Yo hablo inglés when I feel like it, or just when I’m mad hablo más inglés: language use among Latinx youth in a predominantly white Midwestern institution

In this project I analyze the language use and the ideas related to language of Latinx youth in a predominantly white Midwestern institution. My goal was to explore the language practices of individuals who grew up speaking two languages, in this case Spanish and English. I was particularly interested in the use of these two languages at the same time, a process commonly known in linguistics as code-switching. I observe several strategies used by these individuals to switch languages during a single utterance. I also explore the literature that questions how the grammar of bilingual speakers is able to maintain the grammatical rules for each language while mixing. Nonetheless, the primary focus of this research aligns with discussions in sociocultural linguistics that aims to highlight how language is in fact construed by our social realities and embedded in the complexities of social life.

Instead of the term code-switching, researchers in sociocultural linguistics have adopted a term that originated in the field of education to describe this language process. Translanguaging aims to shift perspectives in the study of social realities because of the transgressions it imposes to our common understandings or ideologies we have about languages. As the United States is mostly a monolingual nation, we have developed assumptions about how languages should be spoken. This includes the notion that bilingual speakers should conform to using only one “code” at a time. These notions do not take into consideration the social realities of the millions of bilingual speakers in this country. For this Latinx youth, using both of their languages and having access to a vast amount of linguistic resources from Spanish and English signals the most natural form of maintaining a conversation. This is the case also because it reflects the bilingual world in which they have grown up. Moreover, when attending a predominantly white institution, their language reflects how they adapt to the social realities they encounter in this context. Latinx bilinguals navigate daily common misconceptions and negative ideas about their language that characterize them as stereotypes. These ideas circulate between the social and the personal, each individual internalizes them differently and this creates certain emotions that are displayed through language. This way, it is through language that emotions are both created and displayed.