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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT. The linguistic situation on the United States/Mexican border in Laredo, Texas illustrates the complex nature of a bilingual community. Border residents are faced with the task of negotiating their identity every time they engage in discourse. Language alternation, i.e. TexMex, is a visible phenomenon and is a significant way of communicating in this community. Laredo does not represent a clear case of classic diglossia given that both English and Spanish share the same prestige in the more formal, High variety. Furthermore, there is evidence to indicate that the use of TexMex has crossed into public domains traditionally reserved for the High variety. Similarly, both English and Spanish can be heard in domains traditionally reserved for the Low variety. These findings further validate the usefulness of examining language use within a sociocultural linguistic framework.
1. BACKGROUND. For many Hispanic families in the Southwestern United States, bilingualism is a transitory state, as child speakers move from Spanish dominance or indeed monolingualism to dominance or even monolingualism in English. With public education in Texas structured to encourage rapid acquisition of English, generally accompanied by minority language loss, maintenance of Spanish in the borderlands has historically depended on continued immigration from Mexico and on private social networks rooted in extended families and Mexican-American colonias. The linguistic situation on the United States/Mexican border in Laredo, Texas illustrates the complex nature of one such bilingual community. Laredo is noted for its conservative nature, and for guarding and maintaining its Hispanic customs and Spanish language in spite of its location within the United States and despite its increased contact with the Anglo/Caucasian population. In fact, George Barker could have been referring to Laredo when he wrote 'How does it happen, for example, that among bilinguals, the ancestral language will be used on one occasion and English on another, and that on certain occasions bilinguals will alternate, without apparent cause, from one language to another?' (1947:185-6). The linguistic situation of this community is particularly important since 93% of Laredo's 200,000 inhabitants are of Hispanic decent.
Border residents are faced with the complex task of negotiating their identity every time they engage in discourse. Most Hispanic Americans in this region grow up with Spanish, English, and a tendency to mix the two languages. Gafaranga states that the use of two languages within the same conversation 'has always been a very noticeable phenomenon for lay people and linguists alike, even though bilingual speakers themselves may not be aware of it while talking' (2007:10). He goes on to say that 'wherever language alternation is a salient feature of social interaction, a name is coined by the way of identifying this mode of speech' (11). In this border community, some people (often monolinguals) derogatorily refer to English-Spanish language alternation as Pocho, Mocho, Spanglish, Border Spanish, Border English, Chicano English, and very rarely, as TexMex or even MexTex. This is noteworthy because it illustrates that language alternation is a visible phenomenon and is a significant way of communicating in this community. Furthermore, since it is a visible linguistic phenomenon, people often have an opinion about it that can be positive or negative depending on one's own language ideology of that of the community. Given that monolingualism is still the norm in the United States and given the more recent 'English-only' debates that have plagued the United States, attitudes towards some forms of bilingualism (i.e. access to more than one language) and, in particular, toward language alternation are often negative (Gafaranga 2007:12). Fortunately, attitudes toward bilingualism and the use of TexMex among self-identified bilingual Laredoans are positive: 94% and 86% respectively (Pletsch de Garcia, 2007b). Flores (2007) conducted an informal survey of 34 students and Pletsch de Garcia (2007a) conducted the same survey with 66 students responding to the following questions:
1. What do you call the dialect that is spoken in Laredo?
2. Please describe or define what the word you used in #1 means to you.
3. Who uses this word to describe what is spoken in Laredo?
4. What value to you place on speaking this way? Explain.
Of the thirty-four students, 70% responded that they called this dialect TexMex and of the other group of 66 students, 82% responded in the same manner. Comments included the following:
* Casi todos aqui en Laredo usamos esta palabra.
'Almost all of us here in Laredo use this word.'
* Basicamente, todos o la mayoria de los hispanos al igual que muchos mexicano-americanos lo usan.
'Basically, all of the majority of Hispanics and even many Mexican-Americans use it.'
* I think everyone uses this Word to describe our language.
Flores (2007) and Pletsch de Garcia (2007a) also conducted an informal content analysis of the open-ended responses, and found 86% of students' comments contained positive or neutral connotations for the term. Such positive words as 'interesting', 'unique', 'fortunate', were repeated. According to Flores: Positive comments included the following:
* Creo que tiene mucho valor porque te puedes comunicar con muchas personas que hablen estos dos idiomas.
'I think that it has a lot of value because you can communicate with a lot of people who speak both of these languages.'
* Para mi es bueno porque asi nos damos a entender y estamos acostumbrados a hablar asi.
'For me it's good because that way we can make ourselves understood and we are accustomed to speaking this way.'
* Pienso que es muy importante porque este dialecto nos identifica a todos los que vivimos aqui en esta ciudad.
'I think that it is very important because this dialect identifies us as living here in this city.'
Others held neutral views of the term TexMex:
*...
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