Spanglish - Linguistic Relativity

Linguistic Relativity

In Mexico and the southwestern U.S., Spanglish speakers are called Pochos (said of Mexicans that adopt customs or manners of the people of the United States of America, according to the dictionary of the Spanish language of the Real Academia Española). English-influenced Spanish is called mocho, "mutilated", "amputated".

The use of Spanglish has evolved over time. It has emerged as a way of conceptualizing one's thoughts whether it be in speech or on paper. This has been seen in Chicano/a literature as well as in speech patterns. Refer to the below section for examples of Spanglish dialogue. One example of this is seen in Chicana feminist writer Gloria Anzaldua's wiki link piece titled Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers wiki link. In it she utilizes Spanglish as a means of identifying stereotypes of minorities. It reads: "They know how to treat a man in bed, the flat faced Chicana or Indian, passively lying on her back, being fucked by the Man a la La Chingada." In this particular text Anzaldua utilizes both Spanglish and another blending of languages with the inclusion of a la. This use of Spanglish in literary writing identifies a key piece of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis conceptualized by scholars Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and Benjamin Lee Whorf. In this particular theory they built upon one another's ideas which sum up to address the idea that the language we speak determines how we conceptualize the world. An example would be how in English we may identify a propane tank as being empty, yet if struck by a hard object, it may still explode. But since the use of the word empty implies an absence of matter, or anything at all, we assume there is nothing present within the propane tank. This example provides insight on how Spanglish works. By utilizing and blending different languages within the same dialogue people give themselves the freedom to communicate their thoughts more concisely. With the notion being that Spanish words such as La Chingada carry more context then aggressively, or intensely. The Sapir- whorf hypothesis elaborates on how our thinking is influenced by our language. With the case of literary writing, our thinking becomes textualized by the words we used, influenced by our language.