]
permesso di soggiorno [residence permit], [‘posto ‘leto] posto letto [a bed in
a shared flat], [rekondyundyi’mento fami’liare] ricongiungimento familiare
[family reunification]. Functional words are also imported from Italian, of
which the particle [‘aŋke] anche (also) stands out; see Excerpt 3, as widely
distributed among all the interviews collected:
Excerpt 3
hubo una misa, una misa linda [‘aŋke], y [‘dopo] de la misa en la Basí-
lica de San Pedro, para mí era una novedad [‘aŋke] todo aquello, entro
por otro (xxx) y veo que eran [karto’linas], tarjetas
there was a Mass, a lovely Mass [‘aŋke] [also], and [‘dopo] [after] the
Mass at the Basilica of St. Peter’s, for me it was a novelty [‘aŋke] [also]
all that, I went in by another (xxx) and I saw they were [karto’linas],
cards
In the corpus for this chapter, many examples of hybrid forms appear that
can be interpreted as interferential phenomena, code-switching, or code-
mixing (Auer, 2011). There are also examples of oscillation between the two
languages as a result of a marked uncertainty over identity (Gugenberger,
2007):
Excerpt 4
he [ve’nuta]+ cuando he venido+ cuando he [ve’nuta]+ cuando he lle-
gado++ Disculpe que [‘aŋke] a mí se me+ ya me sale alguna palabra en
italiano, es la costumbre
I [ve’nuta] [came]+ when I came+ when I [ve’nuta] [came]+ when
I arrived++ I’m sorry that [‘aŋke] [also] I keep + an Italian word keeps
coming out, it’s habit
It is not the aim of this work to delve into these phenomena, but from the
constructionist perspective adopted, it seems appropriate to emphasize that
the corpus provides significant evidence for the use of code-switching as
a conversational strategy for the construction of identity (Gafaranga, 2007)
within the discursive framework of the biographical interview, a finding that
needs to be confirmed by more in-depth studies. The speaker makes an often
“creative” use of code-switching, emphasizing his or her ability to move and
act within the two languages, the alternation of which is not random but
often occurs intentionally. Take, from among many others, the following
example, in which the speaker uses Italian to highlight its role as a “bridge”
between two languages and cultures:
Excerpt 5
nunca soy de una cultura o de otra, soy como un puente, si estoy
con mis padres no quiero que ellos piensen que me comporto como
un italiano, entonces la tendencia es comportarme como un peruano
[. . .]. Al mismo tiempo, cuando voy con mis amigos italianos y les
digo “dai, andiamo a balare latinoamericano”, me dicen “vai a balare
da solo”, por esto me comporto en manera distinta en cada situación
I’m never from one culture or another, I’m like a bridge, if I’m with
my parents I don’t want them to think I behave like an Italian, so I tend
to behave like a Peruvian [. . .]. At the same time, when I am out with
my Italian friends and I say to them “dai, andiamo a balare latinoameri-
cano” (come on, let’s go to a Latin American dance), they say “vai a
balare da solo” (go and dance on your own), that’s why I behave differ-
ently in each situation
The data from this study suggest that linguistic maintenance and identifica-
tion with the community of origin is often more pronounced in men than in
women, especially in the case of adults:
Excerpt 6
Yo sí, soy cien por cien peruano, cien por ciento latino, [pe’rɔ] de todas
maneras me gusta [l ‘italja], estoy bien acá
Yes, I’m 100 percent Peruvian, 100 percent latino, [pe’rɔ] [but] I still
like [l ‘italja] [Italy], I’m ok here
Women, mostly the ones who initiated the migratory chain, (Ambrosini &
Queirolo Palmas, 2005; Boccagni, 2009; Caselli, 2009), are more open
minded and more prone to identity hybridizations (see Excerpts 3 and 4).
Among adolescents, a critical factor is the amount of education they received
in their countries of origin, ranging from those who were educated primarily
where they came from to the opposite extreme of those born in Italy. In their
case, the image they have of the world from which they originate but in
some cases have never visited is entirely blurred, and complete identification
with the host community is common, as their parents observe:
Excerpt 7
Ah, ellos [los hijos] quisieran ser italianos ((risas)), para ellos no existe
El Salvador, no les gusta, no quisieran regresar
Ah, they [the children] want to be Italian ((laughter)), for them El
Salvador doesn’t exist, they don’t like it, they wouldn’t want to go back
In other cases, among both adults and adolescents, a variety of attitudes

can be seen. Sometimes the informant distances her- or himself from their
community of origin due to cases of negative behavior that they do not
condone (in particular, the tendency to drink heavily). These attitudes are
not always stable but show some variation over time, as revealed by certain
subjects when reinterviewed some time later, as well as by some stories that
attest to personal development. A 23-year-old Peruvian woman, in Italy for
9 years at the time of the interview (2012), is a case in point (see Excerpt 10).
She goes from totally adopting the typical patterns of her host society to a
greater interest and curiosity concerning the cultural-linguistic model of her
place of origin, which she perceives as a “new world”:
Excerpt 8
Con los latinoamericanos he estado más [da] los 19 en adelante porque
también [da] los 19 en adelante este++ he conocido mi enamorado y
con él digamos he descubierto mi nuevo mundo ¿no? Voy a aprender
a hablar mejor también el español, he estado más rodeada de latino-
americanos, él me hizo conocer también sus amigos, ++ eeh también
un mundo nuevo ¿no?[pe’rɔ] en parte si, también me encuentro bien,
[tʃo’ɛ], para mí [. . .] eso significa que no olvido también mis raices, sé
como soy, ++ también me siento aceptada
I was with Latin Americans more [da] [from] the age of 19 also
because [da] [from] the age of 19 on++ I met the man I love and with
him you might say I got to know my new world you know? I’m also
going to learn to speak Spanish better, I’ve been surrounded more by
Latin Americans, he got me to meet his friends too,++ eeh and a new
world as well you know? [pe’rɔ] [but] partly yes, I’m happy too, [tʃo’ɛ],
[I mean] for me [. . .] it also means that I don’t forget my roots either, I
know how I am, ++ and I also feel accepted
In the case of this Peruvian’s life path, the effects of social proximity deter-
mined by the relationship with a partner would appear to be particularly
important and thus to endorse Parks’s (1995, p. 157) findings that per-
sonal relationships, no less than individuals, are intertwined with the social
context; it is not only transient relationships, having friends in common,
that are created, but rather a whole set of factors come together. These
include meeting people’s expectations socially, attraction to the people
who surround the other person, better understanding of a partner through
knowing his or her environment, taking part in different activities together,
and strengthening the relationship; and to these, an attraction to the shared
language could be added. These assertions reaffirm the need for an analysis
that goes beyond the mere implementation of sociolinguistic determinism,
relating linguistic uses to the influence of social networks—in other words,
one that addresses the interpretation of microphenomena.
SPACE AND DEIXIS
Space and time are the basic parameters of any system of representation, which
must shift its object into spatial and temporal dimensions; thus, all identities
are placed in a symbolic space and time (Hall, 1992). In terms of a representa-
tional system, every narrative places events in a sequence, whose prototypical
structure, according to Labov (1997), comprises the following steps: Abstract,
Orientation, Complicating Action, Evaluation, Result/Resolution, and Coda.
In addition, the concept of space is a cultural element and assumes differ-
ent properties according to the expressive forms available to any language
system. Spatial idealization allows us to know our location relative to other
spatial entities and the relations between them and to place ourselves within
spaces we cannot take in visually. In short, spatial idealization is a cogni-
tive activity related to orientation and the creation of mental trajectories
(Guarddon Anelo, 1998, p. 619).
In a detailed analysis of the oral histories of Latin American immigrants
in the US, De Fina (2007) focuses on their value as social and interactive
practices wherein the experience that took place is configured. The roles of
the orientating elements stand out in time and in space. In her corpus, she
problematizes the Labov model—in which the orientation sections identify
the time, place, people, and activity or situation of the protagonists in the
world of the story—given that the interviewees often appear disoriented.
Owing to the nature of their migration process—they are illegal immigrants,
brought over by coyotes8 that crossed the border without knowing their
final destination—they demonstrate anything from somewhat inaccurate
orientation mechanisms to total loss of control or any power to take action.
Although De Fina’s argument, which recommends understanding the
orientation process “as something that must be achieved rather than given
a priori” (2007, p. 290) is regarded here as highly valuable, the data from the
corpus for this study are different from those collected in her research. Besides
some cases of complex itineraries and lengthy unexpected events, what is
observed is a more conscious management of orientation mechanisms, with
a strong tendency to establish two opposing polarities, marked by the use of
the adverbs aquí, acá (here, over here)/allí, allá (there, over there), that is,
linguistic elements of a clearly demonstrative character, opening up a deic-
tic interpretation of space. Our informants construct their identity after the
establishment of the coordinates that define the enunciation context (aquí,
acá). Nevertheless, they are not referring to the immediate physical environ-
ment, the perceptive horizon (the place where the interview is taking place),
but rather to a wider area (the neighborhood, town, city, or nation) that
assumes a symbolic value as the “migration space”. In the allí, allá (there), in
contrast, there is a constant reference to elsewhere, far from the area where
the dialogue takes place (Carbonero Cano, 1979) but indicated more spe-
cifically as their place of origin (town, city, or country), which also becomes
a symbolic space, distant and contrasted with the host country. This is only to
be expected within the discursive framework of a biographical interview con-
cerning migration. The demonstrative nature of these adverbs, preferred over
other spatial forms, such as “Peru”, “Italy”—which do occasionally accom-
pany them—mark the subjective orientation of the space in which the speaker
is situated. These signs have a distinctly performative character and allow the
contextualization of the events into two separate domains (see Excerpts 9
to 13). This is a finding consistent with the results of socio-anthropological
research that notes the spread of transnational practices among migrants
from Ecuador (Boccagni, 2009) and Peru (Caselli, 2009) in Italy.
Acá (here) usually refers to Italy (including the conversational partner),
but sometimes also to towns and cities of residence; rarely does it refer to
the venue of the interview, which tends to be either the home of the respon-
dent or the neighborhood where they live (e.g., “Acá en Amendola Fiera”,
a Milanese neighborhood). It also combines with other locative forms:
Excerpt 9
Con mi abuela vine+ ella me trajo acá porque como ella me he críado
allá y ella me tuvo que dejar acá con mis padres, [e a’llora]
I came over with my grandmother+ she brought me here because
being that she brought me up over there and she had to leave me here
with my parents, [e a’llora] [so that’s why]
Excerpt 10
aquí es más tranquilo porque en mi país es demasiado [rumoˈroso], en
los pueblos poco, más en las ciudades, es demasiado caótico, aquí hay
tanta paz
here it’s quieter because in my country it’s too [rumoˈroso] [noisy],
not so much in the villages, more in the cities, it’s more chaotic, here it’s
so peaceful
Excerpt 11
Allí uno, al menos yo, tenía más libertad [. . .] acá uno se encuentra en
un país ajeno
There you have, well at least I had, more freedom [. . .] here you’re
in a foreign country
Excerpt 12
ahora mi hija tiene por nacimiento acá in Italia, y por un futuro para ella
tengo la decisión tomada que++ yo a Bolivia no regreso. Me quedo acá
por ella, por mi hija, porque quiero que conozca el lugar de su nacimiento
now my daughter was born here in Italy, and for the sake of her
future I have taken the decision that++ I’m not going back to Bolivia.
I’ll stay here for her, for my daughter, because I want her to know the
place where she was born
The deictics aquí, acá (here), allí, allá (there) in themselves simply manifest
a demonstrative and not an orientative content; but when combined with
verbs of motion (regresar allá “to return there”; me vine para acá “I came
here”; me trajeron para acá “they brought me here”, etc.), they assume
a directional character; their situative value gives way to a dynamic effect.9
As in any narrative text, there are frequent examples of Deixis am Phan-
tasma (deictics used to refer to absent referents; Bühler, 1939, quoted in Volk-
mann, 2009, p. 124), when the speaker carries the listener to a remembered
or evoked situation. The point of origin remains the “I” of the respondent,
but the situational anchor changes. Displacement of the deictic center is
common, given that the “I” is situated in the world evoked and the there
becomes here:
Excerpt 13
mi mamá había ya emigrado para acá a Italia tres años atrás este++ había
emigrado en el ’97, ¿no? Y vio que había muchas más posibilidades de
salir adelante respecto al Perú y decidió hacerme los documentos para
traerme, ¿no? Y una vez que los hizo ahí me dijo: “mira”, bueno, me
djo: “¿Qué es lo que quieres hacer, continuar a estudiar en Perú o venir
aquí? Los documentos ya están hechos” y me explicó, me dijo que,
bueno, la situación++ qué allá había más posibilidades de salir adelante,
¿no? Aquí en Italia.
my mother had already emigrated to here in Italy three years before
this++ she had emigrated in ’97, ok? And she saw that there were much
better chances of getting ahead compared to Peru and she decided to
sort out the documents to bring me, right? And once she’d sorted them
out there she told me: “look”, well, she told me: “What do you want
to do, carry on studying in Peru or come here? The documents are all
done” and she explained to me, she told me that, well, the situation++
that there there was a better chance of getting ahead, you know? Here
in Italy.
Worthy of note are the ways in which the successive movements of the
narrative carry the informant to her place of origin, which acts as a deictic
center in the reconstruction of the long-distance conversation with her
mother, when she proposes that they “reunite” in Italy. When the inter-
viewee reproduces her mother’s words using direct speech, she uses aquí
(here) with reference to the host country, but then she switches to indirect
speech, which lets her summarize the dialogue from the point of view of
her life in her country of origin, from where Italy is the allá (there), “me
dijo [. . .] que allá había más posibilidades de salir adelante” (“she told me
that [. . .] that there there was a better chance of getting ahead”). She then
marks the return to the host country by reformulating the there: “Here in
Italy”.
The strategic use of deictics may also constitute the linguistic counterpoint to
the processes of globalization, which create the effect of compressing time and
space, bringing different places together. Interviewees highlight how the Inter-
net allows them to “fill the gap”, thanks mainly to the possibility of seeing the
distant party, something that favors the maintenance of “transnational” ties:
Excerpt 14
ahora con el computer ya los puedo ver, se llena la distancia, ha cam-
biado tanto
these days with the computer I can now see them, it fills the gap, it’s
changed so much
In the following excerpt, the interviewee is a Peruvian woman of 40 who

has lived in Italy for 7 years in a situation of encapsulation, occurring when
the social life of the immigrant is comprised in a narrow environment,
such as the employer’s house (Hannerz, 1992): “no tengo casa porque vivo
donde trabajo” (“I have no home because I live where I work”). Thanks
to video conferencing, her long-distance relationship with her son is kept
alive:
Excerpt 15
- ¿Ahora cómo comunicas con tu familia en Perú?
- Por teléfono y por Internet, sí, todos los días lo veo a mi hijo [. . .] me
escribe, nos escribimos, nos miramos [. . .]. Por ejemplo la otra vez vino
mi mamá, mi mamá no tiene en su casa+ eeh Internet (xxx) entonces vino
a mi casa+ entonces cuando llegó yo estaba ahí con mi hijo y él me dijo:
“Mami, mamá te quiere ver”, entonces entra, mi mamá, entra y me vio.
- How do you communicate with your family in Peru now?

- By phone and online, every day I see my son [. . .] he writes to me,
we write to each other, we see each other [. . .]. For example the other
day my mom came, my mom doesn’t have Internet at home, you know?
(xxx) so she came to my house and when she came I was already there
with my son and he said to me, “Mommy, mom she wants to see you”
so she comes in, my mom, she comes in and sees me.
The medium allows for a simultaneous presence in two distant places: “yo
estaba ahí con mi hijo” (“I was there with my son”) and the shift of deictic
center from Italy to the Peruvian woman’s house in Peru: “vino a mi casa”
(“she came to my house”). The narrator sets the stage for the surprise meet-
ing between mother and daughter, making the interviewer participate as
a witness (Bauman, 2000). Throughout the whole sequence, the recurrence
of situative elements can be frequently observed, and these serve to anchor
the consciousness of the speaker to the place evoked.
Finally, it is important to stress the importance of another element that
contributes to orientation, emphasizing the intentionality and agentivity
(Giddens, 1979) of the subject: the adverb adelante (ahead), combined with
different verbs (salir “come out”, ir “go”, andar “walk on”, seguir “push
on”), giving meaning to the migration experience:
Excerpt 16
Ya [mi marido], dejó el trabajo, y de ahí hemos hecho un poco más
fatiga [. . .], pero he tenido la fortuna yo y así hemos ido adelante
[My husband] had already, left his work, and from then on life got
a bit more difficult [. . .], but I’ve been lucky me so that way we’ve been
able to make progress
Excerpt 17
sí porque no es que lo pasaba a lo grande, pero mejor que allá sí, diga-
mos, porque si estoy trabajando pienso que puedo salir adelante, pero si
no tengo un trabajo, aquí no se puede vivir sin trabajo en Italia
yes because it’s not like we’re having a great time, but better than
there yes, you might say, because if I’m working I think I can get ahead,
but if I don’t have a job, you can’t live here in Italy without a job
Sometimes the physicality of the movement returns, as in the next example,

due to the presence of the verb patalear (“kicking”):
Excerpt 18
Me sentía impotente de poderle preguntar al doctor o a la enfermera o
decirles algo, pataleaba, pataleando pataleando he podido avanzar, ir
adelante
I felt powerless to ask the doctor or the nurse anything or tell them
anything, I was kicking my legs, kicking kicking I was able to move on,
get ahead
In the following example, the action of cerrar los ojos (“closing your
eyes”) and caminar para adelante (“walking ahead”) is placed in opposition
to going back, indicating a determination that will not tolerate regret:
Excerpt 19
ya me acostumbré acá, [‘kuiŋdi] como quien dice: cierro mis ojos,
camino para adelante y no regreso para atrás
now I’m used to it here, [‘kuiŋdi] [so] as they say: I shut my eyes,
walk straight ahead and never turn back
The recurrence of forms such as acá (here), allá (there), adelante (ahead) in
our corpus is in strong agreement with the results of Dick (2010), who frames
the discourse of nonmigrant Mexicans within the modernist chronotope
opposing progress to tradition. Though coming from a different theoretical
and methodological perspective, this author nevertheless agrees in highlighting
the hegemonic presence of these linguistic signs in a discourse of nonmigrants
but about migration. In both cases, the discussion is about signs belonging to
configurations of space that are widely shared within the community.
CONCLUSIONS
Over the last two decades, Italy has become one of the main destination
countries for the Latin American diaspora in Europe. In the region of
Lombardy and, above all, in the city of Milan, a significant section of the
Spanish-speaking immigrant population is concentrated—particularly in
terms of the Peruvian and Ecuadorian communities.
It is within this scenario that the biographical interviews analyzed in this
chapter are situated. They are aimed at adults from diverse backgrounds,
predominantly Peruvians and Ecuadorians. These interviews are conceived
as a discursive practice that plays a significant role in the construction of
identity, which tends to be revealed especially in the context of migration.
Previous studies have focused on linguistic habits within the community
analyzed, mainly the tendency to maintain the language of origin along with
the need to take on board the language of the destination country, in this
case Italian, which is required for integration into the labor market and
is dominant among the second generation. A very obvious penetration of
Italian in the language spoken by these groups is observed, in particular as
regards the lexicon and discourse marking, as well as code-switching phe-
nomena that show a willingness to acknowledge the formation of hybrid
identities. Naturally, to confirm these data, a more in-depth observation of
the spontaneous interactions within the group would be necessary.
This analysis has focused on the representation of space that takes
place through narratives, with a strong tendency toward a polarization
between two spaces: the host society and the world of the speaker’s ori-
gin. The recurrence of deictic forms with greater demonstrative and situative
value (here, there) bears witness to a subjective orientation of space, which
holds special importance in the construction of identity. Furthermore, recur-
rence of verbs of motion in combination with deictics imbues the representa-
tion of space with dynamism, while the frequent use of adverbial forms, such
as adelante (ahead), bestows on it a directional quality and highlights the
status of the narrator as an immigrant in control of her or his own choices.
What also stands out is the strategic use of deixis alongside a displace-
ment of the deictic center as a resource to effect shifts between two different
worlds while acting simultaneously in them both. Thus transnational identi-
ties are developed, in part thanks to the ability to communicate through new
technological means.
In summary, deictics become discourse markers endowed with social and
symbolic meaning, characterizing a group that, while remaining true to its
original world, has achieved certain autonomy within its destination society.
This analysis also confirms the importance of the language of orientation in
oral narratives concerning migratory experiences, in which the representa-
tion of space is configured as a continuously evolving process.
NOTES
1. Projects—FIRST 2005: “I repertori linguistici degli immigrati ispanofoni in

