Spanglish and its Utilization Within the Classroom

 The use of Spanglish in the American classroom has not only become common practice but is also proving itself to be a useful tool, especially in classes with younger students. School populations are becoming more and more diverse, and creating the best possible learning environments for all students in bilingual classrooms is immensely important. Not only is Spanglish proving itself to be beneficial for children, but also for teachers who, at any moment, may have to switch back and forth between different languages in response to the students present or even the classroom environment. These kinds of situations as well as a teacher's performance in handling them were documented by researchers and authors Kathryn Henderson and Mitch Ingram. 

To ensure Spanglish is being presented to students in an effective way, the proper tools must be utilized to ensure students become both interested and encouraged in viewing Spanglish as an acceptable means of communication.

With the language's growth and ever-increasing visibility in recent years, children's picture books containing elements of or being written fully in Spanglish have increased greatly. One that utilizes Spanglish effectively and incorporates Hispanic culture is Los Gatos Black on Halloween by Marisa Montes and Yuyi Morales. The story following the activities of children's favorite Halloween creatures will grab the attention of younger students, meanwhile the darker art depicting scenes influenced by Dia De Los Muertos will attract older students as well. 

It is also important to remember, however, that for as many supporters of Spanglish there are, so too exist just as many detractors. If teachers are willing to incorporate Spanglish in their classrooms, they have to be aware of potential risks. Authors Sharon Chappell and Christian Faltis have done a deep dive into several Spanglish children's books and found that many contain potentially harmful messages aimed at kids, like the notion that they are betraying their cultures by adopting Spanglish over their native language.

Spanglish has only gained popularity and visibility in recent years, and for teachers to truly be able to create comfortable and effective learning spaces for diverse classrooms, the implementation of Spanglish is becoming necessary in schools.

Assimilation Through Spanglish in "The House on Mango Street"

 Sandra Cisneros' "The House on Mango Street" is a series of vignettes that account for the individual experiences of the author as a child growing up in a Spanish-speaking community while living in an English-speaking country. The intermixing of English and Spanish has led to the hybrid language of Spanglish. Spanglish has become a marker of identity for a specific group of people, Hispanic immigrants looking to assimilate to English culture. It is this deliberate attempt to assimilate that distincts them from native speakers. Esperanza, our narrator-protagonist, begins to reject her Spanish culture once assessing her reality as a young woman in America. She villifies her language and culture and prioritizes English. 

Cisneros depicts the unique experiences of Hispanic immigrants that reveals the universal feeling of otherness which drives our narrator to a point of assimilation. The author highlights the growing want for sameness from Esperanza into English cultural norms beginning with language. The use of Spanglish is deliberate and helps further the author's themes of race, identity, gender, class, etc. There is cultural context intertwined with the use of language. 

                                                                

Regina Betz discusses the clashing of cultures and identity in "The House of Mango Street" through language. Betz begins her discussion of language by reiterating the importance of the methods in which people communicate. Language reveals key information about someone's identity especially ethnic background. Esperanza utilizes Spanglish, a particular and deliberate choice to use this hybrid language, a direct product from surrounding influences. In this case, Esperanza uses Spanglish to fit into her environment as she mirrors the lingual habits of those around her. Spanglish, in this context, is seen as a point of pride, openly celebrating the community's ability to be from 'neither here nor there,' not exclusively "Mexican" or "American." Esperanza sees this from a different perspective as her Catholic school offers her "English-only" experiences. This calls her identity into question as she struggles between her English tongue and her Spanish roots. The author uses diction to villify Spanish as it keeps her from assimilating and identifying as English-only, glorifying her end goal of assimilation.

Jayne Marek  begins the discussion of assimilation through the explanation of essentialism. Essentialism is the belief that all things must exist within a predetermined set of guidelines that will be followed and stand the test of time. This belief is perpetuated through Esperanza's Catholic school education, the root of her identity crisis. The exposure an American education offers Esperanza an insight on the ways Hispanic and Chicano culture is perceived by non-minorities. Thus she begins 'code-switching' speaking perfect English around her classmates and then reverting to Spanglish and Chicano slang when she's back in her vecindario. The "otherness" effect brought on by her Catholic education and the way it perpetuates Esperanza's assimilation further beyond her use of Spanglish.

The Validity of African American English in Langston Hughes' "Mother to Son"

 

The utilization of African American English in Langston Hughes’ beloved poem “Mother to Son” reveals the validity of the English language variation, which is spoken largely by African Americans.  African American English is utilized to celebrate one’s cultural identity, which cannot be denied. For many years, it has been at the center of conversations because of its stigma. In other words, African American English has been viewed in our society as improper and bad. That is not the case.

