Mock Spanish
University of Kentucky UKnowledge
Linguistics Faculty Publications Linguistics
2006
Language Ideology and Racial Inequality: Competing Functions of Spanish in an Anglo- owned Mexican Restaurant Rusty Barrett University of Kentucky, [email protected]
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Repository Citation Barrett, Rusty, “Language Ideology and Racial Inequality: Competing Functions of Spanish in an Anglo-owned Mexican Restaurant” (2006). Linguistics Faculty Publications. Paper 10. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/lin_facpub/10
Language ideology and racial inequality: Competing functions of Spanish in an Anglo-owned
Mexican restaurant
R U S T Y B A R R E T T
Department of Linguistics University of Chicago
1010 E. 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637
A B S T R A C T
This article examines the influence of language ideology on interactions betweenEnglish-speakingAngloandmonolingualSpanish-speakingemploy- ees in anAnglo-owned Mexican restaurant in Texas. In directives to Spanish- speaking employees,Anglo managers typically use English with elements of Mock Spanish. Because theAnglo managers fail to question whether their lim- ited use of Spanish is sufficient for communicative success, Spanish speakers are almost always held responsible for incidents resulting from miscommu- nication. For Latino workers, Spanish provides an alternative linguistic mar- ket in which Spanish operates as a form of solidarity and resistance. The competing functions of Spanish serve to reinforce racial segregation and inequality in the workplace. (Latinos, English0Spanish bilingualism, Mock Spanish, miscommunication, resistance, segregation, workplace.)*
I N T R O D U C T I O N
This article examines the ways in which language ideology influences inter- actions between monolingual Spanish-speaking workers and Anglo (U.S. English speakers of European ancestry) managers and workers in a Mexican restaurant in Texas. Because of the widespread acceptability of “grossly non-standard and ungrammatical” Mock Spanish (Hill 1998:682), Anglo directives in Spanish (or in English with Mock Spanish elements) are often misinterpreted by Span- ish speakers. The Anglos’ disregard for producing grammatical (or even under- standable) forms in Spanish shifts the communicative burden almost entirely to the Spanish speaker, who is often left with insufficient semantic content for interpreting Anglo speech. Anglo managers typically do not question whether their limited use of Spanish is sufficient for communicative success, and Ang- los typically assume that the Spanish speakers are responsible for incidents resulting from miscommunication. A directive that fails (in that the requested act is done incorrectly or not done at all) is almost always interpreted on the
Language in Society 35, 163–204. Printed in the United States of America DOI: 10.10170S0047404506060088
© 2006 Cambridge University Press 0047-4045006 $12.00 163
basis of racist stereotypes of Spanish speakers as lazy, indignant, uncoopera- tive, illiterate, or unintelligent. The Anglo use of Spanish marginalizes Spanish speakers within interactions, demonstrating a general disregard for Spanish speakers as cultural actors. The Anglo use of Mock Spanish to index a partic- ular Anglo ethnic stance diminishes the ability of Spanish to serve a commu- nicative function. The ideology of Mock Spanish reinforces racial inequality by restricting the agency of Latino workers.
In contrast, Spanish-speaking employees often use Spanish as a tool of soli- darity and resistance. The fact that Anglos pay little attention to what is said in Spanish allows the Latino workers to use Spanish as a means of controlling re- sources in the restaurant. The lack of attention to Spanish also makes it possible for Spanish speakers to talk openly about (and sometimes mock) Anglo workers and managers, even when the referent is able to hear what is being said. Al- though Anglo uses of Spanish may be seen as ways of limiting the agency of Spanish speakers, Latino workers use Spanish to develop an alternative linguis- tic market in which individual agency may be asserted in different ways.
