Uplifting Indigenous Mexican Languages and Identities in Schools

We will soon be publishing Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Mexican Students by William Perez and Rafael Vásquez.  In this post the authors set the stage for their book and discuss its importance.

Last June, Griselda Zarate, a young Indigenous Mexican-origin student, spoke to Spanish-language television about the racial discrimination she and her sister faced while attending the Santa Rita Union School District in Central California USA. The racism that students like Griselda face often spreads by other Mexicans and manifests by language-shaming for the way Indigenous Mexicans speak. Popular culture ridicules Indigenous languages as dialects, holding unequal power relationships against Spanish and English. As a result of these aggressions, the school district passed a resolution to prohibit the disparaging terms “Oaxaquita/o” and “Indito” which translate to “little Oaxacan” and “little Indian” referring to the widely held belief that Indigenous people from Mexico’s Guerrero and Oaxaca states are racially inferior. The district will also establish the first Indigenous Mixtec after school program so that children can have access to learning their language.

California is considered the state with the largest concentration of Indigenous Mexicans. By one estimate, about 800,000 Oaxacans have settled in Southern California and are mostly Zapotec peoples. These communities come from diverse cultures and often speak at least one of the 68 Indigenous languages of Mexico. Despite their rich social, cultural, and linguistic practices, they face many challenges in healthcare, the labor force, education, and other institutions due to historically lived discrimination.

After decades of living among and working with Indigenous communities in Los Angeles, we decided to conduct a study in Southern California with over 150 Indigenous youth from three groups: Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and P’urhépechas. We wanted to find out what happens to Indigenous students who attend schools but largely go unnoticed, or when noticed, face scrutinization. In our book, Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Mexican Students, we ask: how do Indigenous students experience school, given the traumas many have faced in Mexico for being labeled Indigenous, for speaking Spanish ‘with an accent’ due to the ‘inhibiting’ Indigenous ‘dialects’ they speak, or for coming from ‘underdeveloped’ communities and where society regards them as intellectually ‘inferior’? And how can schools be responsive and address the need to leverage Indigenous students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds to make meaningful connections to their schooling experiences so they can achieve equitable educational opportunities?

To answer these questions, we looked at students’ multilingualism from the perspective that languages interact with each other and the places they are spoken. Since many Indigenous youth experience language across and in between borders, we introduce a transcultural and translingual approach to illustrate the dynamic and intersectional processes that Indigenous youth engage to construct their identities and linguistic practices in social and educational settings. We emphasize adolescents’ agency in actively negotiating and constructing their identities and the influence of their non-Indigenous Mexican peers and teachers. Despite the verbal abuse youth face, the development of transcultural practices often serves to reinvigorate a sense of who they are and creates strategies to actively debunk anti-Indigenous beliefs. Therefore, the book intends to inform supportive environments that affirm Indigenous identities and languages, foster critical consciousness, and value the transnational experiences of Indigenous Mexican youth.

Studying Indigenous educational experiences and the critical issues these students face is significant to developing innovative approaches in Latinx cultural and linguistic heterogeneity and intra-group ethnic/racial relations. Educational researchers and policymakers will find the book of tremendous value, as it is the first book to our knowledge that examines the academic pathways and identities of Indigenous Mexican students. The findings of this study have the potential to inform local, state, and national policies affecting Indigenous migrant students. Adolescent development scholars will also find the book useful since few studies have been done examining migrant Indigenous youth identity development. We hope that our book contributes to education justice initiatives so that Indigenous students are invisible no more.

Please let us know your thoughts.  We’d like to hear from you.

Rafael Vásquez (rafael.vasquez@cgu.edu) and William Perez (william.perez@lmu.edu)

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Overcoming the Gentrification of Dual Language, Bilingual and Immersion Education edited by M. Garrett Delavan, Juan A. Freire and Kate Menken.

“Spanish So White” Now Accessible as an Audiobook!

We recently brought out our very first audiobook of our 2023 title Spanish So White by Adam Schwartz. In this post Adam explains why it was so important for him that the book be available in audio format.

