IntraLatino Language and Identity

MexiRican Spanish

Author
ORCID logoKim Potowski | The University of Illinois at Chicago
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027258359 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
e-Book
ISBN 9789027266187 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
Google Play logo
The increasing diversity of the U.S. Latino population has given rise to a growing population of “mixed” Latinos. This is a study of such individuals raised in Chicago, Illinois who have one Mexican parent and one Puerto Rican parent, most of whom call themselves “MexiRicans.” Given that these two varieties of Spanish exhibit highly salient differences, these speakers can be said to experience intrafamilial dialect contact. The book first explores the lexicon, discourse marker use, and phonological features among two generations of over 70 MexiRican speakers, finding several connections to parental dialect, neighborhood demographics, and family dynamics. Drawing from critical mixed race theory, it then examines MexiRicans’ narratives about their ethnic identity, including the role of Spanish features in the ways in which they are accepted or challenged by monoethnic, monodialectal Mexicans and Puerto Ricans both in Chicago and abroad. These findings contribute to our understandings of dialect contact, U.S. Spanish, and the role of language in ethnic identity.
Publishing status: Available
Table of Contents
“A cutting-edge analysis of how mixed ethnicity Mexican and Puerto Rican individuals position themselves socially and linguistically. Expertly combining quantitative and qualitative methods, Potowski’s study fills a critical gap in sociolinguistics. She lets the speakers’ own voices provide a rich context for understanding how they negotiate and co-create complex and changing identities. Written in accessible language with clear and relevant examples, the book explores how speakers’ individual histories are linked to their linguistic patterns. With a healthy respect for variation within and among individuals, it contributes to a theoretical understanding of the concept of Latinidad in the U.S. At a time when Latinos are increasingly important in the nation’s political and social fabric, the book is timely and insightful.”
IntraLatino Language and Identity: MexiRican Spanish is an impressive, state-of-the-art investigation of Spanish dialect contact within Mexican/Puerto Rican families in the U.S. In this innovative study of intrafamilial contact, Potowski analyzes a diverse and detailed linguistic data set using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her results provide new contributions toward theoretical and empirical issues in sociolinguistics, including dialect contact and acquisition, the role of ethnicity, phenotype, migration, generational change, and construction of identity. Integrating her analyses on multiple linguistic levels (lexical items, discourse markers, phonology, clustering of linguistic features), Potowski provides timely perspectives on Spanish contact in the U.S. The book is clear, well informed, and thoroughly researched -- an authoritative, state-of-the-art source on Spanish dialect contact that will be valuable not only for linguistics, but also sociology, social psychology, anthropology, critical mixed race studies, cultural studies, area studies, and many other related disciplines”
“This is an important addition to the growing literature on Spanish dialect contact in the U.S. Its excellent analysis of ethnic identity discourses of second- and third-generation MexiRicans within the framework of critical mixed race theory is quite timely given current debates about ethnicity and racism and the growing heterogeneity of the U.S. population. Potowski’s study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of dialect contact, how Spanish is changing across generations in the U.S., and new ways of conceptualizing Latino U.S. Latino identity.”
Cited by

Cited by 18 other publications

Babino, Alexandra & Mary Amanda Stewart
2020. Carmen Elvira: An Adult ESL Student (and Teacher) Newly Arrived from Mexico. In Radicalizing Literacies and Languaging,  pp. 185 ff. DOI logo
Bayley, Robert
2016. Language Socialization in Latino Communities. In Language Socialization,  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Bayley, Robert
2017. Language Socialization in Latino Communities. In Language Socialization,  pp. 351 ff. DOI logo
Bayley, Robert
2017. Presidential Address: Dialectology in a Multilingual America. American Speech 92:1  pp. 6 ff. DOI logo
Bayley, Robert
2017. Language Socialization in Latino Communities. In Language Socialization,  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Caldera, Altheria & Ale Ruiz Babino
2020. Being a conduit and culprit of white language supremacy: a duo autohistoria-teoría. Trayectorias Humanas Trascontinentales :8 DOI logo
Garcia, Lorena
2018. Language and (Re)Negotiations of Latinx Identity: Latinx Parents’ Approaches to Spanish and Bilingualism. Social Problems DOI logo
Harris, Samantha & Jin Sook Lee
2023. Korean-speaking spaces: heritage language learning and community access for mixed-race Korean Americans. International Journal of Multilingualism 20:3  pp. 1205 ff. DOI logo
Joseph, John E.
2021. Identity Construction. In English and Spanish,  pp. 335 ff. DOI logo
Lynch, Andrew & Netta Avineri
2021. Sociolinguistic Approaches to Heritage Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics,  pp. 423 ff. DOI logo
Martinez, Francia
2022. Politics, Language, and Cultural Identity: DetroitRicans and Puertoricanness in Detroit. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies 9:4  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Danae Perez, Marianne Hundt, Johannes Kabatek & Daniel Schreier
2021. English and Spanish, DOI logo
Potowski, Kim
2016. Bilingual Youth: Spanish‐speakers at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Language and Linguistics Compass 10:6  pp. 272 ff. DOI logo
Rodríguez-Ordóñez, Itxaso
2021. Stylistic Variation and the Role of Dialect Contact in theleísmoof Basque-Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14:1  pp. 81 ff. DOI logo
Szpiech, Ryan, Joshua Shapero, Andries W. Coetzee, Lorenzo García-Amaya, Paulina Alberto, Victoria Langland, Ellie Johandes & Nicholas Henriksen
2020. Afrikaans in Patagonia: Language shift and cultural integration in a rural immigrant community. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2020:266  pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2017. Publications Received. Language in Society 46:4  pp. 619 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Research Approaches to Heritage Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics,  pp. 373 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Subjects

Main BIC Subject

CFB: Sociolinguistics

Main BISAC Subject

LAN009050: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2016041069 | Marc record