Speaking Spanish in the US. Janet M. Fuller

      Tables and Figures

      Tables

      Table 2.1National origin in the Latinx population

      Table 2.2Racial make-up of the Latinx population

      Table 2.3English- and Spanish-speaking ability among Latinxs

      Table 5.1Racial classification in the US census 1790–2010

      Figures

      Figure 2.1Percentage of the population age five and older that speaks Spanish at home

      Figure 2.2American Community Survey language question (2015)

      Figure 3.1A 1765 map of North America showing British and Spanish colonial possessions

      Figure 3.2Timeline of Spanish conquest and US annexation

      Figure 3.3San Xavier Mission outside Tucson, Arizona; the mission was founded in 1692 and the current structure was completed in 1797

      Figure 3.4Map of US territorial expansion

      Figure 3.5National origin groups (ACS 2017 One-year estimates)

      Figure 4.1Bumper sticker: ‘Welcome to America: Now SPEAK ENGLISH!’

      Figure 4.2Bumper sticker: ‘WELCOME TO AMERICA: NOW SPEAK CHEROKEE’

      Figure 4.3¡Yo  U.S.A!

      Figure 5.1Unknown Artist, De Indio y Mestiza sale Coyote (‘From Indian and Mestiza, Coyote’). Mexico, about 1750. Oil on canvas. 31 1/2 × 41 inches

      Figure 5.2Hispanic origin question from the 2010 census

      Figure 5.3Race question from the 2010 census

      Figure 5.4Race question for the 2020 census

      Figure 7.1Sign in Little Village, Chicago: ‘American Family Insurance’

      Figure 7.2Sign in Humboldt Park, Chicago: ‘Ay! Mami “Una cocina caliente”’

      Figure 10.1Tacos plis! Billboard outside Los Angeles, California (September 2018)

       Acknowledgments

      We would like to acknowledge the anonymous reviewers as well as the following people for their generous and helpful feedback on previous drafts of this book: Joan Bristol, Yvette Bürki, Héctor Emanuel, Julio Torres, Claudia Holguín Mendoza, Galey Modan, Kim Potowski, Adam Schwartz, Randolph Scully, Ellen Serafini and Hai Zhang. Thank you for your insights and for your support. We are also grateful to Lalo Alacaraz for permission to reproduce the cartoon that appears in Chapter 4.

       Chapter 1

       An Introduction to Speaking Spanish in the US

Objectives

      To present and explain the focus and approach of our book, provide a general background on the sociopolitics of language and provide a brief overview of the subsequent chapters.

Introduction

      In the decades leading up to and following the turn of the 21st century, the presence of Spanish in the United States has become more salient. The most obvious reason is that the number (and percentage) of people who speak Spanish has increased significantly over the past few decades. According to the US Census Bureau, in 1990 roughly 17 million people aged five or older spoke Spanish at home, which was 7.5% of all persons over the age of five. That number increased to 28 million people (10.7%) in 2000 and 41 million (13.4%) in 2017 (American Community Survey 2017 one-year estimates). Spanish is by far the most common non-English language spoken in the US (the next most common language is Chinese, spoken at home by approximately 3.5 million people). These statistics, together with the long history of Spanish in what is now the US, make Spanish the de facto second language and part of the national fabric.

Even people who do not speak Spanish themselves and who do not regularly come into contact with Spanish-speakers are likely also to have become more aware of the presence of Spanish in recent decades. In other words, hand in hand with an increased number of speakers has come increased visibility of Spanish in the public sphere. Think, for example, of the expansion of Spanish language media and entertainment – including television channels, music, radio and internet programming – and the ubiquity of automated menus offering users the option of using Spanish at ATMs and on telephone customer service lines. In addition to both increased growth and increased recognition of Spanish-speaking populations in the US, these trends are also attributable to the proliferation of media outlets, audience segmentation, transnational programming, targeted and niche marketing and technological advances. In addition, outcry and activism surrounding the lack of ethnoracial diversity in television programming, Hollywood films and broader mainstream popular culture has brought increased attention to the underrepresentation of Latinxs1 and Spanish-speakers in English language media (such as the #OscarsSoWhite campaign). So too, political