Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-grxwn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-25T21:31:14.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language ideology and racial inequality: Competing functions of Spanish in an Anglo-owned Mexican restaurant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2006

RUSTY BARRETT
RUSTY BARRETT
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, 1010 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, rustyb@uchicago.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the influence of language ideology on interactions between English-speaking Anglo and monolingual Spanish-speaking employees in an Anglo-owned Mexican restaurant in Texas. In directives to Spanish-speaking employees, Anglo managers typically use English with elements of Mock Spanish. Because the Anglo 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.I am greatly indebted to the restaurant workers who shared their experiences and opinions with me. For helpful discussions and comments, I would like to thank Eriko Atagi, Mary Bucholtz, Elaine Chun, Erin Debenport, Jane Hill, Jennifer Palmer, Robin Queen, Otto Santa Ana, Teresa Satterfield, Keith Walters, Albert Zapata, and an anonymous reviewer.

Keywords

LatinosEnglish/Spanish bilingualismMock Spanishmiscommunicationresistancesegregationworkplace
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , April 2006 , pp. 163 - 204
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ahearn, Laura (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology 30:109–37.Google Scholar
Austin, John L. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (2002). The linguistics of color-blind racism: How to talk nasty about Blacks without sounding “racist.” Critical Sociology 28:41–64.Google Scholar
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, & Forman, Tyrone (2000). “I'm not racist, but …”: Mapping White college students' racial ideology in the United States. Discourse and Society 11:50–85.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1991). Language and symbolic power. John B. Thompson (ed.), Gino Raymond & Matthew Adamson (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bucholtz, Mary (2004). The appropriation of African American Vernacular English as European American youth slang. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 33, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Cameron, James, & Wisher, William, Jr. (1991). Terminator II: Judgment Day (James Cameron, director). Tri Star Pictures.
Chun, Elaine (2004). Ideologies of legitimate mockery: Margaret Cho's revoicings of Mock Asian. Pragmatics 14:263–89.Google Scholar
Cmiel, Kenneth (1990). Democratic eloquence. New York: William Morrow.
Duranti, Alessandro (2001). Performance and encoding of agency in historical-natural languages. In Kate Henning et al. (eds), SALSA 9: Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Symposium about Language and Society, Austin, Texas Linguistics Forum 44(2), 266–87. Austin: University of Texas Department of Linguistics.
Duranti, Alessandro (2003). Agency in language. In Alessandro Duranti (ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Eble, Connie (2004). Slang. In Edward Finegan & John R. Rickford (eds.), Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century, 375–86. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Erard, Michael (1996). Models of Spanish and Spanish speakers in the political economy of Anglo Spanish. In Alice Chu et al. (eds.), SALSA IV: Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Symposium about Language and Society – Austin.
Flouton, Deanne K. (1991). Hotel/restaurant Spanish. Hispania 74:194–96.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Charles (1975). Toward a characterization of English foreigner talk. Anthropological Lingustics 17:1–14.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Charles (1981). “Foreign talk” as the name of a simplified register. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 28:9–18.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan, & Irvine, Judith (2000). Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language, 35–84. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Gingràs, Rosario (1974). Problems in the description of Spanish-English intrasentential code-switching. In G. A. Bills (ed.), Southwest areal linguistics. San Diego: San Diego State University, Institute for Cultural Pluralism.
Gumperz, John (1982) (ed.). Language and social identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haviland, John B. (2003). Ideologies of language: Some reflections on language and U.S. law. American Anthropologist 105:764–74.Google Scholar
Hill, Jane H. (1993). Is it really “No Problemo”? In Robin Queen and Rusty Barrett (eds.), SALSA I: Proceedings of the First Annual Symposium about Language and Society – Austin. Texas Linguistic Forum 33:1–12.Google Scholar
Hill, Jane H. (1995). Mock Spanish: A site for the indexical reproduction of racism in American English. Originally posted at University of Chicago Lang-cult site: http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/discussions/l-c
