Spanglish: Two languages and a unique perspective. An analysis of three short stories by U.S. Latinos.

Abstract

The number of Latino immigrants in the United States has risen substantially during the last decades, the inevitable consequence being a language contact situation where both Spanish and English coexist. This paper aims to provide a thorough investigation of the phenomenon known as ‘Spanglish’, which is examined as an important element of “border culture” (Gonzales, 1999:30). In asking the question “what is Spanglish?”, both linguistic and sociocultural issues are problematized, demonstrating that Spanglish entails a powerful assertion of a multicultural identity. Attention is given to the historical and social forces that prompted the emergence of Spanglish, alongside the attitudes towards the phenomenon. Surrounded by waves of hysteria, both from the Hispanic and Anglo-American press and academia, because of the threat that Spanglish allegedly represents for the integrity of both Castellan Spanish and English, this phenomenon points beyond language variation to a much broader cultural shift in the United States. This study centres on literary manifestations in order to verify whether Spanglish is a systematic phenomenon governed by specific grammatical constraints and to identify the function of Spanglish in narrative discourse. Overall, by examining this linguistic phenomenon the purpose is to shed some light on how Spanglish reflects the sociocultural situation of the Latino population in the United States, with particular attention to issues of transcultural identity.