Upon the first anniversary of the publication of Spanish So White: Conversations on the Inconvenient Racism of a ‘Foreign’ Language Education, I’m so pleased to announce that my book is now available in audio format. I narrate my own text, which was recorded, mixed and edited at Don Ross Productions, in Eugene, Oregon. I send special thanks to Multilingual Matters and the Center for Humanities at Oregon State University, both of whom provided essential funding for this effort.

From the outset of its writing, I attempted to draft and design Spanish So White as a highly accessible text. I’ve thought a lot about its accessibility this past year, and how this has or has not been realized for its readers. Leading up to and following the book’s publication, I was tasked with helping Multilingual Matters to publicize Spanish So White widely. Implicit in this effort is a request to ensure that the book’s content is engaging, relatable, accessible.

Even before pitching a proposal to Multilingual Matters and other publishers, I imagined that an accessible book about language education, race and Whiteness could and should take many forms. For instance, I was thrilled that my work would not only be available in print, but through the flexible modality of an ebook. Additionally, of primary priority was a need to depart from academic discourse whenever possible. This was most challenging. As researchers, we have been trained to communicate in ways that (1) assume an audience of fellow scholars whose work falls within a shared academic community of practice; and (2) reproduce standardized language in order to communicate “rigor”. Throughout my writing process, I thought about wisdom of my students, my family, or an unknown individual encountering this book online, or perhaps at the recommendation of another. Would my words invite those wisdoms into the “conversations” this book urges are necessary? Would a reliance on academic language reproduce the very Whiteness I intended to challenge?

Questions of accessibility also extended to the length, organization, and layout of my book. This is not a long volume. I wanted the book’s physical size to communicate a lightness, to counter the necessary heft of topics taken up within. I was fortunate to have creative input in the design of the cover: Suggested in its artistry is a kaleidoscopic view of what a Spanish “So White” might entail. In addition, I knew that a shorter book would cost less for the buying public. I think often about how my students regularly go into debt when purchasing course textbooks in a given semester; I therefore hoped that a book addressing issues of social inequity would be affordable as possible. Multilingual Matters assured me that my book could be sold under $20 in paperback, and indeed, such is the case.

Finally, many of us have very little time to read, and this includes those for whom regular reading is essential: Students and teachers. This book is written expressly for this audience, of which I am a part. I personally enjoy flexible access to audiobooks for this very reason, and I know many others do as well. I commute to my campus by car, but I also walk, run and take care of life around the house – my daily soundtrack necessarily alternates music and spoken narration of all sorts. If a book is particularly engaging, I’ll be inclined to locate a hard copy as well, so I may pivot between versions, and not lose access to visuals or the personality of a book’s packaging.

As a text that invites conversation, Spanish So White is waiting to be “heard” in this new format. I’m excited about the possibilities of its impact, just as other texts in their audio format, in fact, impacted my own writing of Spanish So White (Amanda Montell’s Wordslut, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between The World and Me, Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, among many others). I’ve also assigned portions of a few texts, also read by their authors, for my own students. To engage with one’s written language is a gift, but listening to one’s voice suggests a particularly personal, dialogic connection.

Listening indeed invites us to engage differently. In my book, I write about listening as method, one where we must be present and awake in multiple senses. As such, this recording is meant to be shared. Listen with your friends, your family, and your students – whomever joins you in the work of dismantling racism and White supremacy. Take a break and debrief not only at the pause points, but whenever something resonates and invites you to more deeply think, feel and act. This book is yours, as ever.

One limitation to an audiobook, as alluded to above, is that its affordances do not include illustrations and other referents that appear in the print edition. While an audiobook may activate our imaginations, it might be helpful to see images, read captions and interact with pause points that require a more visual scaffolding. Please visit the Multilingual Matters website for the full complement of resources to accompany you on your listening journey. Along the way, you’ll be prompted when a visit to this site is necessary for your participation.

Publishing this book in triplicate – physical copy, ebook and audio – was a significant ask for Multilingual Matters. This is the first audiobook for my publisher, and while I’m so grateful they took a risk on me, I hope it’s not their last. My hope is that the audiobook engages with an expanded audience of reader-listeners, and that it inspires future researchers and educators to write with the accessibility of this format in mind.

Please let me know what Spanish So White sounds like to you. Let’s converse! My email is adam.schwartz@oregonstate.edu.

