1998/09/01 by Jane H. Hill · 1 voice · 16 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Multilingual Education and Policy
paper · pdf · doi:10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.680
openalex publication_date 1998/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
White public space is constructed through (1) intense monitoring of the speech of racialized populations such as Chicanos and Latinos and African Americans for signs of linguistic disorder and (2) the invisibility of almost identical signs in the speech of Whites, where language mixing, required for the expression of a highly valued type of colloquial persona, takes several forms. One such form, Mock Spanish, exhibits a complex semiotics. By direct indexicality, Mock Spanish presents speakers as possessing desirable personal qualities. By indirect indexicality, it reproduces highly negative racializing stereotypes of Chicanos and Latinos. In addition, it indirectly indexes "whiteness" as an unmarked normative order. Mock Spanish is compared to White "crossover" uses of African American English. Finally, the question of the potential for such usages to be reshaped to subvert the order of racial practices in discourse is briefly explored.