Italia” and PUR 2008: “Ispanofoni in Italia: repertori linguistici e identità”,
Università degli Studi di Milano.
2. This is an open and heterogeneous corpus but representative of various facets
of the migratory phenomenon studied. For further quantitative analysis, we
will develop a structured corpus, selecting materials according to quotas.
3. In the field of sociology, the following generational categories are distin-
guished: 2.0, consisting of those born in the host society; 1.75, which includes
those who arrive at preschool age; 1.5, which includes those who migrate
between 6 and 13 years of age; 1.25, composed of those who migrate after
the age of 13; 1.0, those who leave their country of origin after the age of 18
(Ambrosini, 2010; Rumbaut, 1997).
4. Fillmore (1975) identifies the following categories of deixis: personal, spatial,
temporal, discursive, and social.
5. Data from ISTAT, the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica.
6. For the purposes of transcription, I will follow a conventional orthographic
criterion (with the exception of words in Italian, which are transcribed
phonetically, although complete phrases in Italian are marked in italics).
Pauses are marked with +, ++ or +++, depending on the duration. For unintel-
ligible words, (xxx) is used.
7. The interviewers are students of Language Mediation and Intercultural Com-
munication, who are undertaking their dissertation, putting their interdisci-
plinary training into practice. The quality of material recorded attests to the
cooperative attitude of those interviewed.
8. The Spanish word coyotes refers to guides who bring Latin American immi-
grants across the US border illegally.
9. Within the deictic system in Spanish, acá can indicate movement (over here/this
way), as well as proximity; but the movement aspect of its meaning does not
apply in the Latin American varieties, in which the two forms acá and aquí are
interchangeable. It is by way of the collocated elements that frequently appear
alongside them that movement is expressed.
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8 Language Ideologies and
Latinidad at a Latin American
School in London
Sophie Kelsall
INTRODUCTION
It is as the result of the process of migration that the panethnic labels “Latin
American” and “Latino” acquire most strategic relevance and become a
prime category of ascription and identification for people from countries
such as Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Examining how migrants make sense
of these group labels—in other words, how they construct commonality and
difference with other group members—provides insight into the dynamics of
migration and the localized negotiation of ethnic belonging. The vast major-
ity of scholarship on Latino migrants has been carried out in the US, where
migration from Latin American countries spans several generations and
where scholars have explored how latinidad, that is, Latin(American)-ness, is
produced and performed (see notably Aparicio & Chávez-Silverman, 1997,
and de Genova & Ramos-Zayas, 2003). Owing to the tightening of visa
regimes in the US, however, and the widespread poverty and economic
hardship caused by the recession, migrants from Latin America have been
increasingly choosing to move to Europe and particularly to Spain before
possibly moving on to the UK (Pellegrino, 2008; International Organization
for Migation, 2005). This calls for new scholarship on the formation and
adaptation of Latino communities in Europe.
The presence of Latin American migrants in the UK is much smaller than
in Spain but has, nevertheless, been growing since 2000; it is concentrated
in London, where it is estimated to be comparable in size to other large
migrant and ethnic groups, such as the Chinese (McIlwaine, Cock, &
Linneker, 2011). The 2011 Census figures suggest that England, in particular
London, is becoming increasingly ethnically diverse, with rising numbers of
people identifying with minority ethnic groups (Office for National Statis-
tics, 2012). Yet the changing demographic landscape etched by the Office for
National Statistics remains a crude snapshot that acknowledges some broad
categories, such as “Asian” and “African”, but elides others, such as “Latin
American”. Latinos are, therefore, hidden under other nonspecific catego-
ries such as “Any other White background” or “Any other ethnic group”.
This contributes to a situation of relative invisibility for Latin Americans
Language Ideologies and Latinidad at a Latin American School 139
in London (Block, 2008; Cock, 2009; McIlwaine, 2007). Thus, their lack
of visibility is statistical as well as phenotypic (not being visually identifi-
able as one ethnic group), geographic (not being concentrated in identifiably
Latino barrios), and occupational (more than half are employed in low-paid,
low-profile jobs, such as cleaning; see McIlwaine, Cock, & Linneker, 2011,
p. 56). As a result, Latinos are largely absent from public discourse. Attempts
to increase the visibility and to serve the specific needs of the community
include the creation of Latin American schools. These schools aim to pass on
and maintain a minority language, which they see as essential to their group
identity. Little or no research has until now examined Spanish-speaking Latin
American schools. Previous research on Spanish-speaking Latin Americans
in London has highlighted the dramatic loss of occupational status experi-
enced by many and has focused principally on processes of integration and
transnational practices among adults (see Guarnizo, 2008; McIlwaine, 2010;
Wright, 2010). In the largest study undertaken so far, McIlwaine, Cock, and
Linneker (2011) found that, although Latin Americans in London are well
educated, one third cannot speak English, and that more than half identi-
fied language difficulties and, specifically, the inability to speak English as
their main problem (McIlwaine, Cock, & Linneker, 2011, p. 125). Finding
the necessary time to invest in learning English is often problematic (Block,
2008), and lack of proficiency in the dominant language places limits on
civic participation (James, 2005). In his case study of three Latino men,
Block (2006, p. 137) identifies “distinct discourses of Spanish-speaking Lati-
nidad”: the voices of the marginado (marginalized), asimilado (assimilated),
and educated expatriate. Overall these studies underline how, among Lati-
nos who migrated to London as adults, language proficiency and language
affiliation are linked to immigration status, social position, and aspirations.
What they fail to do is to address how this may be different for young people
growing up in London and how interfamilial language choice may be the
subject of negotiation and contestation.
In the UK, since state schools are not required to provide bilingual edu-
cation, the principal providers of minority language tuition are comple-
mentary schools, which are also known as supplementary, Saturday, and
heritage schools. Previous research on complementary schools in the UK has
drawn attention to the gradation of ethnicity according to language profi-
ciency in the discourses of teachers, parents, and students. In their study of
Chinese complementary schools, Francis, Archer, and Mau (2009) found
that some young people felt that “the British-born Chinese who don’t speak
Chinese are like bananas because they’re Chinese on the outside and inside
they are completely English” (p. 9; see also Lo, 2009). Here, language pro-
ficiency serves to draw a distinction between external (apparent) and inter-
nal (genuine) ethnicity. While terms such as “banana” refer to people who
are in some ways “not true” to their ethnicity, other terms seem to imply
that some are “too true” to their ethnicity and thus appear unsophisticated.
In their study of two Gujarati complementary schools in the UK, Creese
140 Sophie Kelsall
and colleagues (2006) found that the term “freshie” was used to refer to
the nonnative, who is an outsider by dint of their “singular ethnicity and
culture indexed by a single language”, thus “a lack of bilingualism links the
freshie to static ethnic identity categories” (p. 8). These examples illustrate
how social actors can attribute degrees of ethnicity according to perceived
language proficiency and language choice, and produce racialized linguis-
tic hierarchies based on discourses about assimilation and moral stances
toward mono- or bilingualism or both.
Underpinning such discourses are language ideologies, which constitute the
mediating link between social structures and forms of talk (Woolard & Schief-
felin, 1994, p. 55). Language ideologies are apparent in the metalinguistic
judgments made about the relative desirability, sociocultural value, and aes-
thetic qualities of language varieties. Work on language ideologies can be
characterized as a body of research that simultaneously problematizes speak-
ers’ consciousness of their language and discourse as well as their position-
ality in political economic systems, in shaping beliefs, proclamations, and
evaluations of linguistic forms, and in discursive practices (Kroskrity 2004,
p. 498). Hence, language ideology research provides a valuable theoretical
framework for analyzing the discourses of members of a complementary
school and for understanding how they evaluate the language practices of
community members.
This chapter explores how adult members of a Latin American school in
London portray language proficiency and language choice in Latino families
and how they construct a mutually constitutive relationship between lan-
guage practices and ethnicity (latinidad). It argues that their discourses are
shaped by localized language ideologies, which (a) inform their understand-
ing of (Latino) community membership and (b) form part of the structuring
process that leads to their relative integration.
THE STUDY
The data reported were collected as part of a study, funded by the Arts &
Humanities Research Council (AHRC), to examine how Latino Londoners
construct the idea of “Latin American community” and latinidad in their
discourse and to what ends and outcomes. This study adopted an interpre-
tive approach; in other words, it sought to discover and communicate the
meaning-making perspectives of the people studied and relate these to the
ecological circumstances of action in which they find themselves (Erickson,
1986). Ethnographic methods were best suited to this approach, as they
prioritized spending undirected time with participants and joining in some
of the activities that informed their daily lives in order to understand their
frames of reference.
Data collection started in October 2008 and ended in July 2011; it
included participant observation of Latino community events across
London, repeated visits to three family homes, and semistructured inter-
views (n = 25). Given the opportunities it presented for investigating lan-
guage practices, language ideologies, and processes of ethnic affiliation, data
collection was centered in and around a Latin American complementary
school named Escuela Latino Americana (Latin American School, hence-
forth referred to as ELA). At the time of fieldwork, the school was based in
a Church of England primary school located in an inner-city neighborhood
and surrounded by council estates. It welcomed between 60 and 90 children
every week, the overwhelming majority of whom were born and bred in the
UK. It taught principally Spanish, drama, art, and music.
This chapter examines data collected over the course of 15 months at
the school. These comprise the collection of school documents and detailed
field notes written as a result of around 255 hours spent at the school, dur-
ing which I observed and participated in events such as assemblies, lessons,
parent–teacher meetings, and informal conversations. They also include
semistructured interviews with 13 adults (3 parents, 1 grandparent, 4 for-
mer students, 4 teachers, and 1 volunteer). Among these, nine were Colom-
bian, one was British born of Colombian parents, two were Peruvian, and
one was Argentinean; all but one were women. The overrepresentation of
Colombians in this sample reflects both the higher proportion of Colom-
bians within the Spanish-speaking Latino population in London (see Mc-
Ilwaine, Cock, & Linneker, 2011) and within the school, which had been
founded by two Colombians. The overrepresentation of women was due to
the fact that most of the teachers and volunteers were female and that the
family members I got to know best were mothers, daughters, and nieces.
The interviews were conducted in the language preferred by the participant,
which corresponded to Spanish for those who had migrated to London as
adults (9/13) and English for those who migrated under the age of 10 or
who were born in the UK (4/13). Interviewees were asked about their migra-
tory trajectory, about speaking and learning Spanish and English in their
family, and about their experience at ELA.
INTRAFAMILIAL SPANISH: AUTHENTICATING LATINIDAD
The raison d’être of ELA was founded on an essentialized conception of eth-

nicity, which was seen as something that was both inherited and strongly tied
to language proficiency. Although the children of London Latinos may have
been born or brought up in the UK, members of the school community still
saw them as having “Latin blood” and, consequently, as needing to learn to
speak Spanish, both for their realization as Latinos and for the continuation
of the community. Such an ethnolinguistic linkage has been documented in
other complementary schools (see Blackledge & Creese, 2010).
Drawing on Irvine and Gal’s (2000) concept of “iconization”, which
occurs when “[l]inguistic features that index social groups or activities
142 Sophie Kelsall
appear to be iconic representations of them, as if a linguistic feature some-
how depicted or displayed a social group’s inherent nature of essence”
(p. 37), the Spanish language could be seen as an iconic representation of
latinidad at the ELA. As encapsulated in its promotional leaflet, the ELA’s
purpose was to “maintain our language (SPANISH)”. During lessons, teach-
ers reminded children to speak Spanish, while in assembly and in meetings
with parents, the director and the speech therapist emphasized the impor-
tance of parents speaking only Spanish to their children. The rationale
behind these exhortations was that Spanish should be the intrafamilial and
home language because it represented, as the director put it to parents dur-
ing a workshop, “not a language [but] a culture”. In the discourse of the
staff, there was a clear division between what should be the language of the
family home (Spanish) and that of the mainstream school (English), illus-
trating a desire for what Heller (2006, p. 34) identifies as “parallel mono-
lingualisms”. Furthermore, intrafamilial Spanish was considered to bring
linguistic and cognitive benefits. Indeed, instituting Spanish as the sole lan-
guage between parents and children from an early age was identified as the
reason why some students spoke Spanish fluently and sounded as if they had
been brought up in Latin America. In addition, some members of staff, such
as the speech therapist, expressed the belief that the children who spoke
Spanish at home also did very well in mainstream school.
Consequently, for some members of the school community, the way a
child spoke revealed the parents’ ease with and success in supporting their
acquisition of Spanish and, by extension, was seen as a reflection on their
parenting skills. A child’s proficiency in Spanish could, therefore, be coded
morally and become a source of linguistic pride or shame for parents and
grandparents. For instance, Colombian mother Patricia explained in inter-
view that she had been advised by a mainstream schoolteacher to teach
her child Spanish, which she claimed had not been difficult. As a result,
she stated that her 7-year-old daughter not only spoke Spanish well but
also really liked speaking Spanish, which my observations seem to con-
firm. She contrasted her daughter’s language proficiency with that of her
nephew and niece who, despite having Latino parents, did not speak flu-
ently. According to Patricia, her British-born daughter sounded as if she
came from where her father originated (Medellin, Antioquia): she spoke
with the accent of the paisa region. Among London Colombians, the term
paisa is associated with a distinctive, pleasant accent and is used as a cat-
egory for cultural and regional identification; one of the Latino landmarks
in London is called Pueblito Paisa (Paisa Village, a collection of businesses
in the neighborhood of Seven Sisters). Indeed, a disproportionate propor-
tion of Colombian migrants—around 30% or more—have been found to
originate from the departments of Antioquia and the coffee-growing region
known as Eje Cafetero, the areas that constitute the nonadministrative paisa
region (Guarnizo, 2008). For Patricia, it was a source of parental pride
that her daughter not only sounded Latina but displayed an accent that
indexed her father’s native region, associated with enterprise and commerce
in the London diaspora, as it was a token of ethnolinguistic and geographic
authenticity. Furthermore, this regional accent was one that the Colombian
members of the school commonly regarded as respectable and not a source
of mockery, like the rural-sounding pastuso accent, used in a region strad-
dling southern Colombia and northern Ecuador.
Conversely, during a parent–teacher meeting, Colombian mother Laura
spoke candidly of the difficulties she had had teaching her 9-year-old daugh-
ter Spanish. My classroom observations state that her daughter had a speech
impediment and did not speak Spanish fluently. In the presence of three
other mothers and three teachers, all Colombian, Laura described how her
daughter talked “like a gringuita”, a comment that provoked laughter from
her audience. The word “gringuita” draws from the term gringa, commonly
used in Latin America to refer to a racialized (White) female foreigner,
characterized in particular by deficient proficiency in Spanish (Mason
Carris, 2011). The etymology of the term “gringo” is controversial; one
hypothesis traces it back to the expression “hablar en griego” (“to speak in
Greek”, i.e., incomprehensibly), used to describe those who spoke Spanish
with a foreign accent (Ronan, 1959). In some parts of Latin America, such
as Mexico and Colombia, the term has become more specifically associated
with English-speaking North Americans.
The reaction to Laura’s words reveals a shared linguistic ideology, which
makes it acceptable to monitor and to mock the language practices of the
gringo/a, stereotyped as having the accent of an outsider and as being unable
to speak Spanish well. At the same time, since Laura’s comment implies that
she has failed to transmit or cultivate a legitimately Latino accent and pro-
ficiency in her daughter, it can be seen as self-deprecating humor and as a
strategy to minimize what constitutes a face-threatening act to herself and
to ease a potentially awkward disclosure of shame or guilt. Furthermore,
the word “gringuita” is composed of the diminutive “-ita”, which is widely
used in American varieties of Spanish and usually denotes size, endearment,
or depreciation (Callebaut, 2011). Here, the diminutive can be read as refer-
encing the child’s age; in addition, it can be interpreted as a way of mitigat-
ing the root word “gringa”, a term that others her daughter and frames her
Spanish language practices as inauthentic.
In sum, the institutional ideology of the school defined the legitimate
language practice as speaking Spanish, with a Latino accent, at home and
between family members.
INTRAFAMILIAL MIXING: REASONS AND RISKS
Although the teachers and the speech therapist at the school recommended
that Spanish be the sole language used between parents and children, those
I spoke to also recognized privately that, in most cases, this did not happen.
144 Sophie Kelsall
At the ELA, children talked almost exclusively in English between them-
selves; so prevalent was this that I practically never heard a child speak
Spanish spontaneously to another. Thus, English was the default language
among young people, while Spanish was used, unevenly and at times grudg-
ingly, with adults. Consequently, some members of staff asserted that what
was the most common situation at home was one of asymmetrical language
choice: parents spoke to their children in Spanish, while children replied to
them in English. Such differing linguistic preferences between the genera-
tions, reported to be difficult to change, have been amply documented in
other migrant communities (see Wei, 1994; Zentella, 1997).
In an interview, one of the Colombian teachers described how some
parents found it challenging to impose Spanish as the prevailing home lan-
guage. She illustrated this by voicing what a mother would typically tell her
about what happened at home:
Excerpt 1
1 Luz “pero es que el niño me contesta en inglés

