Speaking Spanish in the US. Janet M. Fuller
language variety or linguistic practice) is associated with a specific stance, social category or characteristic, the feature is said to ‘index’ or ‘point to’ that category or characteristic (Ochs, 1992; Silverstein, 1996). In order to grasp this notion, remember that it is not only the content of our speech that has meaning, but also the way we talk. Just as we can say something about ourselves by the way we dress or style our hair, we can also enact certain identities by speaking in a particular language or style, or even just by choosing to use certain words. Indexicality is the process that allows us to do this. For example, in her research with Latina gangs in northern California, Mendoza-Denton (2008) found that the color red was an index of the Norteña gang while the color blue was an index of the Sureñas, such that dressing in these colors was a way to signal membership in one gang or the other. Feathered hair and the numbers 14 and 4 were also indexes of Norteña identity, whereas vertical ponytails and the numbers 13 and 3 were indexes of the Sureñas. Language was another way through which girls signaled their membership in one gang or the other: speaking Spanish (and minimizing or denying proficiency in English) indexed the Sureñas, while speaking English and downplaying or avoiding Spanish indexed the Norteñas.
Indexical meanings are not intrinsic, but instead depend on context; clearly, the color blue doesn’t index the Sureña gang everywhere. Similarly, linguistic features and practices don’t always mean the same thing in every context, or even to everyone with in a given context. Obviously, Spanish doesn’t index Sureña identity universally; in many US contexts it is an index of Latinx identity, an issue we return to later in this chapter and throughout the book. For another example of the contextual nature of indexicality, let us consider the use of English words in a primarily Spanish conversation, which has different social and symbolic meanings in Latin America and the US. In many Latin American contexts, incorporating a few words in English can serve to index internationalism and sophistication, but in the US the exact same practice is sometimes interpreted as linguistic sloppiness or seen as evidence of deficient Spanish knowledge.
One framework for looking at the role of language ideologies in social differentiation, or how language ideologies allow for linguistic differences to be used in assigning people to different social categories or identities, has been put forth by Irvine and Gal (2000). They identify three key processes: iconicity, fractal recursivity and erasure. Iconicity is an ideological process in which linguistic features not only index certain groups or activities but are seen as iconic representations of them, and reflections of the group’s ‘inherent nature or essence’ (Irvine & Gal, 2000: 37). In other words, the linguistic feature or language doesn’t just ‘point to’ the social group; it is seen as inherent to the group. Further, with iconization, the linguistic feature and the group associated with it are perceived as being similar or sharing certain characteristics. Taking the case of Spanish in the US, in many contexts Spanish has become an icon for Latinxs, such that the perceived characteristics (and stereotypes) of Latinxs map onto perceptions of Spanish. For example, the Spanish language is commonly viewed as ‘easy’ (Lipski, 2002: 1248), which parallels racist attitudes about the cultural and intellectual achievements of Spanish-speakers.
Similarly, the Mock Spanish practice of adding -o endings to English nouns (e.g. no problemo, el cheapo) and the treatment of Spanish as if it weren’t a ‘real’ language with its own words and complex grammar parallels the devaluing of Latinx peoples and cultures (Barrett, 2006; Hill, 1995, 2008; we discuss Mock Spanish further in Chapter 6). In these cases, the perceived shared characteristics of Latinxs and Spanish are negative, but that isn’t always the case in iconization. When a website selling online language classes states that ‘Spanish tops off our list as one of the world’s most romantic languages because of its passionate, sensual sound’ (https://www.rocketlanguages.com/blog/the-languages-of-love-the-5-most-romantic-languages, accessed 12 September 2018), passion and sensuality are perceived as shared characteristics of the language and its speakers. Of course, even when presented as positive attributes, these are still stereotypes that can have negative implications (see the discussion in Chapter 7 on such stereotypes in media representations of Latinxs).
Fractal recursivity is the term that Gal and Irvine use to describe the tendency of social and linguistic distinctions to operate on multiple levels. Specifically, ideological features that are used to differentiate between groups are often also used to differentiate within groups recursively. Recursivity in US language ideology can be found in the hierarchy of languages that positions some languages as better than others and the pervasive idea that there is just one right way of speaking that is superior to other ways. In the dominant linguistic hierarchy, English is intellectually superior to Spanish. However, similar distinctions are also made within English, such that northern US varieties are seen as ‘smarter’ than southern varieties. Thus, the perception of one ‘correct’ way of speaking and multiple inferior ways of speaking is seen both on the level of language as well as on the level of variety. Similar types of fractal recursivity also operate in Spanish among national varieties and within them. For example, a common belief among Spanish-speakers is that Colombian Spanish is ‘better’ than other national varieties. However, within Colombian Spanish, Bogotá Spanish is often seen as superior to varieties spoken along the coast and, within Bogotá, the varieties spoken by the elite are seen as better than those of the working class.
Finally, erasure is the phenomenon of ignoring or rendering invisible any information or practice that would contradict the hegemonic ideology. The one nation-one language ideology frames monolingualism within a national territory as the natural and right way for a country to operate, and thus portrays multilingualism as divisive, an impediment to participation in mainstream America, and a characteristic of impoverished immigrant communities. In order for this ideology to stand, several sociolinguistic realities undergo erasure. To wit, there are many multilingual nations throughout the world, and the majority of the world’s people are believed to be multilingual. In the case of the US, many bilinguals were born in the US, fully participate in all aspects of US society and are members of the middle and upper socio-economic classes. In addition, Spanish language maintenance (i.e. Spanish–English bilingualism) correlates with academic achievement and success (see Chapter 9). These facts constitute counter-evidence to the prevailing ideology but go largely unseen by those that subscribe to it. Similarly, the image of the US as a monolingual English-speaking nation involves selective erasure of various aspects of the linguistic history of the US, including the multilingual nature of early settlements and the maintenance of immigrant and Indigenous languages. And of course, it also erases the fact that English itself is not native to what is now the US.
The Consequences of Language Ideologies: Power, Politics and Policy
As we noted, language ideologies are opinions or beliefs, but they have real-world consequences. By influencing the public portrayal and perception of people and groups, language ideologies also shape the treatment of those people and groups. This can happen at the level of individual interactions, such as when someone yells at or attacks people for speaking languages other than English. There have been numerous videotaped examples of this in recent years, some of which are listed together with other examples of linguistic prejudice and discrimination on the webpage http://potowski.org/resources/repression. Here we will discuss one representative example which received a lot of attention in the media and public discourse, the case of a New York man who became enraged that employees of a Manhattan eatery were speaking in Spanish (Robbins, 2018; https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/nyregion/man-threatens-spanish-language-video.html, accessed 15 September 2018). The one nation-one language ideology is clearly reflected in the man’s outrage that ‘staff is speaking Spanish to customers when they should be speaking English,’ his explanation that ‘It’s America,’ and his subsequent assumption and threat: ‘I will be following up, and my guess is they’re not documented. So my next call is to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to have each one of them kicked out of my country.’ For this man, the ideological linking of English and the US is so strong that he doesn’t just