Adam Schwartz

This audiobook is available on Audible UK here, Audible US here and from other audiobook retailers. You can learn more about the book from the author himself in a recent online author event here.

Language Use in a Multilingual Workplace

This month we published Domestic Workers Talk by Kellie Gonçalves and Anne Ambler Schluter. In this post the authors introduce the book and explain what inspired it. 

This study of Shine (a multilingual cleaning company) was inspired by the dearth of sociolinguistic work carried out in domestic labor contexts and blue-collar workplaces more generally. As Kellie had close familial ties to Magda, Shine’s owner, we were able to gain access to all employees (migrant women who speak Portuguese and Spanish) and several of Shine’s Anglophone clients who reside in an upper-class suburb of New York City. As such, we were able to talk to the company owner (Magda), all of her employees and several clients in order to better understand how communication is achieved in a small private business where European Portuguese serves as the company internal language despite the company’s geographical location in the US, where English is the dominant language.

Our study had a strong ethnographic component to it meaning that we were also able to observe how the company hierarchy was structured and how daily business was carried out. As both Kellie and Anne are speakers of English, Portuguese and Spanish (at different levels), we were able to witness first-hand how different languages and different language varieties were valued, mixed, and used among domestic workers with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

At the same time, we were also able to observe the diverse, creative linguistic and embodied resources drawn on to facilitate communication among domestic workers and their Anglophone clients. Because Magda, the company owner, is a multilingual speaker, she often facilitated communication between her employees and clients thus serving as the main language broker of the company. This fact coupled with domestic workers’ ability to use both Portuguese and Spanish in Newark, NJ (where many domestic workers reside) diminished most domestic workers’ need and even motivation to learn English while simultaneously allowing Magda to control and micro-manage communication between her employees and clients. English was therefore not a prerequisite for employment at Shine.

Due to Magda’s professional background in finance, as well as her managerial and multilingual skills, we also investigated the complex power relations among her, her migrant female employees as well as her Anglophone clients. While we found Magda’s managerial style to be very direct and authoritative, she also had a very soft side to her with regard to both her employees and clients resulting in little turnover of her staff and a high demand for Shine’s cleaning services.

Overall, the book traces the story of Magda as a migrant domestic worker herself, who left Brazil in the 1970s to work as a live-in nanny for an upper-class Brazilian family in New Jersey up until the establishment of Shine in the mid 1980s. We collected data for this project beginning in 2011 until shortly before the book was published in order to provide readers with an accurate and up to date account of how Shine was created and successfully run until Magda’s retirement in 2019 shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic.

We believe our study adds to the growing body of research on language and domestic work by taking embodied sociolinguistics, posthumanism and emotional intelligence into account while simultaneously maintaining a critical perspective on multilingualism, the feminine gendered nature of domestic work as well as the inherent power relations between majority and minority language speakers, where issues of class, gender and citizenship prevail.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Exploring (Im)mobilities edited by Anna De Fina and Gerardo Mazzaferro.

Spanish So White: Conversations on the Inconvenient Racism of a ‘Foreign’ Language Education

We recently held an online event with Adam Schwartz, author of Spanish So White: Conversations on the Inconvenient Racism of a ‘Foreign’ Language Education. Our Editorial Director, Anna Roderick, spoke to Adam about the inspiration behind the book, his writing process and the book’s main takeaways. If you missed the event or want to rewatch it, you can do so on our YouTube channel:

For more information or to purchase this book, please see our website.

How Do You Subtitle Offensive and Taboo Language?

We recently published The Challenge of Subtitling Offensive and Taboo Language into Spanish by José Javier Ávila-Cabrera. In this post the author introduces us to the book.

The field of offensive and taboo language – or what other authors refer to as taboo language, swear words, etc– has been gaining more interest in the past few decades. However, there are scarce monographs which help the reader gain insight into the treatment of this type of language in audiovisual translation (AVT), both from a theoretical and practical approach. My research background and passion for the way this language is subtitled into Spanish triggered my motivation to write The Challenge of Subtitling Offensive and Taboo Language into Spanish: A Theoretical and Practical Guide. Another reason for having written it concerns the visibility that research on this type of language deserves in academic circles, although in the AVT research field it enjoys good health.

