Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic Aspects

When this book was first published in 1982, there were approximately eleven million Spanish-speaking people in the United States. This volume constitutes a comprehensive and accessible set of readings on the Spanish spoken in the United States. The authors examine various aspects of language structure and language use by the American Chicano, Puerto Rican and Cuban populations. Chapters include descriptions of language variation, reports of language contact and language change and analyses of the ethnography of language use in bilingual communities with particular emphasis on code-switching. Several chapters explore the educational implications of language structure and language use. This collection will be of interest to a wide range of linguists, anthropologists and sociologists. Bilingual educators and language planners in bilingual communities will find it of particular value and students of sociolinguistics will discover in it the main trends of sociolinguistic analysis usefully exemplified.

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: United Kingdom, 31 August 1982

Format: Paperback / softback, 448 pages

Other Information: 9d.88tabs.

Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.6 x 2.3 centimeters (0.62 kg)

Writer: Jon Amastae, Lucia Elias-Olivares

Table of ContentsList of contributors; Preface; Introduction; Part I. Varieties and variations of Spanish in the United States: 1. Our linguistic and social context Rosaura Sanchez; 2. Current trends in the investigation of Cuban and Puerto Rican phonology T. D. Terrell; 3. Influences of English on /b/ in Los Angeles Spanish Robert Phillips; 4. Syntactic variation in verb phrases of motion in US-Mexican Spanish Maryellen Garcia; 5. Subject expression and placement in Mexican-American Spanish Carmen Silva-Corvalan; 6. Mexican-American calo and standard Mexican Spanish John T. Webb; Part II. Aspects of Language Contact and Language Change: 7. Intergenerational language shift in an Albuquerque barrio Alan Hudson-Edwards and Garland D. Bills; 8. Language mixing in Chicano Spanish Rogelio Reyes; 9. Texas Spanish and lexical borrowing Nicholas Sobin; 10. The social implications of intra-sentential code-switching Rodolfo Jacobson; 11. Social interaction and code-switching patterns: a case study of Spanish/English alternation Guadalupe Valdes; 12. 'Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en espanol': toward a typology of code-switching Shana Poplack; 13. Constraints on language mixing: intrasentential code-switching and borrowing in Spanish/English Carol W. Pfaff; Part III. Ethnographic Aspects of Language Use in Bilingual Communities: 14. El meeting: history, folk Spanish and ethnic nationalism in a Chicano student community Jose E. Limon; 15. Sociolinguistic contours in the verbal art of Chicano children John H. McDowell; 16. Code-switching and interactions among Puerto Rican children Ana Celia Zentella; 17. The use of Spanish and English in a high school bilingual civics class Alexander Sapiens; 18. Marble terminology in a bilingual South Texas community: a sociolinguistic perspective on language change Jose L. Galvan; Index.

Promotional InformationThis volume constitutes a comprehensive and accessible set of readings on the Spanish spoken in the United States.