"Soy los dos:" Spanish and Identity Among "MexiRicans"
This lecture was co-sponsored by the Language Learning Research Center (LLRC)
Date: Tuesday, April 19th, 2016, 2:30-3:30 PM
Location: Poetry Center, Humanities 2001
Watch: "Soy los dos:" Spanish and Identity Among "MexiRicans"
Lecture Abstract
"MexiRican" individuals grow up in the U.S. with one Mexican parent and one Puerto
Rican parent. What does
their Spanish look like after being exposed to these two distinct dialects from birth?
I explore several features
of their Spanish, including their knowledge of Mexican and Puerto Rican lexicon and
their realizations of coda
/s/ and of multiple /r/. I then describes the ways in which they perform identities
as mixed ethnicity Latinos
and the role that the Spanish language plays in their identities.
About the Speaker: Kim Potowski
Kim Potowski is Associate Professor of Spanish linguistics at the University of Illinois
at Chicago, where she directs the Spanish for heritage speakers program. Her research
focuses on Spanish in the United States, including factors that influence intergenerational
language transmission and change as well as connections between language and ethnic
identity. She has authored, co-authored, and edited works including Heritage language
teaching: Research and practice (McGraw Hill 2014), Language and identity in a dual
immersion school (Multilingual Matters 2007), Language diversity in the USA (Cambridge
University Press 2011), and El español de los Estados Unidos(Cambridge University
Press 2015), as well as numerous journal articles. She currently serves as Executive
Editor of the journal Spanish in Context. Her presentation today draws from her forthcoming
book Inter-Latino language and identity: MexiRicans
in Chicago.