ERIC Number: EJ1475849
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0018-2133
EISSN: EISSN-2153-6414
Available Date: 0000-00-00
U.S. Spanish and the Standard Language Myth
Mark Waltermire; Daniel J. Villa
Hispania, v108 n1 p97-112 2025
The Spanish spoken in the U.S. contains certain elements from English due to the sustained sociocultural contact between these two languages. Unfortunately, it is for this very reason that many monolingual Spanish speakers (and even some bilinguals) denigrate bilingual varieties of U.S. Spanish, which they see as impure (Mata 2023; Rangel et al. 2015). This negative view of U.S. Spanish is common among "journalists, translators and educators," as noted by Cecilia Montes-Alcalá (99). Confronting these deeply rooted prejudices at a societal level represents a tremendous challenge. However, this is also the view of some linguists, though it is based principally or wholly on ideology and not on the results of empirical research. As language scholars, we have a role to play in bringing attention to these ideologies "within" our discipline and questioning them based on empirically grounded studies. In this article we suggest means of employing extant research to better inform the linguistic study of U.S. Spanish, which has wide-ranging implications for current and future research agendas.
Descriptors: Spanish, Language Variation, Language Attitudes, Sociocultural Patterns, Sociolinguistics, Language Research, Researchers, Misconceptions, Negative Attitudes, Standard Spoken Usage, Immigrants, Social Bias
American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Inc. 900 Ladd Road, Walled Lake, MI 48390. Tel: 248-960-2180; Fax: 248-960-9570; e-mail: AATSPoffice@aatsp.org; Web site: http://www.aatsp.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United States
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A