In the four chapters of the manuscript, the reader will find out about general concepts on AVT and subtitling conventions. The importance of censorship and ideological manipulation are key aspects to understanding the existing manipulating elements in the subtitling process. The core aim of the book is to present a model of analysis for offensive and taboo language. A total of ninety exercises are included in the book, with examples borrowed from popular TV series and films and answer keys in the form of professional subtitles with further discussions on the translation operations carried out and the way the offensive and taboo categories have been treated. Even though the linguistic combination of the exercises is English-Spanish, every single example is provided with a back translation so that any other reader not competent in Spanish can understand the translation operations discussed, which can be considered with other linguistic combinations. This is an innovative feature as no book had tackled theory and practice regarding offensive and taboo language in English-Spanish subtitling to date.

Dear reader, this book is aimed at you whether you are a student, researcher or audiovisual translator with interest in the strength offensive and taboo words have onscreen. Do you dare to break taboos? Then this is your book!

José Javier Ávila-Cabrera, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Spain, jjavilacabrera@flog.uned.es.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Fast-Forwarding with Audiovisual Translation edited by Jorge Díaz Cintas and Kristijan Nikolić.

Spanish So White: Conversations on the Inconvenient Racism of a ‘Foreign’ Language Education

We recently published Spanish So White by Adam Schwartz. In this post the author explains how the book came about.

Before it existed as a book, Spanish So White long persisted as generous, personal invitations into conversation. Such invitations assume so many forms over my 20 years as a White Spanish language educator and researcher in the US. These come at me daily, and I cannot envision a future where I am not accountable to such a conversation. This book is my attempt to project that conversation outward and invite others – particularly White students and colleagues – to join me.

The invitations I reference initiate in ordinary, persistent ways in which I must contend with my own racism and relationship to racist logics. They might emerge as a question from an observant student, not one necessarily broadcast to signal my attention, about why “all my Spanish teachers have been White men with gringo accents.” Another invitation doubles as a memorable email from a middle school parent about why their son can’t simply focus on “mastering English first” before tending to the minutiae of a vocabulary quiz, one that shares the language of that family’s heritage.

And then, of course, there are the reminders that slyly re-emerge through well-circulated discourses about the use of Spanish for “foreign” or “world” language education. I have learned to interpret these as capitalist, racist messaging in advertisements and pedagogical literature that communicates tired tropes, which critical language researchers (Valdés, 2003; Leeman & Martínez, 2007) have called out for some time:

• “Good Spanish teaching” reproduces the vernacular of the educated in “Spanish-speaking” nation-states, aligned accordingly with Eurocentric standards for communication.
• To teach chiefly about the colonial origins of a language is to maintain ideas of linguistic purity.
• It is not a priority to acknowledge the existence, let alone condone the practice, of codeswitching or Spanglish in our classroom spaces or local communities.

Invitations into conversation about gringo accents, English “mastery” and “good Spanish teaching” beget larger questions about Spanish language education in the US. What a fascinating and frustrating cultural experiment it is. As educators, we may teach language, but whose voices are heard in the spaces we share? Who is vocalized, and who is silenced? And if language and voice inevitably emerges from racialized bodies, how do race and racisms sustain in these spaces? And how is a consciousness of our Whiteness – among many other privileged identities we may claim – essential to addressing these questions?

Adam Schwartz

The “we” here – the intended audience of this book – is White-identified, non-Latinx for whom Spanish is not a language of heritage. I include myself in this “we.” Put simply: If we as White people uphold and benefit from White privileges and White racisms, how must that logic extend to our language classrooms where Spanish captures a most troubling paradox? As a commodity, Spanish is enjoyed as a “foreign” or “world” language from whom bilingualism is beneficial and employable for White “non-native” learners and speakers. As an identity, Spanish is a language of heritage – an icon of ethnicity, perhaps – for those whose linguistic abilities are systemically ignored or misunderstood in institutions designed for and by White people.

These conversations, introduced as starting points in this book for multiple parties (ourselves, our students, fellow colleagues in teaching, friends and family) are reminders that we carefully consider Spanish language education in the US as a White supremacist project. This logic is not easy for many to understand. And yet, as my students and colleagues have demanded for some time, we must do so.

