Spanish and Identity among Latin@s in the U.S.

Jessica ¹ describes herself as a ‘Spanglish’ person. In her home community in Houston, she speaks Spanish to represent her Mexican identity and align with other Spanish speakers. At home in conversation with her Mexican parents and U.S.-born sister, she switches back and forth between Spanish and English depending on the person to whom she is speaking. In her Spanish class for heritage speakers, she only speaks Spanish and insists that her classmates do the same, but on the university campus outside of the classroom, she almost always interacts in English, even with her friends who speak Spanish. The value and social meaning associated with Spanish and Spanish-English bilingual practices is different in each of the contexts in which Jessica uses language, and Jessica brings with her to these contexts a history of how others have evaluated or responded to her language use in other similar contexts. For example, at a conference on diversity that she attended when she was in high school, Jessica was introduced to a girl from Spain who laughed at the way she spoke and called it ‘broken Spanish.’ When she talks with her cousins who live in Mexico, they say she talks like an American. Back home in Houston, she does not receive these kinds of evaluations of her language—her use of Spanish allows her to represent a desired linguistic identity in that context. Jessica’s desire to speak ‘correctly’ motivates her in her formal study of the language, but may affect her language choice in other contexts outside of her home community.