Capstone Topic

1. Title: Linguistic Discrimination: The Uses of Spanish Creating Anti-Spanish Attitudes
2. Bibliography

           Hill, Jane H.

1998 Language, Race, and White Public Space. American anthropologist, 100(3): 680-689

           Hill, Jane H.

1993 Hasta La Vista, Baby: Anglo Spanish in the American Southwest. Critique of Anthropology 13:145-176.

            Ledford, Katherine

1998 Review of English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. Appalachian Journal 26(1):46-49.

Lippi-Green, Rosina

1997 English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge.

Mendoza-Denton, Norma
        1999 Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology of US Latinos. Annual Review of Anthropology 28: 375-395.

Page, Helan E., and Brooke Thomas

1994 White Public Space and the Construction of White Privilege in U.S. Health Care: Fresh Concepts and a New Model of Analysis. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 8: 109-1 1 6.

             Rubin, D.L.

1992 Nonlanguage Factors Affecting Undergraduates’ Judgements of Nonnative English-Speaking Teaching Assistants. Research in Higher Education 33:511-531.

   

      3. Elevator Pitch:

      The use of language is important in how we communicate with one another. Although, when the use of language is used in forms to mock or discriminate, it beings to reflect a certain attitude about the speakers of that language. The focus for this project is the uses of Spanish; from foreign accents to ‘Mock-Spanish’ in our society and how these could be used as a form of discrimination and creating certain attitudes towards the Spanish speaking community. Even if this type of discrimination is not acknowledged by the speakers of mock Spanish, by ignoring these uses one could begin to develop anti-Spanish attitudes without even realizing.

 4. Theory:

           The theory I used to influence this project was this Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis of linguistic relativity that theorized  an individual’s actions and thoughts were determined by the languages they speak.  This relates to some of the viewpoints certain speakers who use mock Spanish actually have about Spanish speakers even if they do not realize it. Also Bambi B. Schieffelin and Elinor Ochs’s theory of Language Socialization is another theory that will be used to guide my thinking and better understanding of the uses of Spanish both in a positive and negative manner. Schieffelin and Ochs considered two ways for language socialization which were; socialization through the language and socialization of the use of the language. This relates to my project with the idea that when Spanish is used properly it can convey this sociocultural knowledge by using Spanish to socialize but when use in ‘Mocking Spanish’ it gives a different perspective of how the mocker views that speaking group. Another theory I plan to use is Helan E. Page, and Thomas Brooke’s theory of White Public Space, which are practices of a racializeing hegemony, in which Whites are invisibly normal and the implication to those who do not fit in this white public space norm. Finally I plan to add Elinor Ochs’s Indexicality and Socialization article about the physiological theory of indirect and direct indexes that produces nonreferential meanings or “indexes’ that are understood and acknowledged by speakers. The speakers of mock Spanish have this ‘cogenial persona’ better said as these racist images of members of historically Spanish-speaking populations, which makes the mocking funny in the first place.