This is your invitation into conversation, and one for you to share with your own students, colleagues, friends and family. Join us via ebook, print volumes, or in audiobook format.

Adam Schwartz (he/his/él) is Associate Professor of Language, Culture and Society at Oregon State University. Contact him at adam.schwartz@oregonstate.edu.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Hablar español en Estados Unidos by Jennifer Leeman and Janet M. Fuller.

Putting Gender Inclusive Language into Practice in English and Spanish

This month we published Hablar español en Estados Unidos by Jennifer Leeman and Janet M. Fuller, a Spanish edition of their 2020 book, Speaking Spanish in the US. In this post Jennifer discusses the translation process between the English and Spanish editions.

Although non-sexist language has long been a subject of discussion and debate, in recent years gender inclusive language has received increased attention around the world. Regardless of the context, these discussions reflect similar concerns, such as whether the use of masculine forms as the generic is exclusionary, which pronouns to use for people who don’t identity with a gender binary, and what impact the linguistic representation of gender might have on individual and societal understandings of gender identities and roles. Underlying and running through these debates are broader tensions between linguistic innovation and conservatism, disagreement about whether the emergence of new ways of expressing gender reflects ‘natural’ language change or ‘artificial’ social and linguistic engineering, and different understandings on the locus of linguistic authority: language academies and other institutions or language users themselves. Despite these commonalities, there are also language- and context-specific differences.

In the English-language edition of our book Speaking Spanish in the US: The Sociopolitics of Language (2020) we discussed the competing positions regarding gender-inclusive language, the ideologies that underlie them, and their connection to broader social and political issues. In addition to talking about gender inclusivity, we also used gender-inclusive language throughout. As we prepared the Spanish-language edition, Hablar español en Estados Unidos: La sociopolítica del lenguaje, the cross-linguistic differences between English and Spanish came into sharp relief. Specifically, although we were able to adapt our discussion about gender inclusivity for a Spanish-speaking audience without much difficulty, putting it into practice proved a bit more complicated.

Because English has a relatively limited system of gender marking, it was easy to use gender inclusive forms in the English-language edition. For one thing, except for pronouns and possessives, the majority of English nouns (including animate nouns) and adjectives lack gender marking, so phrases like many Spanish-speakers, Mexican immigrants and researchers are all gender inclusive. Whereas the masculine form was long prescribed for generic cases (e.g. Every parent wants the best for his child), the use of singular they/their is now widely accepted (i.e. Every parents wants the best for their child), and it is also fairly easy to avoid the issue by simply using the plural (i.e. All parents want the best for their children.). Along the same lines, nouns that were once gender-specific, such as those referring to professions (e.g. fireman, mailman, and waiter/waitress) have largely been replaced in common usage by gender-neutral forms (i.e. firefighter, mail carrier, server). Thus, in English, gender inclusive language is easily achievable and for the most part, uncontroversial.

One exception to English’s lack of gender marking, and one that is particularly salient in the context of our book, is the identity label Latinx/a/o, which is believed to originate with the Spanish word latinoamericano, and which exhibits patterns of gender-marking similar to those found in Spanish. In the US, the term Latinx has taken hold as the most commonly used gender inclusive form in English, and it is particularly popular among younger adults, activists and academics. We too adopted Latinx for the English-language edition, and took advantage of the opportunity to explain how our choice to do so constitutes an example of language use as a way of positioning oneself as a particular kind of person (in this case as people committed to gender inclusivity), a subject to which we dedicate sufficient attention in the book.