“but it’s just that the child answers me in English
2 y mira estoy tan casada
and look I’m so tired
3 no hay tiempo
there’s no time
4 y mientras que le estoy diciendo que hable en inglés
and while I’m telling him to speak to me in English
5 hay que hacer la tarea
you have to do the homework
6 hay que ir a comer
you have to go and eat
7 hay que ir a acostarse
you have to go to bed
8 ya está tarde
and it’s already late
9 pues yo le dejo que me conteste en inglés
well I let him answer me in English
10 y luego yo ( ) le hablo en españo
land then I ( ) speak to him in Spanish
11 igual me contesta en inglés”
he answers me in English anyway”
(In line 4, the teacher meant “Spanish”, a confusion between languages that
happened occasionally in recorded interviews.) This passage illustrates some
of the factors, cited by teachers and parents, that went against establishing
intrafamilial Spanish: child insistence, parental weariness, and lack of oppor-
tunities for hard-working parents to spend time talking with their children.
Indeed, the depiction of Latin American families forced by socioeconomic
pressures to work very long hours, which in turn impact negatively on their
children, was a recurrent narrative heard during field work. Family dispersal,
and hence loss of a supportive network to provide child care, as well as long
hours, often the result of accumulating low-paid jobs where English profi-
ciency is not required, were some of the difficulties families had to contend
with. Such material and structural problems associated with low-income
migration created substantial obstacles to confident parenting and success-
ful language maintenance. In these cases, the complementary school could
play an important role, as it supported or even substituted for the home in
facilitating exposure to the community language.
If there was some sympathetic justification for why parents may come
to neglect their children’s linguistic development or surrender to their pre-
dilection for English, there was also concern about the repercussions of
a mixed orientation to English and Spanish at home. For example, the
speech therapist argued that parents did not realize what might happen
in the future, although she acknowledged that the fact that parents spoke
Spanish while their children spoke English did not apparently disturb
the day-to-day functioning of the family. She feared that when they had
grown up, the children would express themselves in English, which the
parents might not understand, and that speaking separate languages might
limit emotional communication and stunt family relationships. Here she
was voicing the discourse of intergenerational language gap, according
to which imbalances in language proficiency may lead to breakdowns in
communication and cohesion in ethnic minority families (in the UK, see
former Home Secretary David Blunkett’s notoriously incendiary claims in
Griffith & Leonard 2002, p. 77; in the US, see Louie 2006, p. 372, and
see, too, the concept of “dissonant acculturation” in Portes & Rumbaut
2001, p. 144).
Another situation that was described as common but condemnable was
the mixing of Spanish and English, dubbed “hablar combinado (to speak
mixed)”, “espanenglish”, and “Spanglish”. These umbrella terms refer to a
range of language practices, such as the use of lexical borrowings, syntactic
calques, and intrasentential or intersentential language alternation (Lipski,
2007). Gafaranga (2007, p. 11) observes that the very act of naming such
a practice shows that language alternation, where it occurs as a significant
means of communication, is a very visible phenomenon, and that because it is
visible, people react to it, often negatively, depending on prevalent language
ideologies. Indeed, it was not surprising that, in the prescriptive context of
a language school, teachers and parents expressed a discourse shaped by a
purist language ideology, whereby the blending of languages is pathologized
for indexing linguistic laziness, betraying inadequate mastery, and being
detrimental to the correct command of languages. In the following extract
from an interview, Colombian mother Patricia describes how her sister had
allowed asymmetrical language choice, as well as language mixing, to take
place when talking to her daughter:
146 Sophie Kelsall
Excerpt 2
Patricia le hablo del caso de Manuela

I tell you about Manuela’s case
Manuela antes de que entrara aquí
Manuela before she came here
y ese error lo tuvo muy muy grave mi hermana
and my sister made a big big mistake
era que en la casa eh mi hermana le hablaba en español
what happened was that at home er my sister would speak to her in
Spanish
Manuela entendía pero respondía en inglés
Manuela would understand but she would reply in English
o mi hermana le hablaba parte de español y parte en inglés
or my sister would speak to her partly in Spanish and partly in English
Sophie espanglish
Spanglish
Patricia Spanglish sí
Spanglish yes
entonces yo le decía a ella ( )
so I would tell her ( )
“eso no está bien
“this is not good
o ella habla inglés o habla español”
either she speaks English or she speaks Spanish”
At the same time, the teachers who denounced the mixing of languages
later recognized that, as the speech therapist put it after inserting an English
word in her sentence, “it’s something that we Latin Americans do a lot”.
In the case of both asymmetrical language choice and language mixing, par-
ents and teachers described the situation as problematic yet widespread and
as something that occurred “naturally”.
INTRAFAMILIAL ENGLISH: DESTABILIZING LATINIDAD
The language practice that attracted the most strident criticism in the con-
versations I witnessed or took part in at the school was the reported custom,
among some Latino parents, of addressing their child in English. There were
several reasons this provoked indignation and condemnation. First, there
was concern that Latino parents spoke English poorly and that exposing
children to this would have a deleterious effect on their proficiency in English,
as if inaccuracy were contaminating. Second, it was construed as a result
of parents’ “not caring” (in the words of one Colombian teacher) and as a
dereliction of duty as a community member, which would hinder the child’s
learning of Spanish. Adult disapproval was related to a fear of language loss
within the family and possibly of language shift within the community at
large and thus to a perceived threat to ethnolinguistic continuity. Third, it
was seen as incompatible with the parents’ ethnic origin and as representing
a disaffiliative “act of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985); in other
words, it manifested the desire to identify and affiliate linguistically with the
Anglo or English-speaking population rather than the Latino community.
The Colombian director of the school, who had worked with London
Latino families for more than 10 years, linked the parents’ preference for
intrafamilial English to race or ethnicity and to aspiration. He described some
Latin American parents as being “ashamed of speaking Spanish”. One of the
examples he put forward was that of a Peruvian family who chose to speak
English at home. He recounted how acquiring a Spanish passport had given
this family a high social status and had meant that they identified as English
and European. According to him, this family looked down on Latinos and
avoided contact with them. The director’s analysis was that UK Latinos’ ori-
entation to English was both pragmatic (there was no need to speak Spanish
because English was the language spoken here) and ideological (it signaled
disregard for and rejection of their latinidad). He attributed the decision to
speak English at home to a lack of education and, to support this, he men-
tioned a study that had found that, in the vast majority of cases where Latin
American children did not speak Spanish, their mothers had not completed
compulsory education. Furthermore, he interpreted the choice of intrafamilial
English as, in his words, a “denial” of the language and the culture of Latinos
and even of “nuestro ser” (our [Latin American] sense of self).
Here it is necessary to examine the historicity of the director’s position
on English. In the midst of the armed conflict in Colombia in the 1990s, he
had migrated to London as a political refugee from the paisa region and ini-
tially had had to work as a cleaner, given that he could speak little English.
Privately, he explained to me that, as a young man, he had been opposed to
learning English because he had associated it with the imperialist US. At that
time, language orientation had indexed political allegiance and had been
inextricable from social struggle. In London, however, he spoke of his desire
to speak English more fluently, as his limited proficiency had been an obstacle
for him professionally. By portraying intrafamilial English among London
Latinos as, in his words, a “cultural problem” linked to a “race complex”, he
invoked the intertwining of ethnicity and class in Latin America (see Wade,
1997; Wade et al., 2008). Indeed, historically, an institutionalized preference
for lo extranjero—what is foreign, that is, Western—has permeated many
aspects of social life; in Mexico, this has been theorized as malinchismo and
has been associated with the betrayal of the nation-building project. In such
a context, social mobility may be achieved or attempted via various “whiten-
ing” practices (blanqueamiento), notably through miscegenation, marriage,
and migration (see Leinaweaver 2008; Wade 1993). I suggest that the direc-
tor represented intrafamilial English among Latinos as a form of “linguistic
148 Sophie Kelsall
whitening”, in other words, an aspirational strategy based on the rejection
of one’s ethnically marked language in favor of the majority language. From
his perspective, this went directly against the ideological project of the school
and constituted a form of ethnolinguistic betrayal.
CONCLUSION
This school, the ELA, is representative of other ethnolinguistic complemen-

tary schools insofar as its main ideological tenet is that language is essential
to ethnicity. Therefore, being Latino/a means speaking Spanish with other
Latino/as, especially in intergenerational contexts, where the continuation of
the (ethnolinguistic) community is at stake. In this diasporic setting, accent,
language proficiency, and language choice all carry capital and are central
to claims of community membership. Indeed, adult participants were found
to place Latino parents in socio-moral hierarchies based on their perceived
language practices, whereby those who have succeeded in transmitting and
maintaining Spanish are elevated, while those who have not are denigrated.
These data suggest that, in their discursive process of identification, adult
London Latino/as prioritize their condition of migrants as belonging to a
minority and do not seem to espouse a perspective of superdiversity.
This chapter has also highlighted the tensions between school and home
ideology, the pressures that Latino families are under, and the problems
concomitant with engaging with the “right” kind of language practices.
First, while Spanish is construed as an iconization of latinidad and as such
is idealized as the home and intrafamilial language, some parents find it
hard to teach their child Spanish. In particular, it is difficult to impose
it as the sole home language and to keep languages separate when chil-
dren overwhelmingly favor English and defy linguistic coercion. Second,
alternative language situations, in which Spanish and English are brought
together, either in asymmetrical language choice or language mixing, are
portrayed as deviant and as harmful to the correct command of languages.
Yet these prescriptions are also problematic because they go against what
occurs “naturally” in a home setting, for example, the mixing of Spanish
and English. Furthermore, material and structural difficulties related to low-
income migration are found to play a factor: notably, hard-working parents
are described as not having enough time and energy to focus on developing
their children’s language skills. Third, the decision to have English as the
intrafamilial language is condemned for being detrimental and disaffiliative
and for potentially leading to language loss in the family and to language
shift in the community; it is also represented as a form of “linguistic whit-
ening”. At the same time, English is undeniably the dominant language in
London and a requirement for advancement in a range of educational and
professional settings (in order to move away from the cleaning industry,
for example). Thus, selecting language practices according to whether they
can enable upward mobility is a very pertinent concern for Latin American
families who experience socio-economic constraints and downward occu-
pational mobility. In sum, familial language choices are a key factor in the
ascription and contestation of ethnic affiliation and occur as the result of a
complex process of negotiation of competing language ideologies.
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9 The Deterritorialization of
Latino Educación
Noncitizen Latinos in Israel and the
Everyday Diasporic Subject1
Alejandro I. Paz
In 2006, I was visiting the home of a Bolivian family in a working-class neigh-

borhood in south Tel Aviv, helping the 12-year-old son remove malware from
his computer. The son, Itsik, is Bolivian in the sense that many first-generation
migrant children can be said to be from elsewhere.2 He was actually born and
raised in Israel, attended a Jewish-Israeli school in the neighborhood, and,
although his Spanish is excellent, he speaks Hebrew most of the time with
his brother at home and with his peers at school. Thus, Itsik is “Bolivian”
through a process of what Appadurai and other scholars of globalization and
migration in the mid-90s called deterritorialization (Appadurai, 1996; Basch,
Schiller, & Szanton Blanc, 1994): Itsik is of Bolivian descent produced in
diaspora. He is Bolivian, or more broadly Latino, also because, in hegemonic
Israeli terms, he is a “foreign worker” (OVED ZAR),3 an example of what Sim-
mel called the “stranger” (Simmel, 1950; see also Brodwin 2003, p. 386–388):
for most of his life, Itsik could not even achieve legal residence in Israel, much
less be perceived or perceive himself as part of the Jewish nation.
As I worked on the computer, Itsik watched, chatted, and at times
exchanged heated words with his mother, Barbara. We recorded the con-
versation as part of my study of bilingual communication among nonciti-
zen Latino migrant workers in Israel. Altogether I conducted some 3 full
years of ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork with Latin American labor
migrants and their children in Israel, including extensive unscripted record-
ings (both with and without my presence) in domestic and school environ-
ments, as well as interviews about migration trajectories and language use.4
Only later, while working on the transcript of my visit, did I did notice
how Itsik had addressed me to ask how the computer was progressing.
Speaking fluent Hebrew, he said:
Excerpt 1, Itsik
1 MA′ ZE OSE? WHAT’S IT [THE COMPUTER] DOING?
2 IM MUTAR LI LISHOL IF I MAY ASK
3 KE’ILU, MA HU OSE AXSHAV′? LIKE, WHAT’S IT DOING NOW?
Two aspects of this turn at talk surprised me. First, that the preteen
had addressed me using an enormously respectful form, unusual for such
152 Alejandro I. Paz
marginalized Latino youth. The respect shown is found in the intonation,
especially in line 3, and in the line 2 request for permission to ask, a highly
ritualized gesture to mitigate the threat to my face. That is, this interac-
tional move constitutes a show of politeness (see Brown & Levinson, 1987;
Goffman, 1967; Watts, 2003). Latinos call such displays educación. Itsik
took such care because I was a respected adult, a guest in his home, and also
someone who was helping him with his computer. His display is probably
also due to the fact that his mother had already berated him for approach-
ing my recording equipment and more generally for downloading harmful
(and sometimes costly) programs from the Internet. And no doubt Itsik was
already a little impatient to receive his computer back.
The second surprising aspect, especially for Latino interlocutors who
heard the clip (see the following), is that Itsik delivers this question entirely
in Hebrew, which they associate with a lack of educación. Perhaps this per-
ception is explained by Israeli interpersonal pragmatics. Certainly, litera-
ture on (especially middle-class) Israeli interactional practices has suggested
a past commitment to directness (Katriel, 1986) or “solidarity-politeness”
(Blum-Kulka, 1987)—although this is perhaps now shifting (Katriel, 2004;
see also Maschler, 2009, pp. 166–170). At the same time, Hebrew speakers
have every means at their disposal to present their ethical selves through for-
mulae of politeness and attention to their interlocutors’ face, albeit perhaps
not as elaborated as those in other societies where extensive honorifics or
other specialized register phenomena are used extensively.
However, Latino adults and kids alike tend to subscribe to the language
ideology that Hebrew is simply a language bereft of educación. Building on
Irvine and Gal’s (2000) definitions of iconization and erasure as semiotic
processes, we can say that this ideology is a kind of Herderian equation of
language with culture, where a narrow understanding of the denotational
code is taken as an icon that stands for (and thus is conflated with) inter-
personal pragmatics of interaction. This ideology of “code for interactional
pragmatics” erases the enormous sociolinguistic variation across individual
repertoires and sites of interaction in any social formation. In this specific
case, Spanish tends to take on the veneer of the language of educación, just
as much as Hebrew tends to be treated as a language of maleducación or
rudeness.
These tendencies, however, are not uniform, and, as Excerpt 1 shows,
there are many occasions that Latinos could perceive or produce a split
between the language as denotational code and the interpersonal pragmat-
ics. Itsik’s accomplishment of displaying Latino pragmatics of educación
in Hebrew—and Latinos’ ideas that it cannot be achieved—point to a key
way that Latinos perceive themselves to be ethnolinguistically distinct from
(Jewish-)Israelis. This perception is especially important since many of
the children of Latinos grew up Hebrew dominant, spending much more
time with Hebrew-speaking peer groups than with their parents’ networks.
Educación much more than Spanish (as an ancestral or heritage language)
The Deterritorialization of Latino Educación 153
was believed to tie Latino generations together and thus to give the basis of
Latino diasporic personhood.
This chapter discusses how the discursive practices associated with edu-
cación contribute in multiple ways to Latinos’ sense that they descended
from an elsewhere. In that sense, this chapter considers how educación is
deterritorialized.
NONCITIZEN LATINOS IN ISRAEL AS DIASPORIC SUBJECTS
Living in diaspora is fundamentally linked to an imaginary about being from

an “elsewhere”, or as Clifford (1994) puts it, dwelling in displacement. This
imaginary is often produced due to a historical rupture from the place to
which a return is hoped for but is interminably delayed. That elsewhere, or
homeland, does not necessarily exist, at least not in the form imagined or
remembered by diasporic subjects, a point perhaps most forcefully made by
Axel (2002). Further, the spatio-temporal signs of displacement do not arise
mechanically in reaction to migration or crossing state borders, but rather
diaspora is achieved through the emergence of locally embedded practices
that produce for a group this historical awareness (Brubaker, 2005; see
also Butler, 2001; Shukla, 2001; Yelvington, 2001; Zeleza, 2005). In other
words, to study diaspora requires attention to those practices and how they
produce this complex social imaginary. To study diasporic imaginary is to
consider how certain characteristics of the homeland are deterritorialized;
that is, these characteristics are understood to be from elsewhere even when
they are produced through practices that are grounded in local sites.
By using the term “deterritorialization”, Appadurai (1996) suggested that
the imaginings of community associated with large-scale social formations
(like in articulations of nationhood) did not necessarily have to occur within
the borders of a single state. The work that produces social imaginaries
can occur also across discontinuous geographies, like those produced by
groups that form across transnational circuits of migrating border crossers.
Indeed, Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc (1994) further argued that
marginalized nation-states are produced in deterritorialized form by those
transmigrants in core countries who remain committed to such nationalism.
The term “deterritorialization” has taken on other senses in the scholarly lit-
erature, but it is this work of imagination that I emphasize here. In that sense,
although my meaning shares characteristics of what Rockefeller (2011) calls
the “geographic” use in his well-taken caution against some terminology
found in the globalization scholarship, I am not opposing it to a rooted
notion of place. Rather, given nationalist practices that project some cul-
tural characteristics as rooted in place, there are diasporic practices that
make other cultural characteristics appear as if they have been removed
from their place of origin. Thus, through such diasporic practices as instill-
ing educación in Latino youth in Israel, it becomes possible for one like Itsik
to think of himself as having “Bolivian” characteristics, even if he has never
set foot in Bolivia.
To understand the relation of diasporic personhood and the pragmatics of
educación, some background information about the Latinos in Israel is nec-
essary. The noncitizen Latinos of Israel are a small and highly marginalized
group, and their migration stream is historically shallow. Non-Jewish Latin
Americans began migrating as part of a large wave of what the Israeli state
calls “foreign workers” in the late 1980s. A phenomenon that extended
beyond Latin America to Eastern Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia, this
wave of migration has completely transformed Israel’s labor force. As soci-
ologists Kemp and Raijman have discussed (2008), state-sponsored guest
worker programs were closely linked from the beginning with the neoliber-
alization of the Israeli economy and the shifting geopolitics that sought to
decrease the employment of noncitizen Palestinian day laborers in the ter-
ritory, which the state perceives as its own. Latinos participated far less in
formal guest worker programs than did those from other regions and tended
to generate long chains of migrants who overstayed their tourist visas. They
arrived mostly from Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Venezuela, and Bolivia and
came to number between 10,000 and 15,000, although this number was
greatly reduced with the advent of the Immigration Police in 2002. Initially,
many found work in all kinds of occupations, but today the overwhelm-
ing majority, men and women, work largely as domestic cleaners and to a
lesser extent as caregivers. Although by no means the first group of Latin
Americans to arrive in Israel, they are largely separated in socioeconomic
space from authorized Jewish immigration, which consists mostly of Argen-
tineans. Indeed, these non-Jewish labor migrants generally distinguish them-
selves from the Jewish immigrants with the ethnonyms “Latinos” versus
“Argentinos”.
Like those who cross many paradigmatic borders (Alvarez, 1995;
Anzaldúa, 1987), Latinos see their arrival in Israel as a crossing from
third to first world, of global South to North, and one where the cross-
ing signifies for many Latinos the hoped-for transition to greater economic
security. This transition is by no means assured, and the migration itself is
full of risks. The diasporic awareness developed by Latinos in Israel can
be best understood as one motivated by a sense of economic necessity (see
Anzaldúa, 1987, pp. 10–13; Cohen, 2008, pp. 61–62). The sought-after eco-
nomic security is itself conceived by Latinos as a personal modernization:
greater individual independence and agency and yet greater isolation from
family (including children) and friends and greater responsibility for others.
Their migration narratives and practices fit what Dick (2010) has called the
“modernist chronotope”, including the contradiction between maintaining
an ethical life in the country of origin and gaining economic security in the
destination country.
In many senses, the noncitizen Latinos in Israel are a classic diasporic
subject. Especially during the majority of my fieldwork, they lived in liminal
conditions with respect to citizenship, residence, socioeconomic position,
and national belonging. Both adults and youths maintain a sense that their
distinctive culture is descended from their countries of origin, and several
leisure-time institutions developed among them that helped to maintain this
sense of distinctiveness.5 Some of their liminality with respect to citizen-
ship was changing due to government resolutions in 2005, 2006, and 2010,
which resulted in most children receiving recognition as potential citizens,
and their families receive some status as a result. Even so, this group will no
doubt continue to be considered as non-Jewish and descended from “foreign
workers”. This and the other marks of foreignness do not disappear easily,
and this makes for fertile ground for producing a notion of deterritorialized
belonging.
PRAGMATIC CALIBRATION AND THE

