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Language as a representation of Mexican American identity
Carmen Fought
English Today / Volume 26 / Issue 03 / September 2010, pp 44 - 48
DOI: 10.1017/S0266078410000131, Published online: 24 August 2010
Link to this article:
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How to cite this article:
Carmen Fought (2010). Language as a representation of Mexican American identity. English Today, 26, pp 44-48
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44
English Today
103, Vol. 26, No. 3 (September 2010). Printed in the United Kingdom © 2010 Cambridge University
Press
Language as a representation of
Mexican American identity
CARMEN FOUGHT
Chicano English is expanding our notions of American English
Introduction
Demographic data indicate that the English of
Mexican Americans is destined to play a key
role in the sociolinguistic study of language
variation in the United States. In fact, Mexican
American speakers are reported to account for
more than 12.5% of the U.S. population. In
2003, the U.S. Census released data showing
that Latinos and Latinas had replaced African
Americans as the largest minority ethnic group
in the U.S.,
1
and by 2007, 29.2 million Ameri-
cans listed their ancestry as Mexican (Pew His-
panic Center, 2009). Moreover, in addition to
the large numbers of Mexicans (first genera-
tion) and Mexican Americans (second genera-
tion) living in the Southwest, we are now
seeing a new representation of these ethnic
groups in other areas, such as the South. For
example, between 1990 and 2000, North Car-
olina experienced a higher percentage of
growth in its Mexican American population
than any other state (Wolfram, Carter &
Moriello, 2004).
These statistics are important with respect to
language because they reveal that a large and
increasing population of English speakers in
the U.S. are Latinos and Latinas of Mexican ori-
gin. Our notion of American English, then,
must be extended to include the variety tradi-
tionally spoken by the children of Mexican
immigrants in the U.S., generally referred to in
the literature as Chicano English. In addition, if
we look at the Mexican American population
as a whole, we will find a number of other vari-
eties of English spoken.
This paper presents an overview of the lan-
guage use, language choices, and language
attitudes of Mexican American speakers, focus-
ing specifically on the second generation. In
particular, I demonstrate how the linguistic
varieties spoken in these communities repre-
sent (often in an iconic way) the complex and
multi-faceted identities of their speakers. The
goal is to inform educators and others inter-
ested in the language of Latino children (and
adults) in the U.S.
A brief description of Mexican
American language varieties
In all of the sociolinguistic communities stud-
ied systematically, linguists have found that
there are multiple linguistic ‘codes’
2
available
for expressing or signaling ethnic and other
identities. Many people think that there are
just two codes available to Mexican American
speakers (English and Spanish), but the reality
CARMEN FOUGHT is a
Professor of Linguistics at
Pitzer College, in Claremont,
California (USA). She is the
author of ‘Chicano English in
Context’ (Palgrave/Macmillan
2002) and ‘Language and
Ethnicity’ (Cambridge 2006),
and the editor of
‘Sociolinguistic Variation:
Critical Reflections’ (Oxford 2004). Her current
research focuses on issues of ethnicity and gender in
the media, including the representation of women
in the Disney ‘Princess’ movies. She is also the
Pitzer Senior Scholar-in-Residence for 2010–11.
She has appeared as a linguistic consultant on a
number of programs, including the Jim Lehr
NewsHour, the Today Show, and the Dr. Phil Show.
She lives in Southern California with her husband
and several badly behaved dogs.
Email: cfought@pitzer.edu
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is much more complex. Fought (2006) pre-
sents a summary of the types of codes that can
be found in Latino communities in the U.S.; for
purposes of this article, I will focus specifically
on those available in Mexican-American com-
munities, although many commonalities with
other Latino communities will, of course,
exist.
3
These include a number of varieties of
Spanish and English, as well as a code-switch-
ing variety (known colloquially as ‘Spanglish’).
Among these, the varieties of English are par-
ticularly important as not all second-genera-
tion Mexican Americans speak Spanish, but all
of them do speak some variety of English. The
following is a list of English-based varieties
found in Mexican American communities:
Standard English.
The concept of a ‘standard’
English is very difficult to define (cf. Bex &
Watts, 1999). However we define it, though,
middle-class Mexican Americans will usually
have access to a variety of this type. For
example, this code is promoted by the school
setting, so some children will use a different
variety at school than they do at home.
Chicano English.
This is a non-standard
(though linguistically rich) variety of Eng-
lish, which is spoken natively primarily by
U.S.-born speakers, and which shows the
influence of Spanish, especially in the sound
system. It emerged historically from a con-
text in which English and Spanish were in
constant contact, both across the community
and within the competence of individuals.
