English

ERIC ED416671: The "Chiquitafication" of U.S. Latinos and Their Languages, OR Why We Need an Anthropolitical Linguistics.

It is proposed that a process of "chiquitafication" has diminished the complexity of the languages and cultures of over 22 million Latinos living in the United States, and that this process has repercussions for their linguistic security, language maintenance, and ultimately, their hopes for a good life. Focus is on three aspects of this process that feed into "Hispanophobia" and discriminatory policies: the construction of a homogeneous "Hispanic community" that refuses to learn English, the belittling of non-Castilian varieties of Spanish, and labeling of second-generation bilinguals as semi- or a-linguals. Linguistic analyses should address the language ideology that shapes language behavior and its evaluation; specifically, discussions of individual or community language loss, shift, or attrition among ethnolinguistic minorities in the United States must analyze linguistic data in relation to the ideology they reflect, that "real" Americans are monolingual English speakers. Recommended is an anthropolitical linguistics that amends both the objectives and methods of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. Contains 49 references. (MSE)

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