DETERRITORIALIZED IMAGINARY
In ground-breaking work on the relation of language and diaspora, Eisen-

lohr (2006) discussed the multiple temporalities always at work in a large-
scale social formation and suggested how language ideologies help to mediate
these different temporalities (see also Das, 2008). As part of this discussion,
Eisenlohr describes how a “calibration of displacement” can be achieved for
diasporic Hindus in Mauritius through the ideological association of a local
variety of Hindi, with India the projected “homeland”. Also attentive to
how language use articulates with space and time, Dick (2010) follows simi-
lar ideas to consider how Mexicans’ migration discourse conjures up the
United States as a projected destination, filled with both possible economic
benefits as well as moral perils.
Both Eisenlohr and Dick in essence show how language used in particular
contexts can help project an imaginary that cuts across otherwise discontinuous
geographies. They do so by drawing on Silverstein’s (1993) discussion of
pragmatic calibration (pp. 48–53), one of the three dimensions the latter dis-
cusses as relations between pragmatics and metapragmatics.6 By calibration,
Silverstein denotes how the multiple indexicals of a stretch of discourse map
onto—and thereby characterize and come to be characterized by—the ongo-
ing interactional event.7 Silverstein sets out three general types of calibration—
reportive, reflexive, and nomic—and distinguishes them according to the kinds
of metapragmatics by which the discourse typically comes to be regimented
as part of the interaction. Broadly speaking, reportive calibration often involves
the strong salience of explicit metapragmatic devices, like verbs of speaking
and deictics, and the paradigmatic example is reported speech. Reflexive cali-
bration, on the other hand, functions through more implicit devices, like the
poetic organization of speech, and the discourse comes to be interpreted in
relation to a type of event, “as in routinized forms of interaction like greetings”
(Dick, 2010, p. 281). Finally, nomic calibration comprises discourse thick with
signals that the event being experienced is of a distinct ontic realm from that of
the typical interactional world (as with expressions of scientific or cosmologi-
cal universality), and elaborate rituals are the paradigmatic example.
While Eisenlohr (2004) studies how a large-scale ritual can help produce
the association of a language with the ancestral spacetime, Dick (2010)
investigates in depth how the migration discourse of Mexicans routinely pro-
duces the US as a distinct realm in everyday contexts. I build on these sugges-
tions of calibrating displacement by considering how practices of discursive
interaction, like facework and politeness, also are routinely calibrated in Lati-
nos’ talk to another place and time, to a diasporic homeland—Latin America.
There are highly ritualized events that help to achieve this calibration, but
here, like Dick, I am considering everyday domestic contexts. One of Dick’s
contributions is to suggest that it is not only a language seen as a distinct code
but also the interactional practices in the sites where it is spoken that are cru-
cial for producing the ontically distinct world. To comprehend this better,
and indeed to see how educación has been deterritorialized, it is necessary
to examine the contradiction between the practices of educación, on the one
hand, and the ideology of Spanish as the language of educación, on the other.
LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES OF EDUCACIÓN AND

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND
INTERACTIONAL PRACTICES
Latinos in Israel are fond of saying that “la educación empieza en la casa”,
educación begins at home. This expression also shows how educación is
associated especially with domestic contexts of interaction, paradigmati-
cally with interactions between parents and their children. As with other
kinds of discursive practices (Agha, 1998), any discussion of educación is
realized by Latinos through the (ideologically simplified) speech of a series
of stereotyped characters. Latinos generally perceive Israelis to lack edu-
cación and explain this as a result of Israeli parents not understanding how
to socialize—educate—their children. This lack of educación is doubly true
for Israeli children when they address an adult and particularly when they
address their own parents. When Latino children, most of whom are Hebrew
dominant, refer to this lack of educación, they use the Hebrew term, XUTSPA
“cheek” or “gall” (cf. English chutzpah). These kinds of intuitions are typi-
cal of language ideologies (Schieffelin, Woolard, & Kroskrity, 1998), and
point to how, rather than the use of Spanish as code, it is the practices asso-
ciated with educación that are crucial to constituting a sense of diaspora
among Latinos, young and old.
Educación is seen as a characteristic of Latino personhood, whether
describing the Spanish-dominant adult generation or the Hebrew-dominant
generation growing up in Israel. It is understood as part of the sacred rela-
tion of parent and child and thus helps produce an indexical relation to an
imagined homeland. Parents and children are understood to have a relation
of reciprocity. A child displays their educación by showing respect (respeto)
toward their parents. The parent, on the other hand, provides for and, at the
same time, educates the child. This relation means that Latinos often consid-
ered a child’s behavior as evidence of the parents’ educación and ultimately
of the parents’ country of origin. Whenever rival parents complain about
each other’s children, they generally blame the parents. The link is often
very explicit: so-and-so doesn’t know how to educate her or his child, and it
is obvious from the child’s behavior. For example, in interviews, when asked
to judge interactional behavior, adults often qualified their remarks by not-
ing that different countries have different “cultures”, and perhaps “that’s
how they do it there”. Educación is thus seen as producing an indexical
chain pointing back up through the lineage of the family and ultimately to
that shared homeland that noncitizen Latinos in Israel imagine unites them.
But what is educación to noncitizen Latinos in Israel? Or more to the
point, what has it become? Educación is not a uniform or monolithic set of
practices that stayed the same as Latin Americans crossed into Israel. Just as
this marginal group of migrants came to understand themselves as distinct
from (Jewish) Israelis, so has educación transformed in relation to how the
Latinos perceive themselves in encounters with stereotypic Israelis.8
To understand this changing set of practices better, I used a variety of meth-
odologies. One important methodology was to use excerpts like Excerpt 1 in
an interview. I first did tens of hours of recordings of natural conversation in
domestic and educational settings (sometimes with and sometimes without
my presence). From my ethnography, I knew that, while Spanish was an
important marker of ethnolinguistic identity, much more important was the
Latinos’ sense that their educación distinguished them from (Jewish) Israelis.
However, as I went over recordings, especially those between parents and
children, I realized that I could not judge what the Latino participants would
and would not consider examples of speaking with educación. I therefore
devised an interview, administering it to 52 Latinos (27 adults: 6 men and
21 women; 25 youths: 15 male and 10 female). In the interview, I asked them
to describe the interaction and judge whether they felt the participants were
using educación. I also requested from interviewees that they produce an
example of a way to interact with a greater degree of educación, if possible.
The reactions to Excerpt 1 are very instructive about how Latinos can
perceive interactional behavior to be distinct from the denotational code or
language. This distinct perception is crucial for understanding the way edu-
cación can involve a calibration of displacement. Of all the excerpts I played
for interviewees, Excerpt 1 received the most positive response as clearly
using educación, and many interviewees were hard pressed to find a better
form, even in Spanish. Since Itsik spoke completely in Hebrew, many of the
adults required a few playbacks and/or a translation to pick up on all of its
subtleties. Indeed, there were four adults who perceived it with lukewarm
reactions the first time around. Once they understood it better, they readily
endorsed it. What impressed them and other respondents the most was the
subordinated request for permission in line 2, IM MUTAR LI LISHOL. The into-
nation contour also played a role (see what follows), but in general, it did
not receive explicit comment.
One of the adults who changed his perception of Itsik’s interactional
move on a second hearing was a Colombian father, José (in his mid-40s and
14 years in Israel, with passable Hebrew). Just before this excerpt, I had played
back two others between Itsik and his mother Barbara, where there was con-
siderable tension. After listening a couple of times, he noted the difference
between Itsik’s behavior in Excerpt 1 and the earlier excerpts he had heard:
Excerpt 2, José:
1 viene la parte latina the Latino part comes out
2 o sea, hablando en hebreo y regresa la that is, speaking in Hebrew and the
parte latina Latino part returns
3 o sea, “puedo preguntar?” that is, “can I ask?”
4 o sea, como pidiendo un ishur eh un that is, as if requesting PERMISSION
permiso para preguntar eh permission to ask
5 para preguntar, sí to ask, yes
6 ya viene con mas educación now it comes with more educación
Clearly the Hebrew delivery had misled José when he first listened to Excerpt 1,
because after hearing it a second time, he perceived Latino pragmatics even
though Itsik was “speaking in Hebrew”. Like most other interviewees, the
fact that Itsik produces a request for his inquiry was immediately seized
upon by José. José also was clearly impressed by the intonation contour,
which he reproduced in Spanish in line 3.
In analyzing Excerpt 1, Teodora, a Chilean mother (in her 30s and some
7 years in Israel, also with passable Hebrew), explicitly compared Latino
and Israeli interactional practices for requesting information:
Excerpt 3, Teodora:
1 porque tu vistes because you saw
2 él te pregunta “si es que te puedo he asks you “if it’s possible for me to
preguntar” ask”
3 es que un israelita no te lo va a it’s just that an Israelite isn’t going to ask
preguntar you
4 no te va “IM MUTAR LI BIXLAL” he’s not going to you “IF I MAY ASK AT
ALL”
5 BIXLAL LO NOT AT ALL
6 te va a preguntar que estás haciendo he’s going to ask you what you’re doing
7 y “LAMA VEKAXA VELAMA” and “WHY AND LIKE THIS AND WHY”
8 “VELAMA KAXA” “AND WHY LIKE THIS”
9 “VELAMA VEKAXA” “AND WHY AND LIKE THIS”
10 pero nada que “MUTAR LI” but nothing that “MAY I”
11 BIXLAL LO NOT AT ALL
Teodora establishes a contrast between the voice of a Latino who mitigates
the imposition of his or her question with an explicit request (lines 2 and 4)
and the voice of an Israeli who increases the interactional imposition by
impatiently asking “why” over and over (lines 6–10). Following this excerpt,
she agreed that Itsik was very polite (educado) and contrasted this display
of educación with what one hears in the street or at work, meaning, in other
words, from Israelis.
Educación as an understanding of interactional pragmatics is thus highly
associated to place, and, as with several other kinds of discursive practices,
is also highly associated with the speech of stereotyped characters in those
places. In a discussion of honorific registers, Agha (1998) explains how
speakers tend to laminate together distinct levels of analysis (like word and
sentence) and how the metapragmatic stereotype of characters with particu-
lar speech helps to unite these levels in ideological perceptions. In this vein,
stereotypes of Latinos and Israelis are contrasted implicitly and explicitly in
Excerpts 2 and 3. In Excerpt 2, lines 2 and 3, José characterizes the speech of
Itsik as that of a typical Latino, and in Excerpt 3, this contrast is made explicit
by Teodora. In typifying these contrastive voices, José and Teodora are able
to dissociate educación from the ideological binary of Spanish and Hebrew.
CALIBRATING EDUCACIÓN: IM MUTAR LI LISHOL
If Latinos could distinguish educación from the language spoken, in spite

of their prevailing language ideologies, how can educación be calibrated to
a Latin American homeland? Given the ideologies just mentioned, it is use-
ful to return to Excerpt 1 in order to discuss this question. Both José and
Teodora (see earlier discussion) mention what they perceive as the Latino
origins to Itsik’s request for information. Beyond such a perception, one
Hebrew-dominant 16-year-old that I interviewed, Cecilio (some 8 years in
Israel, having come with his Colombian mother), even ascribed practically
otherworldly qualities to Itsik’s interactional move:
1 HU HITYAXES ALEXA KE’ILU ATA HE TREATED YOU LIKE YOU’RE AN

BENADAM XASHUV O MASHU IMPORTANT PERSON OR SOMETHING
2 HU DIBER ALEXA YAFE HE TALKED TO YOU RESPECTFULLY
3 “IM EFSHAR LISHOL” “IF I CAN ASK”
Repeating the IM MUTAR LI LISHOL, like José and Teodora, to emphasize

the unusual nature of the utterance, Cecilio also added a bit later that this
turn showed a “form that, like, most kids don’t use to treat most people
most of the time”. That is, the utterance was from elsewhere.
Further ethnographic context helps to position the larger interaction in
which Itsik’s turn occurred. Excerpt 1 is taken from a recording during one
of my first visits to Barbara’s home, where there were two principal objec-
tives. First, Barbara was interested in having me help her son with the mul-
tiple malware problems on his computer, as well as consult with me about
buying him a new, more powerful computer—for which she had saved up
$1,500 US, a large sum for Barbara. Obviously, Itsik was excited both to
hear that I could repair for free the malware that his mother blamed him for
and also that I would help his mother purchase a new computer for him.
On the other hand, I was interested in having them do unscripted recordings
for my research because Barbara was considered to speak Hebrew well by
her friends. Thus, I had brought a sophisticated recorder and intended to
go over the oral consent form that day, and eventually leave them a simpler
recorder to use without me. In short, from the point of view of the various
actors party to the event, there were multiple important goals at stake.
Given what was at stake for him, then, it is not surprising that Itsik was
trying to be on his best behavior. When I arrived, Barbara was not yet home,
and Itsik welcomed me. Also at home was David, Itsik’s 4-year-old brother,
for whom Itsik was caring. Despite many stories I had heard about how
wild he was and what I myself had witnessed on occasion, Itsik played the
part of host with as much educación as any of the preteens and teens with
whom I worked. He invited me in graciously, asked me to sit down, and
then offered me something to drink, going over all possible options. He tried
calling his mother to let her know I was there, and then he asked me what
I preferred to watch on television, noting that he had intended to change
his younger brother’s cartoons to King Kong just before I knocked. We then
talked amiably for a while about King Kong.
Ultimately, all these actions are considered by Latinos as part of displaying
educación, specifically when receiving guests. However, the reasons for the
visit created a set of potential threats to face. These threats were manifested
in a series of questions about me, about my research, and about my equip-
ment. Besides the expectations of the new computer, my visit created a lot
of curiosity: the lengthy oral consent form, the request to record, as well as
the voice recorder itself were all sources of intrigue for mother and children
alike. Added to this were Barbara’s anxieties about the computer, both cur-
rent and future, as well as about her sons’ use of the Internet and of new
technologies, which she clearly felt inadequate to monitor. All of this gener-
ated a series of questions to me that structured much of the interaction.
A second dynamic was the tension between Barbara and Itsik, and a third
was David’s attempt to gain the attention of his mother and older brother.
Excerpt 1 captures Itsik’s attempt to renew his line of questioning after an
earlier rebuke. Earlier in the conversation, Itsik had also used highly polite
forms. The first time came after a couple of rebukes he received from Barbara
about not appreciating the Internet speed they had and about downloading
games that cost money. Then David momentarily occupied Barbara’s atten-
tion, and Itsik tried to take advantage by turning to me to request permis-
sion to look at my recorder:
Excerpt 4, Itsik:
1 EFSHAR LIROT SHNIYA? IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A QUICK LOOK?
Itsik had thus opened up a channel between me and him distinct from his
mother’s participation. Despite my affirmative response, Barbara quickly
snapped that he should not touch, leading to a brief showdown in front of
me before she sent him to help his little brother. Excerpt 1 came a little while
later when Barbara once again became engrossed with her younger son,
and Itsik took advantage to open a channel with me outside of his mother’s
direct participation. This time he was successful. The interaction that fol-
lowed Excerpt 1 was structured by a series of questions about the cost of my
recorder and microphone, about who funded its cost, and how it was that
I had arrived to Israel at all. None of these follow-up questions involve the
high degree of attention to facework displayed in Excerpt 1.
In some sense then, Itsik was playing the role that Teodora stereotyped
as that of the Israeli kid (see Excerpt 3), rapidly asking somewhat invasive
questions. Except that Itsik opens that series with the turn of Excerpt 1.
That is, the educación on display in Excerpt 1 is relatively ritualized, almost
like a greeting, to (re-)establish our footing for several turns, where a very
politely worded question about my actions on his computer became a chance
to interrogate me about my equipment and research. While Itsik questioned
me, Barbara was distracted with phone calls to relatives abroad and occa-
sionally added a few questions of her own about the computer she planned
to buy.
How did Excerpt 1 differ from the series of questions that came in its
wake? First of all, the use in line 2 of IM MUTAR LI LISHOL, “IF I MAY ASK”. There
is also the intonation. In line 1, the stress comes on MA, “WHAT”, and there
is no rising pitch for the question. Such intonation could actually sound
impatient. This is corrected in line 3, with utterance final stress and rising
pitch. Line 3 also has other characteristics to help set it apart. As a rephras-
ing of line 1, line 3 is started by the discourse marker KE’ILU (“LIKE”) in the
intonation unit initial position. Maschler comments in her chapter (2009,
pp. 127–170) on KE’ILU as a discourse marker that this is a typical use and
the most frequent position.9 Here it signals “realizing the need to rephrase”
(p. 152). Significantly, in Itsik’s rephrasing, he switches from the pronomi-
nal ZE (third person, singular, neutralized for case, formally masculine but
often neutralized for gender in informal talk) to HU (third person, singular,
masculine, nominative), as well as adding the temporal adverbial AXSHAV
(“NOW”) to focus his question.10 In keeping with contemporary sociolin-
guistic variation in Hebrew-speaking Israel, his use of HU—which maintains
the grammatical gender and case distinction—in line 3 helps to reformulate
line 1 in a more formal register.
In short, there are a great many reasons that interviewees were so
impressed with Excerpt 1, simultaneously associating it with Latino
educación while opposing it to Israeli interactional pragmatics. These for-
mal devices succeeded in calibrating the turn to a distinct realm that is
treated as an elsewhere, not in Israel. The devices help to constitute Itsik’s
turn at talk as a bit of what Goffman (1967) called “interaction ritual”.
Itsik’s ability to momentarily inhabit such a realm helps him to establish a
new footing with me, which allows him to pry into my research with a con-
stant stream of questions. This was especially effective given that his mother
had already berated him and implied that he was not considerate. Indeed, it
is very probably the sense that educación comes from elsewhere that enables
the associated pragmatics to be so effective for the purposes to which Itsik
and other Latinos used them. To avoid the stereotype of the impatient and
nosy Israeli children, Latinos can integrate aspects of educación to produce
a more Latino context into the ongoing interaction.
CONCLUSION
In Excerpts 2 and 3, José and Teodora react with astonishment to Itsik’s

interactional move in Excerpt 1. The astonishment they register—and here
they represent the overwhelming majority of the 52 interviewees—is due in
part to the contrast that they heard in earlier examples of Itsik and Barbara
arguing. But it is also because of the dramatic degree of polished educación
that the 12-year-old displays. It is as if Itsik is suddenly talking from another
realm. The speaking subject Itsik manages to represent at that moment
emerges from another world, the diasporic homeland. The astonishment
interviewees sensed, which I shared, stems from this diasporic calibration.
The poignancy is amplified by the fact that Itsik manages this while speak-
ing his youthful, native Hebrew. Most noncitizen Latinos in Israel are not
accustomed to hearing such refined speech from Latino youth, much less
when they interact in Hebrew-speaking contexts. When it suddenly makes
an appearance in Latino youth in this way, educación thus appears deterri-
torialized, from an ethereal realm called “Latin America” from which Lati-
nos understand themselves to come.
In ways that can only be touched upon here, Excerpt 1 points to a much
more complex process of language and deterritorialization. Indeed, as many
adult Latinos themselves admit, their sensitivity to educación has shifted.
They are not as strict as their own parents were, and, they sometimes would
state, Israeli directness in interaction might offer a model of intimacy for
a more modern relation with their children.
The fact that Latinos are able to perceive a distinction between Spanish and
educación as interactional pragmatics—despite their prevailing ideologies—
also complicates questions that are traditionally studied as a migrant process of
language shift or of code-switching versus borrowing. The intuitions of shifting
interactional practices suggests that the complex interplay between language
structure, use (or practice), and ideology requires multiple methodologies to
better capture what happens to language in diasporic and transnational con-
texts. Indeed, this chapter suggests that, to study such contexts, it is necessary
to go beyond narrow definitions of and assumptions about code to see how
shifting interactional pragmatics serve to found (and ultimately stabilize) the
perceived boundaries of languages in multilingual settings.
NOTES
1. I am extremely grateful to the editors, Rosina Márquez Reiter and Luisa