Achieving gender-inclusive language was far more complex in Spanish than it was in English, because almost all Spanish nouns, pronouns, adjectives and articles are marked for gender. As in English, Spanish grammars and language authorities traditionally have prescribed the use of masculine forms for generics, as well as in instances where there is even a single male among many females. For example, whether you are referring to students in general, a specific group of all male students, or a specific mixed gender group, prescriptive grammars and language authorities such as the Real Academia Española (RAE) mandate the use of the masculine generic los alumnos. Earlier critiques of this usage focused on the linguistic invisibilization of women and girls; some more recent proposals for gender inclusive language also call for greater recognition of people who do not identify with a male/female gender binary. Proposed alternatives to the masculine generic include ‘doubling’ (e.g. los alumnos y las alumnas) as well as the use of new non-binary gender morphemes such as -e (e.g. les alumnes) or -x (e.g. lxs alumnxs). Some speakers see gender-inclusive language as a way not only to recognize the diversity of human gender, but also to promote greater societal inclusivity. Others (including many well-known authors and members of the RAE), have pushed back at what they see as unnatural, arguing that the masculine generic is in fact inclusive according to the long established norms of Spanish. It’s worth noting that the RAE has also rejected ‘doubling’ as unnecessary, despite the fact that it is fully consistent with traditional Spanish grammatical patterns. The reaction to –x has been particularly harsh, in part due to the difficulty of pronouncing it when it occurs before a consonant, such as in lxs. Moreover, some critics argue that the use of –x reflects an unwelcome linguistic influence of English on Spanish in the US, a topic of concern among language purists. (It’s worth pointing out that these critiques are often also leveled against the English-language use of Latinx, seemingly advocating for maintaining Spanish norms to a word borrowed from Spanish into English, and thus raising questions about the directionality of language influence in the case of this particular neologism).

We wanted to be true to the English-language original and the US context (where Latinx is widely used) without making it overly difficult to read, especially for readers unfamiliar with non-binary gender morphemes. Moreover, we were aware that some instructors would be hesitant to adopt the book for classes in which many of the students are learning Spanish as a second or additional language. Ultimately, we opted for a multifaceted approach in which we avoided the use of masculine generics through careful rephrasing, as in the following examples;

English	Masculine generic	Gender inclusive rephrasing
students	los alumnos	el alumnado   ‘the student body’
many Spanish-speakers	muchos hispanohablantes	muchas personas que hablan español    ‘many people who speak Spanish’
Mexican immigrants	inmigrantes mexicanos	inmigrantes de México   ‘immigrants from Mexico’
researchers	los investigadores	quienes han investigado este tema   ‘those who have researched this topic’

Although somewhat laborious, this turned out to be possible in almost every case of generics and mixed gender groups, far more than I had expected. In the few isolated cases where such gender-neutral phrasings were either impossible or awkward, we settled for doubling, such as when we referred to the children of immigrants not as hijos de inmigrantes but hijas e hijos de inmigrantes (‘daughters and sons of immigrants’). However, in order to include explicit reference to non-binary gender we used the -x morpheme specifically for the word Latinx. Through this combination of approaches, we sought not only to use gender inclusive language but also to highlight the limitations of normative binary gender marking. We hope that our approach also underscores the fact that language is a type of social action and language choices are influenced by multiple, sometimes competing factors.

Jennifer Leeman

For more information about this book please see our website.

The English edition of this book is available here.

 

Hispanic or Latino? A Sociolinguistic Perspective

We recently published Speaking Spanish in the US by Janet M. Fuller and Jennifer Leeman. In this post Jennifer writes about the difference between the terms ‘Hispanic’ and ‘Latino’.

Recent growth in the share of the US population that identifies as Hispanic or Latino (as well as feminine Latina and the gender-neutral and non-binary Latinx) has been accompanied by increased attention to the labels themselves. There are ongoing debates about whether these pan-ethnic labels correspond to an ‘authentic’ identity, or people’s own sense of themselves as well as their lived experience or if, conversely, they are an ‘artificial’ creation of the US government. Nor is there consensus among scholars, advocates or anyone else whether that identity, assuming it actually exists, should be considered ‘ethnic’ or ‘racial.’ While we explore both of these issues in our new book, the focus of this post is on a third point of contention: the labels themselves. Specifically, is there a difference between Hispanic and Latino/a/x, and if so, what is it? The meaning of these labels is a perennial topic of lively discussion. It is especially timely this year, given that 2020 is a census year and the US census includes a question on Hispanic or Latino origin. Sociolinguistic perspectives on language, and on the relationship of language to identity, can offer insights into the meaning of the terms as well as into why such discussions are important and never seem to reach resolution.

