Spanglish: From olla podrida to tasty menudo y más

• Published in: NABE Journal of Research and Practice Vol. 14; no. 1-2; pp. 46 - 54
• Main Author: Faltis, Christian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wheaton Taylor & Francis Ltd 02.04.2024
• Subjects: Bilingualism; Childrens literature; English language; Language contact; Morphology; Sociocultural factors; Spanish language; United States > US
• ISSN: 2639-0043; 2639-0035
• DOI: 10.1080/26390043.2024.2370561

For many Spanish speakers, Spanglish is perceived as a bastardized form of Spanish that does not count as “real” Spanish. This view rests on the assumption that there is a “real” Spanish, which operates by a set of grammatical, lexical and morphological rules such that when bilingual speakers mix into these rules elements that belong to English, they produce “ill-formed” expressions like “Mamá, púshame en el columpio” and “Porque no me llamas pa’ tras,” and macaronic languaging like “Creo que she’s not wachando la movie.” In this paper, I argue that this portrayal of Spanglish is based on prescriptive, deficit models that ignore socio-cultural transborder realities of Spanish and English and bilingual language users in contact. Drawing on examples from bilingual children’s literature, bilingual (hybrid) discourse, and bilingual cultural models, I show that Spanglish is not only linguistically well-formed, but also a genuine reflection of bilingual transborder identity affiliations for many Spanglish users living along the US-Mexican regions of the United States. Based on the analyses of the examples, I present the case that serious study of Spanglish within bilingual communities needs to place it within the socio-cultural, transborder contexts that contribute to its development and use.