Martín Rojo, for carrying this project through with great patience and to
Isobel Rainey for her editorial expertise. I am also indebted to the reviewers
and Hilary Parsons Dick for excellent comments that improved this paper.
All errors remain my own.
2. All names are pseudonyms to protect the privacy of my interlocutors in the
field.
3. Throughout this chapter, I use italics for Spanish and SMALL CAPS for Hebrew.
In some places I use both to indicate that the distinction between Spanish and
Hebrew has been neutralized.
4. See below for more context about these noncitizen Latinos. The fieldwork
took place intermittently from the late 1990s to 2007, the longest portion
being from September 2004 to July 2006.
5. For more, see Paz (2009, 2010) and Kalir (2010).
6. It is worth noting that, for Silverstein, metapragmatics is an integral part
of semiosis: the aspect of the signal that regiments indexical (denotational
and nondenotationl) phenomena. Roughly speaking, this occurs on a cline of
explicitness to implicitness, including the metricalized or textually contrastive.
7. This issue was earlier broached by Jakobson (1971) as a relation between
narrated and speech event.
8. The social parameters for this transformation are the subject of several
publications in progress, but a preliminary statement is in Paz (2010).
9. Other functions are hedging and focusing, along with incipient use in
metapragmatic frames for quotation.
10. It is probably the case that ZE in this function also neutralizes number.
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Part III
Virtual Communities
10 Staying in Touch with My Mobile
Phone in My Pocket and
Internet in the Cafés
Jane Vincent
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, I explore the lives of migrants and how they have been trans-
formed by the availability of ubiquitous access to mobile phones and the
Internet in their new place of residence. This present study draws on 10 years
of my own research of mobile phone and information and communications
technologies (ICT) users in the UK (Vincent, 2010; Vincent & Harper, 2003)
and on my further studies with international scholars exploring migration
and diaspora in global societies (Fortunati, Pertierra, & Vincent, 2102a).
In combining this research, I aim to show how this increased global access
to mobile phones and the Internet, during the last decade in particular, has
transformed the relationships between migrants and their left-behind fami-
lies and friends, as well as with their commercial and business links. In the
past, bidding farewell to a family member about to embark upon a new life
in another town or country many miles away could be a traumatic experi-
ence with no certainty of when, if ever, they would be heard of again. Today,
with a mobile phone and an email address in their pocket, the separation
between migrant and their family, friends, and business contacts need only
be one merely of physical location: almost everyone can now be immediately
contactable at the press of a key. Furthermore, communications media exist
that enable always-on, person-to person contact via voice, text, or video, as
well as many other forms of connectivity such as satellite television, Internet
sites, and news media.
It has not always been easy to access mobile phones: the availability of
low-cost, prepay mobile phones without contracts and free Wi-Fi have been
turning points in the mass adoption of these technologies, and this is espe-
cially important to people who are visiting or migrating to another country.
Until the late 1990s, in the UK as well as in most other countries, it was not
possible to buy a mobile phone subscription, or indeed a subscription to any
communications service, unless you had a permanent address of more than
6 months’ residency and a bank account in the country where you were buy-
ing the service. Consequently, new migrants to the UK, as well as many UK
citizens, could not obtain personal telecommunications services and instead
170 Jane Vincent
had to rely on public payphones or, if in employment, their work phones
and Internet. Since the millennium, access to mobile communications—
voice, text, and the Internet—has become much more widely available, and
it is perhaps not a coincidence that transnational diasporas linked by mobile
media rather than by physical colocation are becoming more prevalent.
The chapter begins with a discussion of theoretical approaches to migra-
tion and leads into an overview of the development of various ICTs explored
from the perspective of mobility and migration. It then looks at how migrants
have maintained contact with those they left behind, considering, at the same
time, the emotional aspects of communicating and keeping in touch when
apart. Emotion is a facet of migration that must often be confronted and, as
discussed, both the mobile phone and Internet access are important enablers
for its management. The chapter is illustrated with examples from research
conducted by contributors to various COST Actions1 and in particular from
the edited volume on migration and diaspora in global societies (Fortunati,
Pertierra, & Vincent, 2012b).
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
It is notable that, until very recently, there have been few studies exploring
migrant communities and their use of information communications technol-
ogies. During the last decade, mobile phone and wireless Internet use has
burgeoned, and there is a growing body of research exploring the use of
media by transnational families and diasporas, including some studies on
their mobile phone and Internet use. Early studies of mobile phone users had
highlighted the perpetual connectivity the phones afforded (Katz, & Aakhus,
2002) as well as the close relationship between human beings and machines
that it involves (Katz, 2003). These studies were preoccupied with under-
standing the new social practices emerging from the use of mobile phones
and the Internet. There were, however, fewer studies that explored cultural
differences and the use of ICTs by migrant communities in particular. Notable
exceptions are the international studies by SOCQUIT2 and a number of stud-
ies within COST Actions 248, 269, 298 and IS0960 (Fortunati, Pertierra, &
Vincent, 2012b; Georgiou, & Ponte, 2013; Haddon, 1997, 2005, 2011).
Global infrastructure that supports international travel and offers ubiq-
uitous fixed-line communications service has been available for several
decades now, but it was perhaps the arrival of international roaming mobile
phone services and wireless Internet that has facilitated regular and immedi-
ate communication across populations anywhere in the world. Migrations
of mass populations such as those that occur in times of crises—war, famine,
religious persecution—have been recorded for millennia. While some of the
migrants in the studies referred to herein are indeed refugees from ravaged
countries and communities, the majority are migrants by choice. They move
to join family or to forge a new life elsewhere in search of adventure, money,
Staying in Touch with My Mobile Phone in My Pocket 171
work, and so on; there are many reasons a person becomes an immigrant.
The outcome of this mass of individual migrations has been the develop-
ment of new transnational societies. This notion of transnationalism has
been studied by numerous scholars and is defined by Basch, Glick Schiller,
and Blanc-Szanton (1994): “as the processes by which immigrants forge
and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies
of origin and settlement” (p. 6). Portes (1997) posits that new communities
that have emerged as a response to the process of globalization are centered
on the friends and families of the immigrants; these may not necessarily be
located in the same place or country as they “create communities that sit
astride political borders and that, in a very real sense, are ‘neither here nor
there’ but in both places simultaneously” (p. 3). Combining this concept of
transnationality with those of “no sense of place” and “glocality” explored
by Meyrowitz (1985, 2005) one finds new societies with changing spatial
and temporal patterns that are further influenced by their use of electronic
media. Furthermore, owing to the intervention of these media, boundaries
are ignored through cross-border communications and mobility and, as a
result, private, and public behaviors become blurred.
In establishing their new lives, migrants are also heavily reliant on the
building of social trust and the collaboration of strangers (Putnam, 2000).
This is a further strand in sustaining these floating or nomadic communities,
and it is in this regard that mobile phones especially can be considered “a
tool for social integration and the enhancement of social capital” (Green &
Haddon, 2011, p. 92). The effect of migrants on modern society continues
to spread; Castells (1996) places the migrant worker as central to the devel-
opment of the new networked society and, as explored in what follows, it
is a society in which mobile phones and the Internet particularly play key
enabling roles. Transnational societies with networks of multiple media are
the basis of a new theory of “polymedia” developed by Madianou and Miller
(2012). They posit that multiple media, including television, mobile and
fixed telecommunications, the Internet, print, and broadcast news media,
are central to the establishment of migrant communities and to the identity
of migrants in contemporary society. “Ordinary people around the world,
living not just in cities but in villages and small towns too, find their rela-
tionship with the media is entirely transformed once they have the money
for computer access and phone services” (Miller, 2012, p. xiv). Migrants
can now have an identity they can create and manage themselves via these
media rather than being reported about and categorized in ways that are not
always representative of their lives.
DEPENDENCY ON MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS
While satellite television and access to online news media in their native
language is vital for keeping in touch with their culture and their home
172 Jane Vincent
community, immigrants have also come to rely heavily on other modes of
information communication technologies. Mobile communications in the
form of mobile phone use and the Internet, accessed on a computer in a
café or on their smartphone via free Wi-Fi outlets, are central to the mobile
transnational ecosystem that migrants inhabit. During the course of my soci-
ological research on mobile phone use, it became evident that mobile phones
have a special and personal meaning for their users—a meaning that differs
from the fixed telephone or any other type of digital communications device
(Vincent, 2003). What appears to be so special about the mobile phone is
that it has become a personal compendium for its user and an emotional
and social support for the highs and lows of everyday life (Vincent, 2010).
Most often owned and used by one person for whom the telephone number
is unique, the device is personalized with many facets of its owner’s life: con-
tacts, pictures, texts, voicemails, apps, ring tones, and more. Furthermore,
the mobile phone number is usually only made known to others by the
owner of the phone, and thus most people who have this number have had
some personal contact with the owner. The development of smartphones
allowing Internet access, the use of apps, and many other features beyond
the plain old text and voice have augmented this personalization to include
personal email address(es) and social networking sites. Furthermore, tech-
nology developments for tablets, pads, and handheld computers means that
there are now several forms of device that perform similar functions to the
mobile phone without being a conventional mobile telephone.
People say they cannot live without their mobile, and this is especially per-
tinent for recently arrived migrants as they settle into their new lives. Evers
and Goggin (2012) note in their study of young male refugees from Africa
who settle in Australia that the mobile phone becomes a means for “negoti-
ating new ways of interacting and communicating and coordinating people,
meeting, accessing resources and events” (p. 87). However, they also high-
light the emotional consequences of phone calls home, as they take time to
recover from due to the sense of loss and separation the migrants are forced
to endure. Emotions conveyed on ICT, and via mobile phones in particu-
lar, appear to be particularly intimate, with the added nuance of being con-
veyed via a device that is personal to the recipient alone; it is not implicitly
shared with others as it is with fixed phones or PCs. Vincent and Fortunati’s
(2009) concept of “electronic emotions”—emotions that are created, lived,
and relived via machines—argues that there is a special awareness of some
emotions when they are felt via mobile phones, laptops, and tablets and that
there is an extraordinary relationship between the user and her or his mobile
device (Vincent, 2013). The use of the mobile phone to maintain contact with
families is an exemplar of the link between emotions conveyed and engen-
dered by the device and the dependency people have on the mobile. Dhoest
and colleagues (2013) assert that “within the European context migrants
generally, but not always, travel from more traditional societies with strong
family values into more individualistic societies” (pp. 18–19). This move
away from one’s home family environment puts more pressure on the indi-
vidual to keep in contact with their home, something for which the mobile
phone is an invaluable tool.
This affection for the mobile phone and the growing emotional depen-
dency on it, which I revealed in my UK–based research, is not peculiar to the
UK or to any particular group of users. Indeed, it would appear that people
across the globe are finding similar attachments to this device, particularly
as it becomes increasingly diverse in its capabilities such as in enabling wire-
less Internet connectivity. Dependency on mobile phones and the Internet is
not simply because of the emotional familial connectivity it enables but also
because of the commercial opportunities it affords.
There are now in excess of 3.2 billion mobile phone users worldwide, and
mobile phone coverage is available in some of the most remote locations
in the world (ATKearney, 2013). Along with the growth of mobile phone
penetration has been the development of the availability of the Internet, now
accessible to many more people via Internet cafes and free Wi-Fi hubs, and
soon to be more widely available on smartphones that combine many of the
mobile facets of the Internet with the traditional voice and text capabilities
of the mobile phone.
CULTURAL INFLUENCES
The complexities of combining mobility, multimodal communications, and

migration are made even more complex by the different cultural influences
that can affect the adoption of the Internet and mobile phones. Thomas
and Haddon (2011, p. 5) examined the cultural factors that shape the
take-up of ICTs, highlighting a host of issues that can lead to differences
in the assimilation and distribution of ICTs across the globe. These include
differences in lifestyle, spatial design of housing, fashion, approaches to
work/life balance, digital divide, different histories of implementing new
technologies, social and political control of communications, and religion.
Referring to the research of Hoffman and Novak (1998) on the diffusion
of the Internet within the US, Thomas and Haddon also show how these
are not just differences between nations but that ethnic background also
plays a role, with Hispanics and Afro-Americans, for example, consistently
lagging behind Whites and Asians on the take-up of the Internet in the US.
The ability to seamlessly move individual communications practices from
one place to another does, however, mean that the social practices migrants
bring with them to their new place of abode can be continued. This is not
always beneficial to their integration into new societies, as demonstrated
by the work of Bailén and Suárez (2013). They studied Mahgrebi women
who have migrated to Spain, where there is plenty of opportunity to access
174 Jane Vincent
and use all kinds of media. The focus of these women’s lifestyle is domi-
nated, however, by their traditions and Arabic language and, as a result,
they find consuming products that do not correspond to their culture very
difficult. Furthermore, Bailén and Suárez report that the media their respon-
dents (and their children) consume is determined by the men in their family
and, accordingly, their day-to-day lives remain separated from the Spanish
culture they now inhabit (2013, p. 121). A further example of the separa-
tion of cultures within the communications media used by immigrants can
be found among the teenage users of social network sites (SNS) researched
by Vittadini and colleagues (2013). The older teenagers they interviewed
(in Italy) have groups of friends from different cultural backgrounds who
do not use the same SNS, and so these respondents have more than one site
open at a time.
“On Facebook there are school friends or, in particular, my classmates

(girls) . . . Italians . . . whereas in HI5 there are my South American
friends.” (Ecuador, F18)
“I open two windows at the same time . . . one on HI5 for my [Peruvian]
friends and one on Facebook, for my classmates and school-friends!”
(Peru, F19). (Vittadini et al., 2013, p. 74)
It is interesting to note that cultural differences in the adoption and use