On one hand, many dictionaries present Hispanic and Latinx/o/a as synonyms, as does the US Office of Management and Budget (the federal agency that mandates the race and ethnicity categories to be used on the census), and many speakers use the two terms interchangeably. One the other hand, numerous scholarly essays, news articles, and social media posts insist that they are not in fact the same. Although there is some variation in popular and scholarly explanations of the purported differences, etymology typically figures prominently. Specifically, most authors trace the origins of the word Hispanic to Hispania, the region of the Roman empire that comprised the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal today); some accounts also describe Hispanic as an Anglicized shortening of hispanoamericano, an inhabitant of Spain’s former American colonies. For its part, Latino is described as a deriving from latinoamericano, and many authors note that Latin America is a 19th century construction differentiating the areas in the Americas colonized by France, Portugal and Spain from those colonized by England. Thus, many claim that Hispanic refers to people with a connection to former Spanish colonies (but not Brazil) while Latina/x/o includes all Latin Americans and their descendants (but not people from Europe). Ethnoracial and linguistic diversity within Latin America and Spain is often glossed over in such discussions.

For the most part, etymologically-based accounts of the difference between Hispanic and Latinx/a/o assume a straightforward and enduring one-to-one correspondence between words and their meanings, as well as a similarly rigid understanding of identities and their relationship to labels. In this view, once we know the origin of a word, we know its meaning. However, one of the basics of human language is that it is always undergoing change; not only do pronunciations and sentence structures change over time, so do the semantic and social meanings of words. Thus, while etymology is interesting, and it can tell us something about how words have been used historically, it doesn’t reveal their complete meaning. For sociolinguists, the meaning of words is not contained within the words themselves but in the way they are used and understood in a given context. In the case of ethnoracial labels, this often goes hand-in-hand with varied social constructions of ethnoracial categories, which can vary from place to place as well as over time.

In addition to characterizing identities as socially constructed, sociolinguist approaches also stress that language plays a central role in the creation and performance of identities. Indexicality, or the way that particular linguistic forms or practices ‘point to’ particular attitudes, stances or identities, is key to this process. Specifically, when speakers speak in a particular way, or use one particular word, they rely on socially shared associations between linguistic forms and social meanings to signal something about themselves. Symbolic and indexical meanings play an especially important role in shaping people’s preferences for either Hispanic or Latino/x/a. For many people, the term Hispanic is seen as elevating European heritage and erasing Native and African cultures, peoples and languages. Despite the equally Eurocentric etymology of Latino/x/a, this term for many people indexes a more inclusive recognition of diversity.  In some contexts, using Latino/x/a (and especially when pronounced with Spanish, rather than English, phonology) is a way of enacting a particular kind of ethnoracial pride and/or sociopolitical awareness. In addition, the use of Latinx can signal one’s support for gender inclusivity. In sum, the choice between Hispanic and Latino/x/a (as well as other identity labels) depends not only on the specific ethnoracial identity of the person it refers to, but also on the sociopolitical stance and identity of the speaker. Importantly, indexical meanings are also variable and contextually dependent, rather than fixed within the words themselves. As such, it’s not surprising that the precise meanings of these labels, as well as which one is ‘better’, is highly contested, as are debates about just what it means to be either one.

Jennifer Leeman

For more information about this book please see our website. 

If you found this interesting, you might also like Learning and Not Learning in the Heritage Language Classroom by Kimberly Adilia Helmer.

Exciting New Multilingual Matters Titles for 2020

We can’t believe the first month of 2020 is almost over! It seems like only yesterday we were decorating the office and singing along to our Christmas playlist. However, if January has seemed like a very long month to you, we have plenty of exciting new titles coming up to fend off the winter blues. Here’s a selection of what we’ve got in store for you this spring…

Global TESOL for the 21st Century by Heath Rose, Mona Syrbe, Anuchaya Montakantiwong and Natsuno Funada

This book explores the impact of the spread of English on language teaching and learning. It provides a framework for change in the way English is taught to better reflect global realities and to embrace current research. The book is essential reading for postgraduate researchers, teachers and teacher trainers in TESOL.

Speaking Spanish in the US by Janet M. Fuller and Jennifer Leeman

This book introduces readers to basic concepts of sociolinguistics with a focus on Spanish in the US. The coverage goes beyond linguistics to examine the history and politics of Spanish in the US, the relationship of language to Latinx identities, and how language ideologies and policies reflect and shape societal views of Spanish and its speakers.