Hill, Jane H. (1998). Language, race and white public space. American Anthropologist 100:680–89.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Jakobson, Roman (1960). Concluding statement: linguistics and poetics. In Thomas Sebeok (ed.), Style in language, 350–77. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lindeman, Stephanie (2002). Listening with an attitude: A model of native-speaker comprehension of non-native speakers in the United States. Language in Society 31:419–41.Google Scholar
Lindquist, Julie (2002). A place to stand: Politics and persuasion in a working-class bar. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lindquist, Julie (2004). Class identity and the politics of dissent: The culture of argument in a Chicago neighborhood bar. In Marcia Farr (ed.), Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and literacy in the city's neighborhoods. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Lippi-Green, Rosina (1997). English with an accent: Language, ideology and discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge.
Mesthrie, Rajend (2002). Mock languages and symbolic power: The South African radio series Applesammy and Naidoo. World Englishes 21:99–112.Google Scholar
Morgan, Marcyliena (2001). “Nuthin' but a G thang”: Grammar and language ideology in Hip Hop identity. In Sonja Lanehart (ed.), Sociocultural and historical contexts of African American Vernacular English, 187–210. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Morgan, Marcyliena (2002). Language, discourse and power in African American culture. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Muysken, Pieter (2000). Bilingual speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Myers-Scotton, Carol (1993). Duelling Languages: Grammatical structure in code-switching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ochs, Elinor (1996). Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. In John J. Gumperz & Stephen C. Levinson (eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity, 407–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Perea, Juan (1995). Los olvidados: On the making of invisible people. New York University Law Review 70:965–91.Google Scholar
Perkins, Lisa, & Milroy, Lesley (1997). Sharing the communicative burden: A conversation-analytic account of aphasic/non-aphasic interaction. Multilingua 16:199–215.Google Scholar
Peñalosa, Fernando (1981). Chicano sociolinguistics. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Poplack, Shana (1981). “Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español”: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics 18:581–618.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana; Sankoff, David; & Miller, Christopher (1988). The social correlates and linguistic processes of lexical borrowing and assimilation. Linguistics 26:47–104.Google Scholar
Ronkin, Maggie, & Karn, Helen E. (1999). Mock Ebonics: Linguistic racism in parodies of Ebonics on the Internet. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3:360–80.Google Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto (1999). “Like an animal I was treated”: Anti-immigrant metaphor in U.S. public discourse. Discourse and Society 10:191–224.Google Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto (2002) Brown tide rising: Metaphors of Latinos in contemporary American public discourse. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Smitherman, Geneva (1994). Black talk: Words and phrases from the hood to the amen corner. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Silverstein, Michael (1992). Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function. In John Lucy (ed.), Reflexive language, 33–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Silverstein, Michael (1998). Language ideologies: Practice and theory. In Bambi B. Schieffelin et al. (eds.), The uses and utility of ideology: A commentary, 123–45 New York: Oxford University Press.
Urciuoli, Bonnie (1996). Exposing prejudice: Puerto Rican experiences of language, race, and class. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Valdés, Guadalupe (1981). Code-switching as deliberate verbal strategy: A microanalysis of direct and indirect requests among bilingual Chicano speakers. In Richard P. Durán (ed.), Latino language and communicative behavior, 95–108. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Walters, Keith (1995). Contesting representations of African American Language. In Risako Ide et al. (eds.), SALSA III: Proceedings from the Third Annual Symposium about Language and Society – Austin, Texas Linguistics Forum 36: 137–51. Austin: University of Texas Department of Linguistics.
Woolard, Kathryn A., & Schieffelin, Bambi (1994). Language ideology. Annual Review of Anthropology 23:55–82.Google Scholar
Zentella, Ana Celia (1996). The “Chiquitafication” of U.S. Latinos and their languages, or: Why we need an anthropolitical linguistics. In Risako Ide et al. (eds), SALSA III: Proceedings of the third annual Symposium about Language and Society – Austin, Texas Linguistics Forum 36: 1–18.