of the Internet and other ICTs prevail. As Thomas (2007) reports in his
analysis of the findings of the European SOCQUIT study, “In the more fam-
ily oriented Latin social countries the regular use of the Internet only helps
to maintain the weak contacts” (p. 790). This is because, in order to stay in
touch, close family members are more likely to use the telephone than email
to talk to each other.
The use of SNS can, however, be a very powerful tool for linking members
of a global diaspora who are unknown to each other, as Greschke (2012)
has identified in her research of Paraguayan migrants. They use an online
discussion forum and instant messaging to connect with each other: “. . .
even those entirely unknown to each other and distant in geographical space
are enabled by the Internet to be close in virtual space where they can learn
to create the experience of living together” (p. 137). This approach of a self-
organizing diaspora is in contrast to the national approach adopted by the
Bulgarian government. It has created an international online Bulgarian lan-
guage media network with the specific objective of keeping in contact with
the global Bulgarian diaspora, which comprises nearly one third of their
population (Stoyanova & Raycheva, 2012). This network aims to raise the
profile of Bulgarians abroad in order to leverage them as ambassadors of
their home country and to encourage them to continue to work on behalf of
Bulgarians. One such migrant to Ireland told of how he set up an Internet
site for his Bulgarian community after finding on his arrival that there was
no communication between Bulgarians living in his adopted country.
MANAGING EMOTION
It is would seem clear from the discussion thus far that within these migrant
communities, emotions associated with distant relationships with loved ones
are strongly felt and have to be managed. Migration and diaspora are not
new phenomena, but, since the late 20th century, there has been an emergence
and strengthening of transnational families and diaspora that are supported
and sustained by new information communications technologies. Always-on
communications in every corner of the globe have transformed the connec-
tivity of people. Any journey, for any period of time, or for any distance is
no longer constrained by the inability to maintain contact. Communications
can now be in real time rather than taking days, weeks, or months to arrive.
Migration need no longer be a static separation of a stopping of one life
and beginning a new one but is instead manifested as a dynamic mobility
enabled by telecommunications and transport that allow life to seamlessly
flow from home to elsewhere (Fortunati et al., 2012b). Separation is by loca-
tion and physical presence, but social, familial, and commercial relations
can be maintained through multiple media. Successful continued contact is
dependent to a great extent on the ability to access multiple media, although
the mobile phone and the Internet café are probably the focal points for
this contact.
While this new global mobility is well supported by ICT, the electronic
emotions engendered by the increased use of mobile communications must
somehow be managed by the individual migrants and those they have left
behind. There are some aspects of these relationships, however, especially
the emotions felt with regard to the intimacy of personal relationships, that
cannot be replicated by social media and for which the presence of mobile
phones and the Internet is no substitute. Two powerful examples are the
sending of handwritten letters rather than digital communications and the
intimacy of silence between copresent people. Receiving news in the author’s
own writing conveys an extra layer of closeness and personal contact, as
exemplified by this Italian student who was asked to discuss the differences
between writing on paper and writing on screen:
Writing by hand says much more than what is written: from the pen
stroke in fact can be understood the emotion of those who write: safety
and strength of a strong character trait contrast[s] with the weak and
trembling strokes of those who are begging or are showing themselves
to be extremely fragile. (Fortunati & Vincent, 2014, p. 50)
The nuances and shades of emotion that can be read into handwritten
letters are more acute than if the same words are typed into an email. Law
reported in his study of migrant Chinese workers that when it was com-
monplace to write letters home at least weekly, “Recipients [of a letter] felt
close to family members by just looking at the handwriting” (2012, p. 211).
176 Jane Vincent
Law had identified a decline in familial relationships between his respon-
dents, who had migrated to the factories in Guangdong, China, and their
left-behind families.3 Whereas, in the past, their families might receive an
occasional fixed-line phone call as well as letters, they were now reliant on
receiving news via a mobile phone call or email. It appeared, however, that
the migrants made little contact with their families, perhaps because they
knew they could do so at any time. Furthermore, their time in Internet cafes
was spent interacting on social media and computer games with newfound
Internet friends and not sending emails home (Law, 2012, pp. 210–211).
Cheng researched migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta, finding them
to be increasingly detached from their families as they floated from job to
job. Avid users of the SNS QQ, they would turn to technology “to escape
the boredom and sadness of a dull and aimless working life” (Cheng, 2012,
p. 228). There is poignancy in the lives of these Chinese migrant workers
for whom digital communication with home is always and easily available.
Having supplanted the use of paper and pen, it has resulted in less contact.
A letter can convey more than what is written in the words, but perhaps—
as with the example of the calls home of the Australian (Evers & Goggin,
2012, p. 87)—a telephone call is even more emotionally painful, as there is
nowhere to hide one’s feelings when an audible link is made.
Ironically, it was the loss of audible contact that proved most painful for
one respondent in Madianou and Miller’s (2012) study of Filipino workers.
In this instance, it was the comfort of the silence that exists between couples
living together that was lost when the wife moved to live and work abroad.
The left-behind husband became severely depressed when he lost the silent
company of his wife of 27 years: “In a situation where communication had
become effectively the silent medium of co-presence, not even polymedia
could compensate for this absence of emotional bonding” (p. 135). Thus, it
is clear that using a mobile phone and the Internet is not necessarily a sub-
stitute for lost communications when that communication is so dependent
on copresence and silence. Nevertheless, when possible, some users are over-
coming even this problem with the technology of Skype or other video and
audio connections over the Internet; a child can be watched over or playtime
shared by having a real-time Internet video link running while getting on
with another task. Gordano (2013) provides examples of this in her study of
migrants from Morocco and Ecuador now living in Catalonia. Although her
access to the Internet is frequently restricted, one respondent talks about how
being able to see her sick father on a video link is much better than a phone
call; “to see each other through the webcam, you know? You can see, for
instance, if there is an image of anguish or of calm” (p. 141).
It would appear from these experiences of some immigrants that the
use of mobile communications presents a paradox; on the one hand,
they are essential items for establishing a new life and keeping in touch,
especially with newfound friends, but, on the other, they are no substitute
for those moments of unspoken intimacy between people whose emotional
awareness of each other is interpreted in ways not yet established on
electronic media.
CONCLUSION
Over the centuries, people’s desire to communicate with others located

in different places has steadily grown. In times past, when travelers first
ventured to explore the world, messages might be delivered by others they
met en route, but often it would only be on their return that there was any
certainty that their loved ones were still alive. From the early days of the
telegraph service to the present-day multimodally connected populations,
keeping in touch has been a mainstay of society, and with the availability
of ICT, migrants can leverage this to extend their reach and bridge the void
of distance and separation.
It is clear from the research discussed in this chapter that there is much use
of mobile communications among migrant communities globally. Further-
more, the last decade has seen the burgeoning of mobile phone and Internet
usage, particularly now that they can be accessed easily and at a very low
cost. While usage might, to some extent, be determined by the digital literacy
of the participants, there are other aspects of lifestyle and in particular cul-
tural conditions that determine the take-up and usage of ICTs generally. It is
not always possible for immigrants to access ICTs, perhaps because of tra-
ditional gender roles that preclude owning a mobile phone or accessing the
Internet, or, quite simply, the cost of a mobile phone or a visit to an Internet
café is more than can be afforded. Nevertheless, migrants can now continue
to manage their everyday life via their mobile phone much as they may have
done before in their home country. The ability to continue familiar social
practices, such as speaking or texting with family and friends, is particularly
important for new immigrants for whom the challenges of settling into a new
country may at times be overwhelming. Indeed, the mobile phone takes on
an even stronger emotional property, as it is held and kept with them at all
times to ensure they can contact new friends and be contactable by those left
behind. The mobile phone becomes a lifeline for resolving problems as well
as being the point of contact in emergency now that families’ and friends’
household phones and familiar neighborhoods are no longer accessible.
The growth of the transnational families as well as transnational diaspora
of connected individuals explored in the recent research on migration and
ICTs discussed in this chapter, highlights the emotional paradox for those
making a new life elsewhere. Households split by the migration of family
members are extended globally, and while, for some, the use of mobile phones
and the Internet may increase and intensify connectivity, for others the spatial
extension of the household cannot be sustained in this way and relationships
falter. Nevertheless, the always-on connectivity afforded by mobile phones
and the Internet has transformed and changed the lives of migrants, often in
178 Jane Vincent
very positive ways. At the same time, however, it has heightened the emotional
paradox that has emerged from being required to manage the electronic emo-
tions stirred by unlimited opportunities to stay in touch with those left behind.
NOTES
1. COST is the acronym for European Cooperation in Science and Technology—

the oldest and widest European intergovernmental network for cooperation
in research (www.cost.eu).
2. SOCQUIT, Social Capital, Quality of Life and Information Society Tech-
nologies, study conducted by Partners: TNO, Netherlands; Telenor, Norway;
University of Essex, UK; Eurescom, Germany; FRT France between December
2003 and November 2005.
3. Vittadini and colleagues (2013, p. 80) also report finding similar difficulties
in maintaining filial and sibling relationships among their respondents after
migrating.
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11 The Joint Construction of a
Supranational Identity in the
Latin American Blogging
Community in Quebec
Bettina Kluge
INTRODUCTION
The decision to leave one’s home and head to another country in search of
better opportunities for oneself and one’s children has never been an easy
one. Today, in contrast to the past, however, the Internet offers a mine of
information about where to go and what to expect. Besides official websites,
prospective migrants turn to social media to get information, to meet people
with similar experiences, and to feel that they are not alone with their fears
and problems. They discuss topics with others with whom they share the
wish to migrate to another country to start a new life and the uncertainties
experienced during the process.
This contribution analyzes the linguistic means of identity construction
in hispanophone weblogs that are centered on the topic of migrating to
Quebec, Canada. These blogs are written by migrants and migrants-to-be,
published by bloggers from different Latin American countries. After giving
some general information about official Canadian immigration policy and
introducing the concept of blogs, I will show how a community of practice,
in the sense of Wenger (1998), emerges within this blogosphere. In particular,
I will analyze the discursive construction of a common Latin American iden-
tity in many postings and discuss the relation of this emergent, postmigration
identity as a Latino compared to one that reflects the bloggers’ respective
national identities.
CANADA’S IMMIGRATION POLICY
Canada pursues an active immigration policy based on a point system that

rewards language skills, formal education, and professional experience. Each
year, between 240,000 and 265,000 persons of the so-called economic class
obtain permanent residence permits for themselves and their families.1 Under
the Canada-Quebec Accord, about 50,000 to 54,000 of these immigrants are
annually selected by the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec.
The province modifies the overall Canadian point system in one important
182 Bettina Kluge
aspect, however: applicants receive considerably more points for knowledge
of French than for that of English. Officials hope that immigrants will thus
stabilize the French-speaking population (Pagé, 2010, p. 18). In fact, the
vast majority of French-speaking immigrants to Canada choose to migrate
to Quebec, while English-speaking immigrants prefer other provinces. For
speakers of other Romance languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese, Italian,
Romanian, and one of the Creoles, it is worth noting that Quebec is the des-
tination of choice. Among the allophone immigrants to Quebec in the years
2008 to 2012 (MICC, 2013, p. 18), 11.3% declared Spanish as their mother
tongue, which makes them the second-largest group after speakers of Arabic
(22.9%), who are often French-Arabic bilinguals of North African ori-
gin. The vast majority of the hispanophone immigrants come from Latin
America, although Spanish emigration is rising somewhat due to the severe
economic crisis that currently afflicts Spain.
THE BLOGGERS’ PROJECT
This article reports some initial in-depth analyses of a project recently initi-
ated by Barbara Frank-Job and myself as part of a larger multidisciplinary
research group based at Bielefeld University.2 The project aims at identify-
ing the linguistic means of identity construction at a critical moment, when
one’s identity becomes more fluid because of the need to incorporate new
partial identities due to migration or in preparation therefor (see, for exam-
ple, Frank-Job & Kluge, 2012; Kluge, 2011, 2014). Migrants and would-be
migrants search the Internet for information on and solutions for the small
tasks ahead, mostly organizing their daily lives. Of course, the Canadian
and Quebec authorities also offer help in the integration process. But choice
of city and living quarter, job opportunities in certain professions, as well as
simple indications about what to pack, how to get a credit card, buy a car,
where to acquire electric appliances in Canada, and so forth—these are ques-
tions where people appear to put more trust in the opinions of other people,
especially of those who have had the same experience and are perceived as
knowledgeable and disinterested mediators. In fact, an important aspect of
being a member of the emerging community of migrants and migrants-to-be
is to construct oneself and others as legitimate members of that community
by exchanging advice and by contributing to the subsequent discussion.
The main focus of the project is to identify the discursive steps taken
to jointly negotiate a new immigrant identity. We are aware that what we
witness in online communication is not necessarily identity construction
but a display of facework—as much of one’s own as of that of others. For
ethical reasons, only publicly available and searchable contributions written
by migrants and persons who wish to migrate were considered, especially
in blogs and forums for which one does not need to register. In a sense,
this mirrors the moves of prospective migrants who search the Internet for
The Joint Construction of a Supranational Identity 183
information and start to read existing social media sites before beginning
to comment or build their own blog. Analyses so far have been focused
on the interaction in weblogs, without any participation from us. For pilot
corpora of 10 blogs for Spanish and French, the existing blog communica-
tion has been documented and the relevant categories are currently being
identified for annotation. The communicative activities will be analyzed,
thus, in a quantitative and qualitative manner. A next step will be to actually
“enter the field” by contacting some members of the blogosphere in order
to prepare for a field study in Quebec (probably in the fall of 2014). This
will include in-depth interviews with both migrant bloggers and Quebec
officials to analyze the interdependencies between the official discourse on
immigration and the blogosphere’s discourse on the subject.
Methodologically, the project orients around two proposals for net-based
ethnographic analyses, mainly Androutsopoulos’s (2008) proposal for a
Discourse-Centred Online-Ethnography, in which he argues that “research
based exclusively on log data is not ideally posited to examine participants’
discourse practices and perspectives or to relate these practices to observable
patterns of language use” (p. 2). Similarly, Greschke (2009) proposes a multi-
sited ethnography that also considers the simultaneous use of several media.
It is for this reason that the planned field study is so essential for the project.
For the time being, however, analysis is limited to the blog data themselves.
Data are analyzed sequentially, according to conversation and discourse ana-
lytic principles. Notably, bloggers and their commentators are considered
to display to each other the categories they set as relevant for the ensuing
conversation and their joint negotiation of identities.
THE USE OF BLOGS IN THE CONTEXT OF

MIGRATION TO QUEBEC
Following Schmidt (2007), blogs can be defined as “frequently updated web-

pages where content (text, pictures, sound files, etc.) is posted on a regular
basis and displayed in reversed chronological order” (p. 1405). A blog usually
contains a title banner that gives the name of the blog and below which entries
are published in a posting area in the middle column, with the most current
blog post at the top. Each post consists of the date of publication, a title, and a
main body. Posts may also indicate the author and contain labels of categories.
Depending on the blog provider, comments on the blog entries either open up
in a separate window or appear in a separate site. Additional typical blog items
that can be placed either in the left or the right column are a short “About
me” icon, a list of recommended links, a blog roll, an archive function, and a
tag cloud that allows for a quick, topic-based access to individual blog entries.
Analytically, the emerging blogosphere of immigrants to Quebec can be
described as a community of practice (henceforth CoP) in the sense coined by
Wenger (1998): migrants and migrants-to-be have reached a high degree of
184 Bettina Kluge
interlinking, and by their orientation toward a common goal—migration to
Quebec—and their common blogging practices, they form a CoP. The blog-
gers not only write their own blogs but also read other people’s blogs and
leave comments there. In the process, they come to share “beliefs, values,
ways of doings things, ways of talking,—in short, practices—as a function
of their joint engagement in activity. Simultaneously, social relations form
around the activities and activities form around relationships” (Eckert,
2000, p. 35).
The Spanish-language blogs in the corpus show some striking differences
compared with those in the French language corpus; for the most part, the
differences relate to the degree of group cohesion and to the sense of forming
an important immigrant community. Even before quantification of the data,
it is already obvious that the degree of interlinked blogs on the respective blog
rolls is much higher in the Spanish corpus: the discussion among bloggers and
readers shows a very close-knit, supportive community. The cohesion and
community-building are, it would seem, enhanced by the fact that some blog-
gers have come to know each other personally during the application process,
especially those that have studied French together in the Alianza Francesa or
other language schools in their respective countries. In the French corpus, on
the other hand, there is less focus on group cohesion, and the presentation of
one’s own experience is more often formulated as an individual experience.
It is important to note that migrant blogs have multiple addressees and
multiple communicative functions:
• to keep friends and family at home informed about the migrant’s life
(see, for example, Stefanone & Jang, 2008);
• to meet new friends: Some readers from the blogosphere, formerly
unknown to one another, may become virtual “friends”, sometimes even
friends in real life;
• to reflect on the blogger’s future self as an addressee: the author some-
times returns to previous blog posts and comments on them publicly
(for example, on the anniversary of immigration, on the day of being
nationalized as a Canadian citizen; thus, the blog resembles a diary in
the sense proposed by McNeill, 2005).
A case in point is the initial blog post by Ricardo and Laura, whose blog
Una voz en Québec forms part of the corpus. Several of the aspects listed
above are immediately identifiable:
Example 1: first post in Una voz en Québec 3

Noticias Varias Desde Québec
Este blog tiene la intencion de hablar un poco de todo. Una de las inten-
ciones es ayudar a la gente que emigra. Otra de las intenciones es
contactar gente. Otra muy importante es acercarme a mis amigos y
familiares para que lean como si fuese un diario lo que pensamos,
lo que nos pasa. En definitiva, es una forma mas de comunicarnos.
Bienvenidos a este blog.
Desde la ciudad de Québec,
Ricardo y Laura
http://unavozenquebec.blogspot.com—Noticias varias desde
Québec (3.10.2006)
Translation
A collection of news items from Quebec
This blog intends to talk a bit about everything. One intention is to
help the people who emigrate. Another of our intentions is to contact
people. Another very important one is to get closer to my friends and
family so that they can read about what we think, what is happening
to us, as if it were a diary. In short, it’s one more way to communicate.
Welcome to this blog.
From the city of Quebec,
Ricardo and Laura
This Argentine couple gives three main reasons to begin blogging: they want
to help people who are keen to migrate; they want to meet new people;
and, most importantly, they want to get closer to friends and family back
home, who are invited to read the blog as if it were a diary. While staying
in contact with friends and family would be possible via personal emails,
telephone, and Facebook, Ricardo and Laura, like many other bloggers,
highlight their desire to give public testimony to their personal migration
experience through their blog.
One very interesting characteristic of the Latin American CoP, already
reported in Kluge (2011, p. 205), is that new members are routinely wel-
comed by older members. In the example of the first post in the blog Una
voz en Québec, Ricardo and Laura are welcomed by Guillermo Ziegler from
the blog Los Ziegler en Canadá. Guillermo, one of the most prolific and
renowned bloggers in the Latin American blogosphere, encourages them to
“tell their story”.
Example 2: first post and response in Una voz en Québe

Guillermo said . . .
Ricardo y Laura,
Bienvenidos al mundo de los weblogs. Espero que lo encuentren tan
fascinante como lo encuentro yo. O no tanto. En mi caso ya casi
es una adicción! Ojalá puedan desde aquí romper el viejo mito de
“Quebec Ville No!” y contarnos a los que estamos en otros lugares
186 Bettina Kluge
de Canadá y a los que están por venirpor que se sienten tan a gusto
en esa ciduad, cuales son sus vivencias y que han aprendido en todo
este tiempo . . .
Saludos desde Waterloo, ON . . .
Los Ziegler.
Translation
Guillermo said . . .
Ricardo and Laura,
Welcome to the world of weblogs. I hope you find it as fascinating as
I do. . . . Or maybe not so much. In my case, it’s almost an addiction!
Hopefully you will be able to work against the old myth of ‘Quebec
City, no!’ and tell, to those of us who are in other parts of Canada
and to those who are still on their way, why you feel so much at ease
in this city, what kind of experiences you’ve had and what you have
learned in all this time.
Greetings from Waterloo, ON . . .
The Zieglers.
Guillermo engages here as a spokesperson for the community, for those

who are in other cities in Canada and for those who are still in the applica-
tion process. In choosing the first person plural (contarnos a los que estamos
en otros lugares de Canadá), he indicates that he is already residing in Can-
ada. At the same time, in his choice of the third person plural (a los que
están por venir), he claims responsibility for those who are making plans to
come. Thus, he welcomes new bloggers “into the fold”, helping them find
their place, their “niche”. Since the couple indicates that they have already
been living in Quebec City for a year (most immigrants prefer to settle in
Montreal), Guillermo asks them to document their experience, a task they
duly carry out in later posts.
THE JOINT CONSTRUCTION OF A SUPRANATIONAL

LATIN AMERICAN IDENTITY AND THE PERSISTENCE
OF NATIONAL CATEGORIZATIONS
This section examines the linguistic means used by bloggers and readers to
construct themselves as (legitimate) members of the community, with a focus
on the joint construction of a supranational identity as a Latin American
or Latino immigrant. Also included are references to “hispanoamericano”,
which for the sake of the current argument can be seen as synonymous
although, technically, it places all non–Spanish-speaking Latin Americans,
such as Brazilians, outside the Latino category. The discussion attempts to
show that the orientation toward a supranational Latin American identity
is an important step toward the creation of a Latino social network in the
target province, Quebec. At the same time, however, former national (and
sometimes regional) identities persist. In the case of those who have already
migrated to Quebec, the formation of new regional identities is observed.
This common Latin American identity is jointly negotiated by use of
several well-known linguistic membership categorization devices, following
Sacks’s (1972) seminal article on the categorization of self and of others.4
The remainder of this chapter focuses on three strategies: (a) the explicit
naming of the category in question and self-categorizing oneself (and others)
as belonging to it; (b) building a contrast between “us” and “them”; and
(c) referring to common world knowledge and common experience. These
categories will first be exemplified by the bloggers’ orientation toward a com-
mon Latino identity but can also be found in constructions of regional and
national identity.
If not noted otherwise, all examples presented in this section come from
one single blog post in the blog Volar a Quebec and from the subsequent dis-
cussion of the thread in the CoP (already discussed in greater detail in Kluge,
2013). Focus in the present chapter is on the construction of a supranational
Latino identity while at the same time paying attention to other national
and regional identities. In the blog entry, while still living in Paraguay and
waiting for her visa to arrive, the blogger Volar comments on an internal
debate within the Quebec society that came to be known as accommode-
ments raisonnables. Volar displays good knowledge of the discussion about
the degree to which it is necessary to welcome and accommodate cultural
and ethnic minorities before voicing the opinion that immigrants are much
needed in Quebec to enhance the province’s economic growth. In a first
comment (not reproduced here), blogger Ricardo challenges her views as
uninformed and rather naive. Subsequently, a lively discussion ensues among
Volar and five members of the blogging community, in which a whole array
of self- and other-categorizations are produced. Significantly, the category
“Latino” plays a prominent role.
Explicit Naming of Category and Self-Categorizing