Hughes’ poem revolves around a mother encouraging her son to overcome and triumph in his life as a human being in America, whose skin is black. The poem contains features of African American English. He starts off the stanza with: “Where there ain’t been no light.” “There ain’t been” is a phrase that can be viewed as improper, based on the ideology of Standard English. The way that Hughes structured that phrase reveals his attempt to break free of a race-degrading grip that society has had on the African American cultural identity in his time. 

In our society, people have judged others based on how they speak. If someone read “Mother to Son”, one would probably think that the language is not proper. To them, proper English equals Standard English. Standard English is what one has been used to learning in school. If an African American student said “It ain’t” and a teacher corrects you to say, “It is not”, the latter exemplifies the utilization of Standard English. However, correcting a student, especially one who is African American, is letting one know that using African American English is wrong. Doing that tears down an integral part of one’s identity. Those who study linguistics acknowledges the negativity that has come towards African American English and do not downgrade the language. 

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz explains that students do not perform well when they do not utilize Standard English in schools. However, Sealey-Ruiz points out that the teachers’ negative perception of African American English is a huge factor of students failing in school, based on the language they utilize (Sealey-Ruiz 39). Sealey-Ruiz connects this to a truth that can make some people very uncomfortable. The negative perception of African American English is a result of racism. It is racism that has perpetuated the myth about African American English being inappropriate to use in our society.

The points that Ruiz have made aligns with Hughes’ poem, based on the poet’s decision to utilize African American English. There are other phrases throughout the poem like “there ain’t” and “I’se” that exemplifies what the language is. Hughes’ decision to write “Mother to Son” may come off as being out of place, in terms of speech.  However, Hughes’ decision to write those phrases instead of “There has not” and “I see” was not only an attempt to break free of society’s racially divisive grip on the African American cultural identity. It was also a way for Hughes to tap into the American consciousness to know that African American English reflects one’s reality. Not only that, but it also solidifies a truth that the Standard English ideology tries to bury.

April Baker-Bell reiterated an argument that has evidence to back up. That is every language spoken by a human being has a grammatical system and rules (Bell 72). In other words, the language is valid to utilize. This truth aligns with Hughes’ utilization of African American English in “Mother to Son”. It is because his choices of words and structure in the poem reflects the language's validity that Baker-Bell underscored.

The poem has found a way to convey emotion. That is because of the power of African American English. It mirrors the experience of someone who is not just black, but a human being.  Hughes’ choice to utilize the language does not diminish its importance. It broadens the awareness of its validity. 

 Carl Van Vechten, Langston Hughes. Poetry Foundation.

Teaching Spanglish in the Classroom: "Mango, Abuela, and me"

    The role of Spanglish in the social and academic lives of Spanish-speaking students is something that needs to be embraced and taught in the classroom. Teaching Spanish and it's history must start at the elementary level so that students are exposed to this type of language early. Stavans verbalizes the point that Spanglish is an acceptable form of a dialect. This author has been fighting for this point to be taken seriously for over a decade and has received a lot of criticism for it. In order to get his point across, Stavans discusses the history of Spanglish and how English and Spanish have come to share linguistic tensions. He also discusses his own particular methods on how to incorporate Spanglish into a classroom and emphasizes the importance of validating Spanglish for bilingual students.

    Teaching elementary students early on about Spanglish through literature allows them to become exposed early to this form of dialect that they will most likely hear at one point in their lives. Spanglish comes with a lot of stigma and it is important to fight that stigma since it is a valid dialect as said by linguists. Medina and Dominguez have written a book that depicts Spanglish being used throughout a family. In this book, a little girl named Mia lives in the city with her parents. Her grandmother who is from a different country moves in with her. The pair struggles to communicate due to the language barrier because the grandmother only speaks Spanish and Mia only speaks Spanish. The two come up with a different way to learn each other’s language by using their pet Parrot. This book discusses Spanglish and generational language barriers. This book also emphasizes the importance of Spanglish as a method of communication and the language barriers that often form between generations. 

    

According to the study led by Ramón Antonio Ramirez, he provides evidence that reports findings from a qualitative study of Spanish-English code-switching. In order to conduct this study, Martinez used a group of Latino sixth graders who all spoke in Spanglish to get his results. This article uses the research to defend Spanglish and makes the point that embracing it can actually help students in the classroom. Martinez makes two points with evidence from this study which are that students were able to ‘display an impressive adeptness at shifting voices for different audiences, and communicating subtle shades of meaning.’ Therefore, students' literacy skills were actually improving from the use of Spanglish contrary to the belief that the use of Spanglish will actually confuse students and not help their literacy skills in any way. 

