In this paper, we discuss current trends in sociolinguistic work focusing on language in metropolitan Miami, an area we contend is underrepresented in the sociolinguistics literature given the unique contact situation that has arisen there during the past half century. We focus our attention on four main areas of theoretical and empirical concern: (1) Spanish-English bilingualism, (2) issues related to the varieties of Spanish spoken in Miami, (3) issues related to the varieties of English spoken in Miami, and (4) an overview of languages other than English and Spanish spoken in the region, with particular attention to Haitian Creole. We conclude with suggestions for future sociolinguistic work in all of these areas.
National discourses about US Latinos, immigration, and Spanish have proliferated in the United States over the past two decades, ebbing and flowing in both quantity and vitriol, as Chavez (2008:34) points out, with global and national economic conditions, the broader political climate, and the demand for cheap labor. These discourses construct US Latinos, both immigrants and the US-born, as Spanish monolinguals, unable or unwilling to learn English, who, "flood," "invade," or "infect" the US (Santa Ana 2002), depleting local budgets and draining resources from cities, states, and the nation. Intersecting with ideologies of English monolingualism (discourses about Spanish have, over time and with great repetition, come to constitute hegemonic ways of thinking and talking about US Latinos, and produce as their
Poststructuralist theory has been broadly influential throughout the humanities and social sciences for two decades, yet sociolinguistic engagement with poststructuralism has been limited to select subfields. In this paper, I consider the possibilities for richer cross-disciplinary work involving sociolinguistics and poststructuralist social theory. I begin by describing the place of social theory within sociolinguistics, paying attention both to the possibilities of interdisciplinarity and the resistance to it. I then introduce the basic tenets of poststructuralism, focusing primarily on its two main constructs, 'performativity' and 'discourse,' and briefly discuss the discontentment with structuralism that resulted in 'the linguistic turn'. I outline the sites in the literature where sociolinguists have already made use of poststructuralist approaches, and conclude by suggesting new possibilities for cross-disciplinary collaboration. Though the paper focuses primarily on variationist sociolinguistics in the U.S. academy, I also make reference to other fields that work with non-static, anti-essentialist approaches to sociality, such as critical discourse analysis. I contend that poststructuralist approaches to social theory are useful for sociolinguists, especially variationists, in that they resist the false dichotomy between agency and structure and provide a comprehensive way of thinking about identity that ignores neither practice nor subjectivity.
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