Oneself as Belonging in It
An obvious and important linguistic procedure is to explicitly introduce the
category “Latino” by name, as in the following example:
Example 3: comment Nr. 2, Volar

[. . .] No me malinterpretes, pienso que de hecho es una obligación y
una necesidad adaptarse, sí, pero es imposible (a mi modo de ver)
que uno simplemente abandone todo lo que hace parte de la propia
personalidad, el “sabor” latino, por ejemplo en nuestro caso.
http://volaraquebec.blogspot.com/search/label/racismo—Los que-
bequenses y los dinosaurios (18.8.2007)
188 Bettina Kluge
Translation
[. . .] Don’t get me wrong, I think that it is, in fact, an obligation and
a necessity to adapt oneself, yes, but it is impossible (in my opinion)
that one simply abandons every aspect of one’s own personality, for
example the ‘Latin flavor’, in our case.
In this post, her response to Ricardo, Volar concurs that migrants ought
to adapt to the host society but insists that it is impossible for anyone to
entirely abandon one’s own personality. While the detached, generalized
position expressed through the impersonal pronoun uno (“one”) could refer
to any migrant, she then introduces the categorization Latino with which
she clearly identifies (el “sabor” latino, por ejemplo en nuestro caso) and
into which she inserts her interlocutors and readers, too, by her use of the
first plural pronoun nuestro.
Us Versus Them
As in other studies on the self- and other-categorization of social groups, the
first and third person plural pronouns “us” and “they” are used as a means
for labeling oneself and others. In the following example, commentator Elsi
establishes a contrast between the positively evaluated own group and the
negatively evaluated “others”.
Example 4: comment Nr. 9, Elsi

[. . .] Y además aunque suene mal el problema no es nuestro y nada
podemos hacer porque los que no se adaptan son ellos.
Translation
[. . .] And although it may sound bad, the problem isn’t ours and we can’t do
anything about it, because we aren’t the ones who don’t adapt – they are.
First and third plural pronominal forms are less clear-cut and have a more
ambiguous referential scope than explicit categorizations. In this example,
ambiguous reference is especially helpful, since the commentator explicitly
marks her comment as not politically correct (aunque suene mal) before
referring to another group of immigrants, namely, those of Arab descent,
whose actions she evaluates negatively for their alleged unwillingness to
adapt. Muslims (and Orthodox Jews) have been named explicitly in previ-
ous comments to the initial blog entry, and a large part of the discussion
addresses the question whether Latin American immigrants integrate more
easily into Canadian society. Many of the commentators feel that this is,
indeed, the case. Elsi’s choice of plural pronominal forms is clearly referring
to these previously established categories, but in a more ambiguous way:
She is, thus, able to limit the scope of her judgment to those immigrants who
are perceived, by several discussants in the blog, as orthodox, extremist, and
unwilling to integrate fully into their new country’s society.
Referring to Common World Knowledge and Common Experience

A third mechanism used in the construction of a common Latin American
identity is to refer to similar Latin American experiences as category-bound
activities (see Sacks, 1972). For example, in comment 4, Volar does not refer
directly to the category “Latino” but alludes to the common experience of
having lived under a military dictatorship.
Example 5: comment Nr. 4, Volar

[. . .] Supongo que la frase fue producto de la pésima costumbre que
tiene la mayoría de la población en el pais donde vivo: “si no me
afecta a mí, no es mi problema”.
Y esta costumbre viene de la época de la dictadura, donde era mejor
que el problema no sea tuyo, aunque sea de tu vecino, porque o
sino también engrosabas la lista negra del gobierno, junto a toda tu
familia . . . Lastimosamente este tipo de “reflejos defensivos” a veces
perduran sin que nos demos cuenta . . . [. . .]
Translation
[. . .] I guess that the sentence was the product of the bad habit that is
common with the majority of the population of the country I live in:
“if it doesn’t affect me, it’s not my problem”.
And this habit is a remnant of the time of the dictatorship, when it was
better if the problem weren’t yours, even if it were your neighbor’s,
because otherwise you would be added to the government’s black list,
together with your entire family . . . Unfortunately these “defensive
reflexes” still persist, sometimes without us noticing them.
Volar claims that her previous, negatively evaluated comments stem from
the bad habit (pésima costumbre) of the majority of people in her country,
Paraguay, acquired during the era of military dictatorship, whereby they
are unwilling to help a neighbor for fear of drawing attention to themselves.
Through the use of the generic second person singular pronoun, you, this
habit is presented, however, as something non-Paraguayans can relate to
as well: “you’d choose not to get involved, even if it was your neighbor
who had the problem, or else you would end up on the black list of the
government, together with your entire family” (era mejor que el prob-
lema no sea tuyo, aunque sea de tu vecino). Given Latin America’s experi-
ence of military dictatorships throughout the 1970s and 1980s, almost
all her readers will be able to relate to Volar’s defensive reflexes (reflejos
defensivos). Thus, again, an orientation toward a transnational Latino
identity is observed.
190 Bettina Kluge
LATINO IDENTITY IN RELATION TO NATIONAL
AND REGIONAL IDENTITY
An orientation toward a common Latino identity is thus found to be of

importance among the Spanish-language bloggers in our corpus. While
already existing among many Latin Americans even before migration, this
identity option becomes more important during the migration process, as
it is a way to link up with people with whom one (supposedly) has more
characteristics, habits, and customs in common than with the people usually
encountered in the host society, in this case, Quebec.
There is, however, a certain tendency to display a stronger closeness to
people with the same national background. In the blog data for this study,
members of the blogosphere often identify themselves along national cat-
egories, especially when communicating with compatriots. In response to
the post analyzed in Example 5, two readers, Javier and Elsi (the latter’s
comment is omitted here for space limitations), choose, in the interest
of the construction of a common Latin American identity, to introduce
themselves by revealing their national identity. They thus claim closer ties
to Volar by naming her a compatriot, obligating her to feel closer to them.
Example 6: comment Nr. 6, Javier

Hola Volar
Soy un compatriota tuyo que vive en Montreal. [. . .]
Translation:
Hello Volar
I am one of your fellow countrymen who live in Montreal. [. . .]
The use of national varieties that help to situate a migrant within a certain
linguistic source region was also observed. Salient, highly emblematic uses
are retained but not commented upon—for example, in the case of Argentine
bloggers, the use of the discourse particle che and the Argentine verbal inflec-
tion of voseo. In contrast, expressions that bloggers suspect to be unknown
to readers of other Spanish varieties are often labeled as peculiar to a certain
national variety as in “como decimos en México” (as we say in Mexico).
Bloggers and commentators alike display an awareness of linguistic problems
that may arise out of the pluricentric nature of Spanish, even accommodating
their use of language to the varieties of one another. Use of national varieties
can serve to build up an “us versus them” contrast, often in a ludic manner in
order not to endanger the overall cohesion of the common “Latino” identity.
Especially among readers who know one another well within the community
of practice, a playful mild banter can be detected, as in the following example:
Example 7: comments to a blog entry in Leo-jajajaja
Nr. 2 Hector Torres
Leo:
Totalmente de acuerdo contigo, principalmente en lo de patrones de
consumo, te los ensartan de manera inconciente y ya esta, formaron
un futuro comprador de boludeces que vendra a ensanchar las arcas
de la transnacional. [. . .]
(15 de septiembre de 2008 12:56)
Nr. 5: El 22
[. . .] Ahora pregunto amigo Hector Torres, desde cuando se dice en
Mexico “boludeces”? ja, ja, ja vamos todavia con la globalizacion.
Saludos.
Nr. 6: Hector Torres

Es que en Mexico decimos “pendejadas”, pero como no me van a entender
por eso hablo “argentino”, jajajajajaja
Saludos.
Nr. 7: Alejandra
cheeeee que nosotros somos uruguayos
Nr. 8: Leo
[. . .]
Héctor: . . . trata de decir . . . ¿qué hacés loco!? ¡queacés?, loco! y te
vas a parecer a un porteño y a un uruguayo y yo digo ¡Viva Zapata!
jejejejej:-)
http://leo-jajajajaja.blogspot.com—La tele me quema la capocha.
Estoy quedando l@c@ (14.9.2008)
Translation:
Nr. 2 Hector Torres:
Leo:
I totally agree with you, especially in the part on the consumption hab-
its; they deceive you in a subconscious way and that’s it, they just
formed a future buyer of crap who will enlarge the coffers of the
multinational company. [. . .]
(September 15, 2008, 12:56)
192 Bettina Kluge
Nr. 5 El 22
[. . .] And now I ask amigo ( = my friend, BK) Hector Torres, since
when do they say ‘crap’ in Mexico? Ha ha ha, still with the topic of
globalization. Greetings.
(September 16, 2008; 13:46)
Nr. 6 Hector Torres

It’s just that in Mexico we usually say ‘nonsense’, but since you wouldn’t
have understood me otherwise, I speak ‘Argentinian’, ha ha ha ha ha
Greetings.
(September 16, 2008, 14:28)
Nr. 7 Alejandra
Cheeeeeee ( = jeeeeeez, BK), it’s just that we are Uruguayans
(September 16, 2008, 19:33)
Nr. 8 Leo
[. . .]
Héctor: . . . try to say . . . ‘What’s up, dude?’ ‘Wassup? Dude!’ and you
will pass as a porteño ( = inhabitant of Buenos Aires, BK) and a Uru-
guayan, and I say ‘Viva Zapata’.
Ha ha ha ha :-)
Leo and Alejandra are a Uruguayan couple that has migrated to Quebec;
Hector is Mexican and a regular reader and commentator of Leo’s blog
Leo-jajajaja. Leo regularly posts blog entries that he tags as “boludeces”,
which is idiomatic to the Río de la Plata region and means “nonsense, crap”.5
The post in question is a rather lengthy reflection on the role of television
today. Hector is the second commentator and adopts the term “boludeces”
in his comment without any further comment. After a while, another regular
reader, El 22, first adds some general comments to the topic before address-
ing Hector directly and questioning him on his use of the term “boludeces”.
Note that El 22, who is Argentine, addresses Hector as “amigo”, which is a
characteristic of Mexican Spanish. Hector responds a bit later and explains
his use of another variety as necessary for him to be understood by the
Argentines (his use of third plural no me van a entender could refer to El
22 as well as Leo and Alejandra and even to other readers of the blog). To
Alejandra’s correction that Leo and she are Uruguayans, not Argentines,
Leo adds some colloquial expressions that, according to him, would make
Hector seem even more like a Uruguayan, while he himself offers to shout
out “Viva Zapata” in honor of his Mexican reader. The exchange of jokes
and mutual teasing, evident on other occasions in the same blog, show the
degree of cohesion and warm support in the community of practice that is,
very likely, for many migrants, one of the main reasons to be part of this
particular CoP.
To a lesser degree, regional identity also appears in the blogs (especially
among the porteños), often in references to place names that are only recog-
nizable to those people who know the places, that is, to those with insider
knowledge. Stores, local celebrities, festivities, and foods are mentioned in a
few cases. The data also revealed that, especially for those who have already
migrated, regional identity is often expressed in terms of the new city or
region of residence; thus, people will identify themselves as a Montrealer
or Sherbrookois, even if they do not (yet) feel free to identify themselves
as Québécois or Canadian. Even before migration, snippets of français
québécois can occur and might be a case in point for a proactive orientation
toward a hybrid identity.
CONCLUSION
Within the Latino blogging community, migrants and migrants-to-be receive

crucial emotional and practical support from their contacts in the CoP in
different phases of the migration process. They use the blogosphere for the
maintenance of their social network and its reconstruction, even proactively
before migration. The blogosphere enables bloggers and readers to give and
receive emotional support. Because they know that a great part of their
readers has experienced “the same”, bloggers and their readers express a
high degree of empathy, solidarity, and understanding toward one other.
Concerning the relation of national versus a common Latino identity,
both identities can be seen as nested; national and regional identities (e.g. as
a porteño/a) prevail but often go together with emerging ones (e.g., as a Sher-
brookois, Montréalais). As Volar stated in Example 3, a migrant does not
need to abandon all that is part of her or his own personality (el sabor latino,
en nuestro caso), indicating a fluid conception of identity aimed at integrat-
ing old and new orientations as meaningful for one’s self, past, present, and
future. For most bloggers, a fuzzy supranational identity as a Latin American
was most probably present even before migration but is now transformed
into a “Latino” identity. Obviously, sharing a common language plays an
important role in the development of a supranational orientation, together
with the pressure of living in a host society that does not care to distinguish
the immigrants’ national background beyond the “Latino” category.
This chapter has shown that, from a linguistic and methodological point
of view, Internet data are in fact open to reconstruct the renegotiation or
joint construction of categorical values along discourse and conversation
analytical lines. As was to be expected, online identity construction is as
complex as it is offline.
194 Bettina Kluge
NOTES
1. For more information on the available legal immigration categories, cf. the
official websites by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC, www.cic.
gc.ca) and Ministère d’Immigration et communautés culturelles (MICC, www.
micc.gouv.qc.ca).
2. The Americas as Space of Entanglement(s), project line Transnational Flows,
cf. www.uni-bielefeld.de/%28en%29/cias/entangled_americas/ueber-uns.html.
The project is sponsored by the German ministry of education and research
(BMBF) in the years 2013 to 2016.
3. This blog, while publicly available at the start of this project, has meanwhile
been made somewhat less accessible: readers now need to have a Gmail account
in order to be able to read the blog. Also, some blog posts appear to have been
deleted, most likely by the bloggers themselves.
4. The multimodal nature of the blogs also allows for nonverbal means of identity
construction, especially in the use of photographs and short videos. These strat-
egies cannot be treated in this article for reasons of brevity.
5. In an attempt to translate the different Spanish lexemes employed by Hector,
El 22, and Leo, I have rendered boludeces as crap and pendejadas as nonsense.
Obviously, this is not meant to indicate any formal equivalence but only intends
to portray Spanish as a pluricentric language with important lexical variation.
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Afterword
The Sociolinguistics of Latino Diasporas
Ofelia García
This volume, edited by Rosina Márquez Reiter and Luisa Martín Rojo, makes
a unique contribution to studies of sociolinguistics by establishing, once and
for all, the meanings that language and community hold for people and not
simply for nation-states defined by geographic territories. By reterritorializing
the Latino community in contexts that go beyond the Americas and closely
describing the ways in which these speakers enregister their language prac-
tices in their dynamic diasporic lives, the contributors to this volume redefine
the ways in which we have studied Latino language practices in the past.
The sociolinguistics of Latinos had previously mostly focused on the con-
tact between Spanish and English, and sometimes on the contact between
different varieties of Spanish in the context of the United States. This volume
rests on the extensive theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of
the language of US Latinos but goes beyond this.
The sociolinguistic literature on the language practices of US Latinos is
vast because Spanish has had a continuous presence in the US since the time
of settlement (Kloss, 1977). The early sociolinguistic studies emerged in the
American Southwest, where the language use of the Chicano population was
first studied in the 1970s and 1980s. The topics then studied included pho-
nological, grammatical, and lexical features of the variety, including those
that were said to be English influence, as well as the use of language that
focused on code-switching, language maintenance and shift, and language
education. Among the most important of those studies were El Lenguaje de
los Chicanos (Hernández-Chávez, Cohen, & Beltramo, 1975), Studies in
Southwest Spanish (Bowen & Ornstein, 1976), and Chicano Sociolinguis-
tics (Peñalosa, 1980). Throughout the 1980s, with immigration from all
over Latin America growing and Latinos now settling in different regions of
the US, US Spanish came into its own, spurred especially by the launching
of the first conference on El Español en los Estados Unidos, organized by
Lucía Elías Olivares in 1979. Many volumes disseminated research through-
out the next two decades (see, for example, Amastae & Elías Olivares,
1982; Elías Olivares, 1983; Elías Olivares et al., 1985; Wheritt & García,
1989). However, the topics of study remained those that had been given
attention in the traditional sociology of language literature. As the century
198 Afterword
came to a close, ethnographic studies such as Zentella’s 1997 study of the
bilingual socializing practices of Puerto Rican children in New York started
to make an impact. The conference of Spanish in the US now included more
ethnographic studies, as well as more variationist studies of US Spanish, as
evidenced in the volumes edited by Ana Roca and colleagues (Roca, 2000;
Roca & Colombi, 2003; Roca & Lipski, 1993). More recently, Otheguy
and Zentella (2012) have analyzed both the language contact and dialect
leveling that occurs in the Spanish of New York. But throughout the last
half century of work, US Spanish has been mostly studied through the lens
of language, without regard to the relationship of the ideologies and the
sociopolitical context to the language practices observed. That is, in many
ways, US Latinos have been left out of the picture, with the research frame
drawn closely around language itself. A recent volume that attempts to bring
Latinos back into the picture is Fuller (2013), which reviews the ideologies
and identities as well as the individual and institutional language practices
of US Latinos.
The contributions to the present book go beyond traditional sociolinguis-
tic studies that focus on features of language, looking instead at the ways
in which individual and institutional ideologies, identities, and the political
economy of the context relate to the language practices of Latinos. Going
beyond the Americas, this book demonstrates that the Latino diaspora is, and
has always been, a lot more complex than what is often described. It shows
that the language use of Latinos, their ideologies, and their identities have been
affected by the multiple migrations that they have experienced both in the
present and in the historical past.
Like many other contemporary diasporic groups, the Latino diaspora is
not new and is not monolithic. The Latino diaspora has its origin in the 1492
Encounter when Spanish-speaking explorers, conquistadores, and mission-
aries arrived in territories where the Indigenous population spoke languages
other than what was beginning to be known as Castilian or Spanish. Spanish-
speaking Europeans attempted to impose Spanish on Indigenous groups,
resulting in an increase of Spanish speakers, some bilingual. At the same time,
the transatlantic slave trade brought Africans, mainly from West Africa, to
the Americas and especially to the West Indies. European Spanish speakers
enslaved this population not only through forced labor, but also by obliging
them to take up Spanish as their language. Even before the present Latino dias-
pora came into contact with English or other languages, many Latinos were
bilingual, and many others had language practices that carried traces of their
indigenous or even African languages.
What makes Latinos a most important topic of study for the sociolinguis-
tics of diasporas is that whereas other diasporas claim to have a common
origin in a smaller geographic area, Latinos can only claim to have a joint
foundation in their Spanish language practices, taken up differently depend-
ing on their historical and social circumstances. The dispersion is not only of
Afterword 199
people in space but also of language practices. The language practices of this
Latino diaspora today are very different, produced not only in relationship
to their linguistic past, but also to their present context and the media that
they use to produce them. And so the questions for sociolinguists are: How
are these dispersed and mobile language resources of Latinos constituting
an identification category for the group itself? How is the Latino diaspora
using these mobile linguistic resources and for what purposes?
To do this, the contributors to this volume follow ethnographically
oriented research in different contexts and through various media, describ-
ing the communication networks through which language flows and the
effects of such practices on identity construction. From the streets of Chicago
to the complementary school in London, Latinos are mobilizing (and not)
their different Spanish language practices as they imagine and reconstitute
their identities. From radio to mobile phones and blogs, Latino diasporas
are affirming their transnational identities, enabling language practices that
have been (or not) socially enregistered as indexical of the population. New
media and technology blend with traditional media and conventional lan-
guage use as the Latino diaspora negotiates their language use and their
identities. This volume documents how mobile phones and the Internet
make possible the ability of Latino migrants to maintain bonding with those
in the homeland as well as act as a bridge with those in the new society
(Vincent, this volume). The result is neither linguistic assimilation, language
maintenance, nor language shift—traditional concepts in sociolinguistics––
but something very different.
Together, the contributions to this volume document the use of the mobile
language resources used by the Latino diasporas. Sometimes this use is deeply
tied to national origin varieties, emphasizing distinct Latin American nation-
alities. Other times, this use is linked to regional varieties, emphasizing one
geographic location rather than another. Many other times, the language
practices of the Latino diaspora correlate with length of stay in the United
States or a country in which a language other than Spanish is spoken, show-
ing traces of bilingual contact. And yet many other times, the discourse of
the Latino diaspora reflects a construction of a pan-Latino identity, showing
traces of both bilingualism and leveling of dialectal features. Rosa as well as
Kluge (this volume) refer to these linguistic and cultural transformations and
to the joint construction of a pan-Latino identity.
This volume also makes evident that traditional conceptualizations of
the language(s) of the Latino community as Spanish and/or Spanish and the
other are no longer relevant in our globalized world. For example, rather
than focusing on Spanish language maintenance or shift, these studies look
at how language boundaries are reimagined and reconstituted in the Latino
diasporic communities, as well as the conflict that sometimes occurs between
institutions and speakers. This is, for example, the case of the language
ideologies of the radio host and advertisers in the Spanish-language radio
200 Afterword
station and the dynamic language practices of the transnational community
(see De Fina, this volume). This is also the case of the language ideologies
and language practices of the teachers in the Latin American complementary
school in London and the very different language practices of the children
(Kelsall, this volume).
The Latino diaspora encompasses many national groups that come
together, for the first time, in a new geographical territory. This, of course,
results in much intermarriage, with availability of partners who speak the
same home language, although hailing from different countries and having
different backgrounds. The language practices of these families are also not
tied to a national or regional variety. In turn, these families and especially
their children reimagine and reconstitute not only their language practices
but also their identities. The case of the MexiRicans in Chicago that Potowski
presents in this volume is a case in point.
Finally, one of the main contributions of this volume is the relationship
that it clearly draws between language practices and the social mobility of the
Latino diaspora in different national contexts. The social and legal contexts
of the United States, the UK, and Spain––the three main settings of the Latino
diaspora here presented––intersect with the group’s ideological and practical
efforts to make capital. Thus, the commodification of identities and language
emerges as a most important topic in the treatment of Latino diasporas in a
globalized world.
Clearly Márquez-Reiter and Martín Rojo have put together a volume that
takes us beyond what has been previously done in the study of the sociolin-
guistics of Latinos. Because it is grounded in the processes of globalization
and a neoliberal economy, the intensity, scope, and scale are new (Blommaert,
2010). Transcontextual flows are at the very core of this book and the
language practices that are here analyzed within the different sociocultural,
historical, and political contexts.
This book not only gives us a blueprint to study the sociolinguistics
of Latinos in our globalized world but also presents an epistemological
challenge to traditional sociolinguistics. By questioning traditional concepts
of language as autonomous structures, of bilingualism as separate additions
of language structures, of identities as static and corresponding to a fixed
national or ethnic ethos, of speech communities as being bounded by geo-
graphic territory, this book presents an alternative to the ways in which
we have viewed language in society. By inserting language ideologies into
the mix of how individual and institutional language practices and policies
are produced, the book goes beyond modernist conceptions of language
policy. What the book does is liberate the diaspora, in this case the Latino
diaspora, offering the freedom of voice that comes from being considered
empowered actors and speakers with a critical consciousness. Through this
book, the voice of the Latino diaspora is scattered throughout the globe, as
the speakers themselves recognize and build on the power of the variation
and variance of diasporic language practices.
Afterword 201
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Amastae, J., & Elías-Olivares, L. (1982). Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic
aspects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
University Press.
Bowen, J. D., & Ornstein, J. (Eds.). (1976). Studies in Southwest Spanish. Rowley,
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and diversity. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 79 (whole issue).
Zentella, A. C. (1997). Growing up bilingual. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Contributors
Maria Vittoria Calvi Department of Language Mediation & Intercultural