This variety will be described in more detail
below.
Other local varieties of English.
It is impor-
tant to remember that wherever Mexican
American communities may be located,
there will be regional varieties of English
available to the speakers. These local non-
standard varieties may be described by terms
that refer to the geographic region, such as
Appalachian English or Southern California
English. This category could also include
African American English, which may be a
particularly influential variety in areas
where Mexican American and African Amer-
ican communities have extended contacts.
Non-native Speaker English.
This is the typi-
cal ‘learner’ English, used by immigrants
from Mexico whose first language is Spanish,
and who learned English as adults. Some-
times people hear Chicano English (a native
variety, learned from infancy) and confuse it
with this Non-native (learner) English. How-
ever, they are two completely separate vari-
eties, with different rules and patterns (see
Fought, 2003:80ff).
Code-switching (or Spanglish).
As men-
tioned above, code-switching is the alterna-
tion of languages within a single discourse or
a single utterance. In almost all bilingual
communities that linguists have studied,
some ‘mixed’ variety is found, often with a
pejorative label. Though many people view
these mixed codes as deficient in some way,
in fact they are complex and rule governed,
and require a high degree of fluency in both
languages. In Mexican American communi-
ties, this variety, Spanglish, is a complicated
intermingling of English and Spanish.
Though it is not strictly speaking a variety of
English, it does include English, and it plays
a crucial role in Mexican American identity,
so it must be included on our list.
What is particularly interesting about this com-
plex array of linguistic codes is how it reflects
the complexity of second-generation identity
among Mexican Americans. In particular, like
second-generation speakers in many other
communities, Mexican Americans often want
to distinguish themselves linguistically, as well
as in other ways, from first-generation Mexi-
can immigrants. In a project conducted in Los
Angeles, for example, Fought found that there
were various expressions of conflict between
second-generation speakers and first-genera-
tion immigrants, which sometimes led to quite
serious tensions in the community (2003:39).
Moreover, the second-generation speakers
themselves often pointed to language as a key
element of their identity, as will be discussed
below.
At the same time, Mexican American speak-
ers often have some level of direct geographic
access to their heritage culture in Mexico,
something that would not be so easily avail-
able to African American or Chinese American
speakers. Fought (2003) found that almost all
of the U.S.-born Mexican American speakers
who were interviewed had spent at least
some time in Mexico. Like other children of
immigrants, then, Mexican Americans must
negotiate identities that draw on multiple cul-
tures, and in which ethnicity and other fac-
tors, such as gender, social class, age, and so
forth, are interwoven.
LANGUAGE AS A REPRESENTATION OF MEXICAN AMERICAN IDENTITY
45
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More on Chicano English
4
Chicano English (CHE) is a variety of English
unique to Mexican American communities. As
mentioned above, it arose from a situation of
contact between Spanish and English. As
immigrants from Mexico came to California
and other parts of the Southwest, communities
developed in which many people spoke a non-
native English marked by sounds and gram-
matical constructions from their first language,
Spanish. The children of these immigrants
grew up using this English as a native lan-
guage, so it became regular and rule-governed,
like all native varieties.
Because of its origins, CHE does have many
features that show the influence of Spanish,
especially in the phonology (i.e. the sound sys-
tem). For example, in the ending on words
like
going
or
talking
, CHE speakers tend to
have a higher vowel, more like the ‘i’ of Span-
ish (as in
sÃ
), so that the words end up sound-
ing more like ‘goween’ and ‘talkeen’. CHE
speakers tend to reduce vowels in unstressed
syllables less often than speakers of other
dialects. For most American English speakers,
then, the first vowel in
together
would usually
be
[É™]
(which is the sound heard in the first
syllable of
ago
). In Chicano English, however,
the first syllable of
together
might be pro-
nounced more like the number
two
. In addi-
tion, CHE speakers variably drop final stop
consonants, such as the final
[t]
in
met
. CHE
also manifests patterns of intonation (i.e. the
changes in the pitch of our voices as we speak)
that are very distinctive and can sound ‘sing-
songy’ to outsiders.
In addition, CHE also has different verb pat-
terns, such as the use of multiple negation, as
in
He didn’t say nothing to nobody
. This way of
marking negation is certainly not exclusive to
CHE, and can be found in many vernacular
varieties (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes,
2006:35). With regard to the semantic features
of CHE, there is the use of the word
barely
to
mean ‘had just recently’ as in
These were expen-
sive when they barely came out
. (Standard Eng-
lish translation:
These were expensive at the
beginning, when they had just come out.
