On So Called Spanglish Analysis

In the paper ‘On-So Called-Spanglish,’ the term ‘Spanglish’ refers to oral registers of many Hispanic speakers within the US. The language that Latinos use in the US is a popular variety of Spanish and similarly to other languages the lexical characteristics of Latinos in the US is similar to popular varieties in other countries. Some local varieties of Spanish are restricted to a specific location just like Spanish in the US. One example of local lexicon of Spanish is seen by looking at the local terms for ‘bus.’ Micro, guagua, and colectivo are used by people that belong to the local community, but there words that are hardly known by outsiders. In like manner to the local lexicon of Spanish, words like bildin and lonch are very common among

Yet, other countries do not coin “special names to refer to these local speech-ways.” Their second view regarding ‘Spanglish’ is that it is not a hybrid language because just by hearing the term it can be interpreted that it belongs to a hybrid language. The authors of this paper finds that there is no objective justification for the term and that by using this term Latinos in the US are giving people the right to discriminate against them. In the response paper that Otheguy and Stern wrote in 2013, they argued that the term Spanglish does more harm than good. Otheguy and Stern state that there are many Latinos that reject the term and that object to its perceived derogatory tone. Towards the end of the response paper, Otheguy and Stern offer an insight into why the term Spanglish does more harm than good. If we called the unmonitored ways that Latinos speak as either Spanish or English, that name according to Otheguy and Stern would pave the bridge to literacy and to other benefits attained by those who master standardized varieties, while the term Spanglish creates barriers. This term, which was invented by Professor Tío still reminds people of the derogatory views it was created to

According to Urciuoli, linguists should have nothing to add on the naming of languages because you can’t decide what to call a language based on the features of that language. In general, people should call the way they speak what they want. In this essay, the author says that the term Spanglish is generalized in two ways. The first generalization is a derogatory reference of Spanglish, which is supported by the definition of Spanglish by the Dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spanish which states: “mode of speech of some U.S. Hispanic groups in which grammatical and lexical elements of English are mixed, deforming them in the process.” The second generalization is the use of several elements of Spanglish as a performance strategy. However, according to Urciuoli both of these generalizations do not take into account bilinguals who claim Spanglish as “my language.” The author argues that an identity emerges in ways of speaking and that this process takes on meaning unique to their users. Lastly, Urciuoli argues that speakers of Spanglish deserve to be “acknowledged, not judged or defined out of