Communication, University of Milan, Milan, Italy (Dipartimento di Sci-
enze della Mediazione Linguistica e di Studi Interculturali, Università
degli studi di Milano, Italia).
Holly R. Cashman Department of Language, Literatures, & Cultures,

University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, United States
Anna De Fina Italian Department, Georgetown University, Washington, DC,

United States
Ofelia García The Graduate Center, City University New York, United States
Sophie Kelsall Independent researcher
Bettina Kluge Department of Translation and Specialized Communication,

Hildesheim University, Hildesheim, Germany (Institut für Übersetzungs-
wissenschaft und Fachkommunikation, Stiftung Universität Hildesheim,
Deutschland)
Rosina Márquez-Reiter School of English and Languages, University of

Surrey, UK
Luisa Martín Rojo Department of Linguistics, Autonomous University

of Madrid, Madrid, Spain (Departamento de Lingüística, Universidad
Autónoma de Madrid, España).
Adriana Patiño-Santos Department of Modern Languages, University of

Southampton, United Kingdom
Alejandro I. Paz Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto,

Canada
204 Contributors
Kim Potowski Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies, University of
Illinois at Chicago
Jonathan Rosa Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts,

Amherst, Massachusetts, United States
Jane Vincent Visiting Research Fellow, Digital World Research Centre,

University of Surrey, UK
Index
accommodements raisonnables 187; Colombians 22, 83–4, 94, 102–11,

see also integration into host 114, 116–18, 123, 141–2
society coming out 44, 66–9, 72–3, 76–7,
affection 173 79, 127; social network 66–9,
allophone immigrants 182 74–80, 93–4, 97, 129
always-on 169, 175, 177 common world knowledge 187, 189
assimilation 31, 39, 44, 88, 140, 173, community of practice 181, 183, 190
199 complementary schools: escuela latino
“authenticity” 5–6, 16, 21, 46, 102, americana 141; in the UK 139,
106–7, 110–11, 113–14, 143, 149
150 connectivity 169–70, 173, 175, 177
cultural influences 173
biographical interview 122, 123, 127,
130, 134–5 deictic center 131, 132, 133, 135
blog 6, 181–5, 187–95, 199; blogging deictics 8, 123, 130–5, 155; acá,
6, 181, 184–5, 187, 193, 195; aquí 130, 131, 132, 134, 136;
communicative functions 184; adelante 133–4, 135; allá, allí
multiple addressees 184; set-up 130, 131, 132, 134
183 deixis123, 129; spatial 123; see also
blogger 6, 181–7, 190, 193, 194 deictics
blogosphere 181, 183–5, 190, 193–4 delegitimatization 97
borrowings 26, 126, 145, 162 dependency on mobile communications
broadcasting 3, 48–50 171
deterritorialization 5–6, 38–40, 151,
capital 4–5, 7, 9, 83, 85, 88–100, 153, 162
148–9, 171, 178–9, 200; cultural dialect contact 2, 14, 29
capital 85, 96, 98; economic diasporic subjects 153
capital 7, 85, 92–4, 98–9;
linguistic capital 88, 90, 93–4 educación 151–4, 156–62
Catalan 4, 103–4, 107, 110–11, electronic emotions 172, 175, 178
116–20 emotional paradox: 177–8
categorization 41, 106, 109, 186–8 enregisterment 3, 32, 42, 44
che (discourse particle) 190–2 established communities 3–4
chronotope 6, 8–9, 134, 137, 154, 164; ethnicity 4, 28, 51, 62, 67, 75–7, 101,
cross-chronotope 8 121, 139–41, 147–50
code-switching 17, 26, 52, 62–3, 79,
127, 135, 137, 162, 197 facework 156, 161, 182; displays of
colombianidad 103, 107 182
206 Index
family and friends 5, 6, 177; business 76–7, 79–80, 125, 128, 132,
contacts 169 135, 145, 197, 199; mixing
145–6, 148
global societies 169–70, 178–9 language contact 124, 198; between
gringuita 143 Italian and Spanish 122, 125–7;
see also borrowings
hispanoamericano see latino language/linguistic practices 1–2, 4, 6,
host society 4, 123–4, 128, 135, 188, 8–9, 32–3, 41–4, 46, 48–50, 52,
190, 193 54, 56, 62–3, 67–8, 74, 77, 80,
85, 99, 106, 114, 138, 140–1,
ICT (Information Communication 143, 145, 148, 150, 197–200
Technologies) 169–70, 172–5, language varieties 7–8, 45, 58, 66,
177, 179 84–5, 98, 114, 140
identity 4–9, 13–5, 17, 21–2, 24–6, Latin American immigration in Italy
28–31, 34–5, 37–8, 40–2, 44–8, 122, 123–4, 134
50–1, 55, 57, 58, 61, 62–71, latinidad 4, 14–7, 23, 28–30, 46,
78, 96, 100, 103, 106, 110–11, 107–8, 138–42, 146–9;
117–18, 120–1, 122–5, 127–8, destabilizing 146; latino 2–8,
130, 135–7, 139–40, 147, 13–6, 22–9, 30, 33–5, 40,
149–50, 157, 164, 171, 179–82, 44–52, 56, 58, 62–5, 67, 73, 78,
186–7, 189–90, 193–5, 199; 88–9, 92–3, 99–100, 102,
ethnolinguistic 24–5, 28, 42, 106–8, 110, 117, 128, 136,
96, 122, 157, 164; joint 138–43, 146–54, 156–64, 181,
construction 6, 124–5, 127, 186–90, 193, 197–201; “young
135, 186, 193, 199; latino Latino professionals” 33–4
6–7, 14–5, 22, 26, 28, 35, 56, Latino diaspora 2, 117, 197–200
58, 187, 189–90, 193, 199; Latina/o emblems 33–5, 44
language and 14, 15, 30, 42, left behind 5, 169–70, 175–8
68, 117, 122, 124–5; national letter 23, 175–6
103, 187, 190; nested 193; linguistic anthropology 1–2, 5, 47, 101,
regional 187, 190, 193; 149, 164
supranational 122, 125, 135, linguistic markets 85, 89, 93, 97
181, 186, 189, 193, 199; linguistics of migration 122
transnational see supranational (local) logics 98
imaginary 153, 155; deterritorialized
imaginary 155 marginalization 14, 33, 39, 44, 98
immigrants 16, 25, 27, 29, 50, 62, 79, media 1–2, 5–6, 9, 19, 39–40, 51,
99, 104–5, 118, 120, 122–3, 63–4, 79, 83, 105, 109, 111,
126, 129–30, 136, 154, 171–2, 118, 124, 169–71, 174–81, 183,
174, 176–7, 181–3, 186–8, 194, 199
193–5 membership categorization device 187
immigration policy 181 Mexicanness 28, 35, 37, 40, 42
inequality 33, 64, 94, 98–9, 101, 120 MexiRicanness 3; MexiRicans 13–14;
internet café 173, 175–7 15, 17–18, 23, 28, 34, 37, 200
inverted Spanglish 3, 32, 42–4 migrant 1–2, 4–9, 16, 83–91, 93–5,
97–106, 109, 118, 130, 138,
keeping in touch 170, 171, 176–7 144, 148–51, 154, 157, 162,
164, 169–84, 188, 190, 193,
language/linguistic: ideologies 3–7, 199
16–9, 22–3, 25, 28–9, 31–2, mixed-ethnicity 14, 23
48–52, 62–3, 83, 97, 103, 115, mobile phones 5, 169–73, 175–7,
120, 140, 145, 149, 155–6, 159, 179–80, 199
164, 199–200; loss 64, 78, mobility 4, 7, 67, 83–98, 101, 106,
147–8; maintenance 66–8, 73, 116, 118, 126, 147, 149, 170–1,
Index 207
173, 175, 200; dynamic 175; reterritorialization 3, 4, 6–7, 31, 33, 38,
global 175; and migration 170; 39–40, 44
and multimodal communications
173; occupational mobility 4, segregation 9, 89, 95, 98
88, 90–2, 149; social mobility 4, sexual silence 67, 72, 75–6
7, 84, 85, 88, 94, 97, 118, 126, social media 6, 9, 175–6, 181, 183, 194
147, 200 social network 66–9, 74–80, 93–4, 97,
110–11, 116–18, 129, 174, 187,
newly established communities 4 193
social network sites (SNS) 174
oral narratives 125, 129, 135 sociolinguistic 1–2, 5–6, 9, 17, 26, 29,
31–3, 47, 64, 66–8, 77, 79–80,
Paisa 94, 112–14, 142, 147 85, 100, 103–4, 106, 117,
panethnicity: commodification of 119–20, 124–5, 129, 136, 149,
34; construction of 32, 33; 152, 161, 195, 197–201
interethnic identities and 32, 34, Spanish 75–6, 83–4, 87–9, 91–9, 103,
37; language and 32, 40–42 111, 114–17, 122–3, 125–6,
perpetual connectivity 170 130, 139, 141–8, 151, 152, 156,
personal: compendium 172; contact 157–9, 162, 174, 182–4, 186,
172, 175; relationships 89, 129, 190–3; 88; national varieties
137, 175; telecommunications 190; pluricentric nature of 190;
169 regional varieties 199; Spanish-
personalization 172 Italian bilingualism 126
personal pronouns: generic second
person singular 189; first plural translanguaging 54–5, 62, 64
188; third plural 188, 192 transnational diaspora 170, 177
private and public behaviours 171 transnational families 170, 175, 177,
Puerto Ricanness 28, 35, 37, 40, 42 179
transnationalism 39, 48, 171
Quebec 6, 181–7, 190, 192, 194–5
uno (impersonal pronoun) 187–8
race 29, 46–7, 50, 65, 78, 121, 147,
149–50 virtual communities 3, 5
racializations 17–18, 22–3, 27 voseo 190
radio 3, 41, 48–52, 54, 56, 58, 62,
64–5, 164, 199 weblog see blog
refugee 99–101, 147, 170, 172 wireless Internet 5, 170, 173

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A Sociolinguistics of Diaspora

This volume brings together scholars in sociolinguistics and the sociology of

Rosina Márquez Reiter is Reader in the School of English and Languages at

Luisa Martín Rojo is Professor of Linguistics at the Universidad Autónoma,

Edited by Marilyn Martin-Jones, MOSAIC Centre for Research on

1 Language in Late Capitalism 4 Bilingual Education and

Edited by Rosina Márquez Reiter and

List of Figures vii

Introduction: Exploring Latin American Communities

1 Ethnolinguistic Identities and Ideologies among Mexicans,

2 Nuevo Chicago? Language, Diaspora, and

3 Language Ideologies and Practices in a Transnational Community:

4 Queer Latin@ Networks: Languages, Identities, and the

5 The Dynamics of (Im)Mobility: (In)Transient Capitals and

7 The Use of Deixis in the Oral Narratives of Latin American

8 Language Ideologies and Latinidad at a Latin American

9 The Deterritorialization of Latino Educación: Noncitizen

10 Staying in Touch with My Mobile Phone in My Pocket and

11 The Joint Construction of a Supranational Identity in the

Afterword: The Sociolinguistics of Latino Diasporas 197

List of Contributors 203

1.1 Relationship between social and linguistic attitudes among

1.1 Potowski & Torres (forthcoming) corpus 17

Agha, A. (2007). Language and social relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University

The US Census of 2010 reported 50.5 million “Hispanics”,1 of whom

Chicago has emerged as a major Latino metropolis, with a 2010 Census-

1) What racializations and stereotypes do MXs and PRs invoke about

The corpus includes a total of 125 individuals identified via snowball

Table 1.1 Potowski & Torres (forthcoming) corpus

PR coda /s/ weakening: [e.tá] for estás

. . . as well as a sense that it was “cortado” (cut off) resulting from

“Muchos, muchos amigos mexicanos me dicen que los puertorriqueños

“Los puertorriqueños no pronuncian bien las palabras. Las cortamos

One G2 PR woman was particularly frustrated at what she perceived as a

“Los de aquí son sinvergüenzas y hablan–¡pshhhh! I’m like, ‘Where did

Only two PR women were adamant in their rejection of any positioning of

Interestingly, criticisms spiked among G2 interviewees. Only three G1s

“Cada quien tiene su estilo, y de ninguna manera pienso que ninguno

To what extent might participants’ racializations and their linguistic prej-

What is it like to grow up in Chicago with one MX parent and one PR

1) What linguistic ideologies do MXPRs hold about both varieties of

“What are you, man?”

Tensions and negative stereotypes between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in

What might be the conditions under which the formation of a shared

MexiRicans’ physical embodiment of both MXs and PRs constitutes such

Aaron, J. E., & Hernandez, J. E. (2007). Quantitative evidence for contact-induced

CONSTRUCTING DIASPORIC LATINA/O

New Northwest High School was opened in 2004 to offset overcrowding at a

¿DE QUÉ PARTE? (FROM WHAT PART?): DIASPORIC

CONSTRUCTING SPANISH AND ENGLISH AS SIGNS OF

ENREGISTERING LATINA/O LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY:

NNHS students responded to the paradoxical demand that they demon-

Victor references “Inglés sin Barreras”, an English language-learning

It is not by chance that the creation of linguistic emblems of Latina/o pan-

1. In this chapter I use “Hispanic” and “Latina/o” interchangeably to refer to

Pedro (PR, Gen. 3, Gr. 10)

Globalization has radically transformed the way we live, conceive of ourselves,

RADIO EL ZOL AND THE LATINO PRESENCE IN THE

The Latin American population in the Washington area has experienced an

LANGUAGE PRACTICES, IDEOLOGIES, AND IDENTITIES

ENGLISH, SPANISH, AND LATINO IDENTITIES IN THE US

El Zol’s choice of Spanish as the language of broadcasting cannot be divorced

As we can see in this advertisement, the typical member of the audience is