) CHE
speakers also have a specialized use of
tell
to
mean ‘ask’ (as in
If I tell her to jump up, she’ll
tell me how high
).
Despite its wide range of Spanish features, it
would be a mistake to characterize CHE as just
an English variety influenced by Spanish. As a
freestanding English variety, now spoken by
native speakers, Chicano English is in a process
of change and development just like all vari-
eties of language around the world. Among
other phenomena, it has the ability to borrow
from local or other varieties. For example, the
Los Angeles CHE speakers in Fought (2003)
used some features of local California dialects,
such as the use of fronted /u/ in words like
dude
(wherein the first syllable sounds like
dew
), and the use of
be like
to introduce quoted
speech (as in
She’s like, Don’t eat that!
).
Because of the Spanish sound of CHE, when
people hear Chicano English they often mistak-
enly assume that it is the ‘accent’ of someone
whose first language is Spanish. However,
many speakers of Chicano English are not
bilingual, and do not know any Spanish at all.
These Mexican American speakers have in fact
learned English natively and fluently, like most
children growing up in the U.S. Their English
code just happens to be one that retains indica-
tors of contact with Spanish. As an illustration
of this phenomenon, I have made up an exper-
iment, in which I play a tape of short segments
(in English) spoken by four CHE speakers. Two
of the speakers are bilingual, and two speak
only English. I ask the students to listen, and to
identify each speaker as bilingual or monolin-
gual. Inevitably, students are unable to classify
speakers correctly. The most non-standard
sounding CHE speaker, for example, is usually
labeled as bilingual, yet he knows almost no
Spanish, beyond being able to count to ten.
Clearly, CHE is an independent variety of Eng-
lish that has nothing to do with ability to speak
Spanish.
Language attitudes and the
linguistic reflection of Mexican
American identity
The various linguistic codes that we find in
Mexican American communities play different
roles in the language attitudes of the commu-
nity and in the construction of ethnic identity
by second-generation speakers. First of all,
although this article has focused on English
varieties, Spanish, of course, also plays an
important functional and cultural role. In fact,
speakers will often report that Spanish is
important to their Mexican American identity.
For example, in Fought (2003) a young Mexi-
can American girl says, ‘I think it’s very impor-
tant. Very. Cause, you know, you’re Mexican,
46
ENGLISH TODAY 103 Sep
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you have it in your blood’ (200). Interestingly,
speakers will often express this attitude even if
they do not actually speak any Spanish them-
selves, beyond a few emblematic words.
Despite these positive attitudes by young
speakers, dismayingly slow progress is being
made in fighting the dominant U.S. ideology
that values English and associates Spanish
with the poor and uneducated. Unfortunately,
language ideologies about Spanish in the U.S.
are still influenced by deep prejudices. For this
reason, in most of the Mexican American com-
munities that have been studied, retention of
Spanish beyond the second generation is
increasingly uncommon (Veltman, 1990,
Fought, 2003).
By far the most salient variety to Mexican
American speakers themselves is the code-
switching variety, or Spanglish. While CHE
plays an important role in the construction of
ethnic identity, particularly for monolinguals,
it is less often the topic of overt commentary.
Although comedians such as George Lopez
sometimes mimic elements of CHE, most sec-
ond-generation Mexican Americans, when
asked about ‘how people talk around here,’ cite
code-switching as the type of language that
distinguishes them.
Studies of immigrant communities have
shown code-switching to be a particularly
iconic form of expressing the multiple identi-
ties of second-generation speakers. By code-
switching, Mexican Americans born in the U.S.
are able to index simultaneously their Mexican
heritage (through Spanish) and their claim to a
specifically U.S. identity (through English). A
young second-generation speaker in Los Ange-
les articulates the role of code-switching in eth-
nic identity particularly clearly, saying ‘Two
languages sounds better for us Mexicans’
(Fought, 2003: 209).
5
When asked about
Spanglish, another speaker said:
Es que asà nos- se hablan los Chicanos, los
Mexicanos. Los que viven aquÃ. Como los de
Mexico no hablan- no saben na’ de eso, pero los
que viven aquà sà hablan Chicano- ‘Chicano
language’.
[‘It’s like, that’s how we- how the Chicanos
speak, the Mexicans. The ones that live here.
Like, the people from Mexico don’t speak- don’t
know nothing about that, but people that live
here do speak Chicano- ‘Chicano language’.’]