    Souto-Manning offers a lot of insight into what strategies teachers can use when teaching students from immigrant and diverse families. Often these students will speak different languages and have different backgrounds.  The book emphasizes three paradigms which shape early education of children who are immigrants. These three are inferiority, cultural deprivation, and cultural difference. Souto-Manning discusses how these paradigms affect children and how educators can work to make sure these issues are addressed in the classroom and in their lessons. Teaching Mango, Abuela, and Me can help with these cultural barriers and validate student's language and dialects. 

Cultural Representation in Black Language and Schuyler’s Black No More

 As learned in class, black language, also known as AAVE or black English, has developed controversy in conversations debating the vernacular’s validity within the system’s linguistic competence. In my annotated bibliography, I discuss how the justification of black language as inaccurate English is rationalizing the social prejudices and misconceptions that the world places on the African American dialect and community. Racism against African Americans is undeniably an international issue, but within the history of the United States, in particular, American society promptly undervalues the various creations that develop through the Afro-American communities; one of these creations being the black language. The bibliography focuses on this creation through George S. Schuyler’s fiction novel Black No More, which uses black language as an aspect of the distinction between black and white communities as the main character and others’ transform from African American to Caucasian through newly-found scientific discovery. With this novel as the main text and with various texts based on black language and community, I attempt to deliver the idea that the problem that individuals have with black vernacular is subject to misconceptions about the African Americans and how its correctness is questioned only because of how society perceives the black community.

Sources in the annotated bibliography maintain or develop on the validation and connection between black social communities and vernacular. Black No More expands on the subject presenting how literature applies the vernacular features of black language to design distinctiveness, separation, and exclusivity within American cultures and society.

When someone undervalues the dialect of a particular group, it also undervalues the community as a whole. In one of the sources of the annotated bibliography, John Wideman, a novelist and writer of ‘Defining the Black Voice in Fiction’, explains the depiction of black language in the context of writing dialect in fiction. Speech in fiction is determined solely through context, but Wideman feels as though the black language needs approval under linguistic conventions and systems. Wideman bases his understanding of black vernacular in literature stating that  “black speech like any other variety of language defines reality for its users” (Wideman 562) under the priori which devalues it (559). In another source by Rosina Lippi-Green, the writer of ‘The Real Trouble with Black Language’, discusses how the stereotypes under the African American community impact the acceptance of black vernacular as a legitimate dialect. Lippi-Green focuses on a variety of subjects surrounding the controversy of black language, though the stereotypical aspect of the problem is one of the subjects appropriate for the argument. The main discovery of the writing maintains the idea of the “general unwillingness to accept the speakers of that language and the social choices they have made as viable and functional” (Lippi-Green 209), between America, the black community, and the need for minority groups to have some course of distinction due to social exclusion.

 What some linguists and doubters don’t consider when examining black language is the historical affairs of black vernacular and how black language has a prominent position in America, which retrogresses to slavery and the refusal to teach the English Language to African Americans during that time. Moreover, the acknowledgment of black language didn’t become a topic of linguistic conversation until desegregation and the vernacular became prominent in the educational and workspaces. These important factors contrast with the primary text but are still prominent points that account for the validation and acceptance of the black language in America. Black language is more than slang or internet talk, it is an assertion of history that reverts from the roots of America that progresses and maintains unity through social and political power.

Jevon Melvin

The Paradoxes of American Citizenship in Claudia Rankine's "Citizen"

Glenn Ligon, Untitled: Four Etchings, 1992. Republished in Claudia Rankine's Citizen.

In Citizen: An American Lyric, poet Claudia Rankine uses language as the medium through which to display the inherent contradictions sewn into United States identity politics. In doing so, her collection of “microaggressions” demonstrates both a microcosmic, if not insidious form of racial violence -- perhaps making it quintessentially lyrical as the subtitle suggests -- while paradoxically evaluating the long term political and social effects of such daily acts of racism.

Rankine begins one of the opening passages in Citizen by recalling a conversation between two friends: “A friend argues that Americans battle between the ‘historical self’ and the ‘self self.’” In a way, the battle between historical self and the self self serves as the current that runs through the collection, though it quickly reveals itself to be much less a battle -- two entities at odds -- than it is two sides of the same coin. It is, in other words, the inherent paradox of American citizenship. Indeed, the topic of American citizenship -- the historical and individual “self” -- serves as the site of abundant scholarship, including Dennis Preston’s accounts of American identity formation through language. He outlines such fundamental contradictions in the perpetuation of a standard US English, arguing that its propagation functionally promoted a “unified” American culture, while concurrently “othering” those deemed unrepresentative of such cultural illusions.