Hill 1998 argues that language ideology plays a role in delineating “white public space” through the use of varieties such as Mock Spanish (Hill 1993, 1995). In Mock Spanish, Anglo speakers incorporate Spanish words into other- wise English discourse to “create a jocular or pejorative ‘key’” (Hill 1998:682). Hill (1998:682–83) lists the following strategies found in Mock Spanish:
Semantic pejoration of Spanish words – the use of positive or neutral Spanish words in humorous or negative contexts (e.g., nada to mean “less than noth- ing” peso to convey “cheap”)
Mock Spanish euphemism – the use of obscene or scatological Spanish words in place of English equivalents (e.g., the use of cojones)
The use of Spanish grammatical elements – the addition of the “Spanish” suf- fix �o to nouns and the use of the definite article el (e.g., el cheapo)
Hyperanglicization – parodic pronunciations and orthographic representa- tions that reflect an exaggerated English phonology (e.g. Fleas Navidad on a Christmas card).
These strategies of Mock Spanish are used in Anglo speech designed for Anglo audiences and typically index racist stereotypes of Latinos. Although Mock Span- ish usually carries a negative message, speakers of Mock Spanish are likely to view their use of Spanish as indexing positive personal qualities:
Mock Spanish accomplishes the “elevation of whiteness” in two ways: first, through directly indexing valuable and congenial personal qualities of speak- ers, but importantly, also by the same type of indirect indexicality that is the source of its negative and racializing messages. It is through indirect indexi- cality that using Mock Spanish constructs “White public space,” an arena in which linguistic disorder on the part of Whites is rendered invisible and nor-
R U S T Y B A R R E T T
164 Language in Society 35:2 (2006)
mative, while the linguistic behavior of historically Spanish-speaking popula- tions is highly visible and the object of constant monitoring. (Hill 1998:684)
In the context of a linguistic marketplace where Spanish is undervalued, Anglo use of Mock Spanish in interactions with Latinos serves as a “strategy of conde- scension” (Bourdieu 1991). Because Spanish is racialized to be an iconic marker of Latino ethnic identity (cf. Urciuoli 1996:15– 40), the presence of any Spanish (even grossly distorted or obscene Spanish) indexes an acknowledgment of the racial difference in an interaction. Although the use of Mock Spanish often does little more than index the race of a Latino interlocutor, Anglos may interpret the use of any Spanish at all as an index of egalitarian attitudes toward Latinos and, by extension, general sympathy with minority groups. Speakers of Mock Span- ish may thus produce offensive racialized meanings while simultaneously inter- preting their utterances as a reflection of an open-minded (explicitly nonracist) point of view.
In the interactions presented in this paper, the language ideology of Mock Spanish leads to inequality in the communicative burden between native and nonnative speakers of English (Lippi-Green 1997, Lindeman 2002, Perkins & Milroy 1997). While Spanish speakers must carefully monitor their use of both Spanish and English to ensure that they will be listened to, Anglo English speak- ers regularly produce ungrammatical and offensive forms of Spanish with no concern for how this Spanish might be perceived by actual Spanish speakers (cf. Hill 1993, 1995, 1998).
Mock Spanish as linguistic appropriation
Hill’s groundbreaking work on Mock Spanish has inspired linguists to pay closer attention to Mock varieties (cf. Ronkin & Karn 1999, Mesthrie 2002, Chun 2004). All of these Mock varieties have certain common traits. They all reduce the gram- mar of the mocked variety to a stereotyped representation of the language. Mock varieties also index racist ideologies and reinscribe racist stereotypes, operating as forms of symbolic revalorization (Woolard & Schieffelin 1994, Walters 1995), in which attitudes toward particular language varieties stand in for (proscribed) expressions of racial or ethnic prejudice. Mock Ebonics (Ronkin & Karn 1999), for example, is typically used to reproduce racist humor directed against “speak- ers of Ebonics” rather than “African Americans.” The racist nature of Mock Eb- onics and Mock Asian (Chun 2004) is fairly transparent. The use of Mock Asian forms such as ching-chong-ching-chong (Chun 2004) to an Asian American is likely to be understood as a form of hate speech. The racist nature of Mock Span- ish is covert, however, so that Anglos typically see their use of it as humorous, indexing a positive social identity (Hill 1998:683).
Despite its name, Mock Spanish may be better understood as an example of appropriation and not generally a form of overt mocking. Although Hill com- pares Mock Spanish to the crossover of words from African American English
C O M P E T I N G F U N C T I O N S O F S PA N I S H I N A N A N G L O R E S TA U R A N T