(Fought, 2003:209)
This speaker identifies code-switching as part
of the construction of a specifically
American
Mexican ethnicity, in contrast with that of
immigrant Mexican speakers, which, as men-
tioned above, is of great significance to second-
generation speakers.
Although it is rarely commented on in the
same way, CHE is also, of course, an important
variety for expressing Mexican American iden-
tity. And like code-switching, it provides an
iconic reflection of the second-generation cul-
ture. It is undeniably English; yet sprinkled
with some influence of Spanish. Unlike code-
switching, it does not require fluency in Span-
ish, so it is the variety of choice for Mexican
Americans who are monolingual English
speakers. As our understanding of the role of
non-standard varieties grows, and social struc-
tures such as the educational system and the
media become more enlightened about lan-
guage variation, we may see CHE receiving
more attention, both within and outside the
community.
What’s next?
As in all communities around the world, the
linguistic varieties spoken by second-genera-
tion Mexican Americans are in a constant
process of evolution and change, shaped by
internal and external linguistic and social
forces (see Mendoza-Denton, 2008 for a more
detailed discussion of this topic). While it is
difficult to predict the exact results of those
changes, there are certain areas that sociolin-
guists might want to focus on in the future.
One is the emerging varieties of Spanish-influ-
enced English that we now find in places
where there have been very recent increases in
the population of Mexican American speakers,
such as North Carolina (see Wolfram, Carter &
Moriello, 2004). These areas provide a unique
opportunity to observe the birth of varieties
like CHE, and can contribute to our under-
standing of linguistic change and stabilization.
Another topic of interest is the development
of regional variation in Mexican American vari-
eties of English. It was mentioned earlier that
CHE in Los Angeles clearly shows features of
other local California dialects. Presumably this
is true in other regions as well, but very little
work has been done on regional varieties of
CHE. The flip side of this language contact sit-
uation is the influence of CHE on other
regional dialects. Is CHE having an influence
on the varieties of English spoken by other eth-
LANGUAGE AS A REPRESENTATION OF MEXICAN AMERICAN IDENTITY
47
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48
ENGLISH TODAY 103 Sep
tember 2010
nic groups in places such as California? This is
an intriguing question on which we have, as
yet, no information.
Finally, how will changing language ideolo-
gies affect the linguistic varieties of Mexican
American speakers? On the one hand, Spanish
continues to be lost within a few generations.
On the other hand, code-switching (which
necessitates a knowledge of Spanish) shows
positive attitudes among young speakers, and
is seen as a key component in the linguistic
repertoire of Mexican American communities.
In addition, Mexican Americans and their lin-
guistic codes are increasingly represented in
the media at various levels (including the
release, in 2004, of a movie entitled
Spanglish
). Thus, it is possible that social
changes will lead to more positive attitudes
towards all the varieties available to Mexican
American speakers in their construction of
ethnic identity.
Notes
1
Though we should keep in mind that one group is
counted as a cultural category, and the other as a
race category.
2
By ‘code’ we mean a variety of a language
(whether standard or nonstandard), or in some
cases, a variety that incorporates more than one
language, as in ‘code-switching’ (the alternating
use of two languages in a single utterance).
3
For comparison, see Zentella (1997) for a
detailed discussion of how these are distributed in
a Puerto-Rican American community.
4
Examples in this section are from Fought (2003),
unless otherwise indicated.
5
Note that his use of the term ‘Mexican’ here is the
local equivalent of ‘Mexican American’, and means
someone of Mexican ethnicity, rather than some-
one from Mexico.
References
Bex, T. & Watts, R. J. (eds.) 1999.
Standard English:
The Widening Debate
. London; New York:
Routledge.
Fought, C. 2003.
Chicano English in Context
. New York:
Palgrave/Macmillan Press.
—. 2006.
Language and Ethnicity
. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Mendoza-Denton, N. 2008.
Homegirls: Language and
Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs
.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Pew Hispanic Center. 2009. ‘Hispanics of Mexican
Origin in the United States, 2007.’ Online at
<pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/49.pdf>
(Accessed June 14, 2010)
Veltman, C. 1990. ‘The status of the Spanish language
in the United States at the beginning of the 21st
Century.’
International Migration Review
24,
108–23.
Wolfram, W., Carter, P. & Moriello, B. 2004. ‘Emerging
Hispanic English: New dialect formation in the
American South.’
Journal of Sociolinguistics
8,
339–58.
— & Schilling-Estes, N. 2006.
American English, 2nd
ed
. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Zentella, A. C. 1997.
Growing Up Bilingual
. Malden,
MA.: Blackwell.
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