Moreover, the dichotomy between the historical and individual selves is perhaps typified in the strategically placed microaggression on the following page. In it, Rankine chronicles an instance wherein a nosy neighbor calls the police on a house-sitter over suspicion of his presence at the house. The poem culminates in an interaction between the ambiguous “you” -- the owner of the house -- and the house-sitter: 

...you clumsily tell your friend that the next time he wants to talk on the phone he should just go in the backyard. He looks at you a long minute before saying he can speak on the phone wherever he wants. Yes, of course, you say. Yes, of course.

At once, this passage functionally displays the dichotomy between the individual and historical selves -- the fundamental differences that mark the lived experiences of Americans depending on their race. Simultaneously, it reveals what Ben Lerner refers to as Rankine’s deliberately interchangeable “you,” about which he argues, “Citizen’s concern with how race determines when and how we have access to pronouns is, among many other things, a direct response to the Whitmanic (and nostalgist) notion of a perfectly exchangeable ‘I’ and ‘you’ that can suspend all difference.” In other words, Rankine forces her reader to confront the historical or “unified” self, which is, at best, illusory in nature. Upon deliberation, she implicitly summarizes this ultimately monolithic perception of the American “you,” writing, “And though your joined personal histories are supposed to save you from misunderstandings, they usually cause you to understand all too well what is meant.” 

Paradoxically, Rankine seems to suggest that, if anything, these microaggressions -- these implicit, often subtle forms of racial violence -- are what perpetually mark the “historical self,” or the American identity. Indeed, as Preston corroborates, it is through the subtleties of cultural whitewashing and linguistic discrimination wherein America’s historical identity is built. The lived experiences of the self self are thus marked by the “othering” at the heart of the American historical self. Citizen ultimately makes this dichotomy obvious through its subversive use of the “you,” demonstrating that it can never be interchangeable with “I.”

The Use of Trinidadian English

Trinidadian English is a dialect of English that was formed in Trinidad. There are many differences between Trinidadian English and Modern English. That being said, it is important that we study this dialect of English in order to determine the similarities and differences between the two.  

In 1981, Merle Hodge released a novel, Crick, Crack Monkey. In this novel, she would explore the life of a young girl who had grown up in Trinidad. At a very young age, the main character, Tee, would lose both of her parents. Her mother had passed away during child-birth. Then, her father would immigrate to England and leave Tee and her brother behind. Tee would then be thrown into a custody battle between her Aunt Beatrice, who is from the middle-class, and her Aunt Tantie, who is living in the lower-class. This battle will distort Tee's views of her culture. After winning a scholarship, Tee is forced to go live with her Aunt Beatrice because her Aunt Beatrice has the means necessary to support Tee's success. Beatrice has her own children that she wants to succeed and when Tee comes to live with them, Beatrice is nowhere near inviting. This change makes Tee question herself and how she has grown up. When Tee moves in with her Aunt Beatrice, readers are met with glimpses of racism towards Tee. Tee soon finds herself wondering if who she is is good enough. Ultimately, she falls into an identity crisis. 

In 2018, Kiesha Tamara Lindsay submitted her dissertation to Howard University in order to earn her degree: Doctor of Philosophy. For this dissertation, she explored the phonological features of children who speak Trinidadian English. This source connects directly with Merle Hodge's Crick, Crack Monkey considering Lindsay will explain the knowledge gaps that are associated with children who speak Trinidadian English. In the novel, Beatrice did not know that there was knowledge gaps associated with children who speak Trinidadian English. Even though Tee earned the scholarship all on her own, Beatrice still thought of Tee as someone from the lower class, someone who was different from Beatrice's own family. Lindsay explains how children in Trinidad grow up speaking Trinidadian English Creole until they are of school age where they begin speaking primarily Trinidadian English. With this, she notes, "In everyday life, Trinidadian children engage in code-mixing of both varieties" (Lindsay 4). This is more than likely what Tee had experienced growing up. However, Beatrice's family is a great representation of the many different dialects that are spoken in Trinidad. Since Tee speaks a dialect that is different from what Beatrice's family speaks, she is seen as less educated and therefore below themselves. It is odd how whenever someone speaks a different dialect, they are seen as less educated. In reality, people who speak other languages should be seen as more educated because they know more than one language. With this, the main character in Crick, Crack Monkey, Tee, is a prime example of someone who speaks a different dialect who is very well educated. Considering Tee had won a very competitive scholarship, it is clear that speaking a different language does not equal being uneducated.