The Study of California Chicano English

Abstract

Many members of the Chicano (or Mexican American) ethnic community speak what I will term 'Chicano English', a variety of English that is obviously influenced by Spanish and that has low prestige in most circles, but that nevertheless is independent of Spanish and is the first, and often only, language of many hundreds of thousands of residents of California. 1 In a talk several years ago (Metcalf, 1972a) I deplored the lack of research on Chicano English. I can now report, after a new search for research on the subject, some good news and some bad news.First, the good news. In the past several years real progress has been made in defining and deciding on solutions to the 'language problems' of children and adults who speak Chicano English. Researchers seem more ready than before to recognize that many Chicano English speakers are fluent in English only and should not be barraged with TESOL programs designed for students who have no command of English at all. The notion of respect for the child's language has also begun to take hold, no matter whether that language is standard English, standard Spanish, Chicano English, Chicano Spanish, or even, horror of horrors, a pattern of code-switching between Chicano English and Chicano Spanish.Then, too, there has been mounting evidence that the 'language problem' faced by those who speak Chicano English is not really a language problem, but a social one.

How can a documentary presentation of HMC (historically marginalized community) post-graduate stories inspire other HMCs to consider applying to graduate school?

“…The fastest-growing under-resourced first-generation U.S. college-bound population is the Latinx community (Borelli, Kerr, Smiley, et al, 2022) as demonstrated by Minority Served Institutions (MSI's) particularly serving "Chicano" (Metcalf, 1974) The research detailing personal pride and feelings of acceptance by Latinx students and Latinx women, are part of the importance of the mental "well-being" of first-generation graduate students (Cunningham &Brown, 2014, andHinojosa &Carney, 2016) who pursue post-graduate careers. As the literature and this research project moves from the general understanding of the key motivations for a first-generation student, to even closer consideration of professional or postgraduate applications, these variables emphasize for Hinojosa and Carney ( 2016) the (paraphrasing) participation and navigation through multi-cultural spheres of academic influence.…”