2005/05/23 by Jane H. Hill · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Multilingual Education and Policy
paper · doi:10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.113
openalex publication_date 2005/05/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
AGoogle search conducted on a single Mock Spanish lexical item, "manana," produces an intertextual series comparable to the kind of exposure to multiple tokens of Mock Spanish that English speakers might encounter over a much longer period of time. Tokens of "manana" are consciously associated with Spanish speakers and exhibit a narrow range of "keys," ranging from the jocular to the pejorative. The pejorative senses of /man'yane/ are sometimes accompanied by overtly negative stereotyping of Spanish speakers. The properties of the intertextual series support hypotheses previously developed about the indexical functions of Mock Spanish, a set of lexical items that can be used to create a particular colloquial tone in most varieties of English.