Teaching Adult Immigrants with Limited Formal Education edited by Joy Kreeft Peyton and Martha Young-Scholten

This book aims to empower teachers working with adult migrants who have had little or no prior formal schooling, and give them the information and skills that they need to reach the highest possible levels of literacy in their new languages.

Essays on Conference Interpreting by James Nolan

This book, drawing on the author’s 30-year career, seeks to define what constitutes good interpreting and how to develop the skills and abilities that are conducive to it. It places interpretation in its historical context and examines the uses and limitations of modern technology for interpreting.

 

The Dynamics of Language and Inequality in Education edited by Joel Austin Windle, Dánie de Jesus and Lesley Bartlett

This book contributes new perspectives from the Global South on the ways in which linguistic and discursive boundaries shape inequalities in educational contexts, ranging from Amazonian missions to Mongolian universities, using critical ethnographic and sociolinguistic analyses.

The Emotional Rollercoaster of Language Teaching edited by Christina Gkonou, Jean-Marc Dewaele and Jim King

This book focuses on the emotional complexity of language teaching and how the diverse emotions that teachers experience are shaped and function. The book covers a range of emotion-related topics on both positive and negative emotions, including emotional labour, burnout, emotion regulation, resilience, emotional intelligence and wellbeing.

 

Seen something you like? All these titles are available to pre-order on our website and you can get 50% off this month when you enter the code JANSALE at the checkout!

Plant a Seed and Hope it Grows: The Best Way to Help Your Child Become Bilingual

This month we published Household Perspectives on Minority Language Maintenance and Loss by Isabel Velázquez. In this post the author talks about her research on bilingual household dynamics in Latino families. 

¿Qué no haría uno por sus hijos? – What wouldn’t you do for your kids? This rhetorical question often comes up in conversations with Latino families in the community in which I live and conduct research. Regardless of ethnicity or cultural background, the narrative of parental self-sacrifice runs deep. In conversations with my university colleagues and other middle-class professionals, it often takes on the shiny packaging of meritocracy. In the kitchens and living rooms of the first-generation working-class families that have afforded me the privilege of learning about their experience, it comes with stories of geographical, social, and economic dislocation. Many of their themes are shared with those of other immigrant and refugee households in our city.

Separate one’s family, leave one’s country, learn a new language, start again, risk life and limb, work three jobs, brave the Nebraska cold at 5:00 am, deform the tendons in one’s right hand from the repetitive motion of cutting meat in an industrial line, make ends meet, make do, find a way. I want them to have an education. I want them to have more opportunities. I want them to get ahead in life.

Because I’m interested in how a minority language is lost or maintained in communities with low ethnolinguistic vitality for that language, most of the conversations I have with other Latino parents eventually arrive at the topic of intergenerational transmission of Spanish. Over the course of the past decade, I’ve yet to find a Latino mother or father who does not hold positive attitudes about their children’s development of bilingual skills.

And yet, in this, like in many other communities, positive attitudes toward Spanish are necessary, but insufficient to guarantee children’s development of their family language. Neither are parents’ level of education or economic standing.

In professional presentations and informal interactions, I am often approached by parents interested in finding the best resource to help their children become bilingual. A CD? An app? A book? A television series? A video game? As it happens, the best device to transmit language is an adult in possession of that ever-scarce commodity: attention. Attachment, nurturing, belonging, such are the fundamental ingredients of intergenerational transmission.

In my ideal world, every newborn would come with a four-word instruction: Forgive yourself; try again. Like all other dimensions of raising a healthy human, transmission of a family language happens at the messy junctions of everyday parenting.

Despite different circumstances and life experiences, analysis of bilingual household dynamics has allowed us to learn that families that are able to transmit Spanish to their children share three features: Quality and amount of exposure to the family language, opportunities for use, and relevance – the management, planning, and evaluation of the first two, it must be said, overwhelmingly falling on the mother.

No gardener plants once and expects results. Relevance of the family language for our children will only bloom years later, once they’ve formed their own networks away from the household. As parents, we plant, we weed, we water, and wait. We do not know if the seed of linguistic transmission will bear fruit. Do we ever?

 

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Bilingual Childcare by Victoria Benz.