A B S T R A C TThis article examines the influence of language ideology on interactions between English-speakingAnglo and monolingual Spanish-speaking employees in an Anglo-owned Mexican restaurant in Texas. In directives to Spanishspeaking employees, Anglo managers typically use English with elements of Mock Spanish. Because theAnglo managers fail to question whether their limited use of Spanish is sufficient for communicative success, Spanish speakers are almost always held responsible for incidents resulting from miscommunication. For Latino workers, Spanish provides an alternative linguistic market in which Spanish operates as a form of solidarity and resistance. The competing functions of Spanish serve to reinforce racial segregation and inequality in the workplace. (Latinos, English0Spanish bilingualism, Mock Spanish, miscommunication, resistance, segregation, workplace.)*
I N T R O D U C T I O NThis article examines the ways in which language ideology influences interactions between monolingual Spanish-speaking workers and Anglo (U.S. English speakers of European ancestry) managers and workers in a Mexican restaurant in Texas. Because of the widespread acceptability of "grossly non-standard and ungrammatical" Mock Spanish (Hill 1998:682), Anglo directives in Spanish (or in English with Mock Spanish elements) are often misinterpreted by Spanish speakers. The Anglos' disregard for producing grammatical (or even understandable) forms in Spanish shifts the communicative burden almost entirely to the Spanish speaker, who is often left with insufficient semantic content for interpreting Anglo speech. Anglo managers typically do not question whether their limited use of Spanish is sufficient for communicative success, and Anglos typically assume that the Spanish speakers are responsible for incidents resulting from miscommunication. A directive that fails (in that the requested act is done incorrectly or not done at all) is almost always interpreted on the
This paper presents a quantitative study of syntactic change in the context of Mayan language revitalization in Guatemala. Quantitative analyses of grammatical variation and code-switching patterns were used to examine the degree of Spanish influence in the speech of three generations of SipakapenseSpanish bilinguals. The younger generations show lower frequencies of codeswitching compared to the oldest generation. In terms of syntactic variation, younger speakers show patterns that suggest a resistance to influence from Spanish. The results suggest that younger speakers are hyperdifferentiating the two languages by avoiding traditional Sipakapense constructions that could be interpreted as resulting from Spanish influence. The analysis highlights the important role of language ideology in cases of language change due to contact and language shift.
This paper examines two models that have been used in theoretical discussions of language and sexuality. The two models, the culture-based model and the desire-based model, view the gay community as formed through a shared culture or based solely on sexual desire. The impact of the models in works by Leap (1996) and Kulick (2000) is discussed, and the models are used to demonstrate competing views of gay language found in foreign-language phrasebooks intended for gay men. Strict adherence to either of these models masks the reality of “gay language” and impedes the progress of research into the relationships between language, gender and sexuality.
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