First, I would like to thank my family; mother, father, brother and sister who are an important part of my life. Miss Yonatan Puón Castro and Miss Gicela Cuatlapantzi Pichón thank you very much for being part of my Committee and contributing to finish this project well.
Overview 1
Project rationale 2
Significance of the topic 2
The use of more than one language is thus an interesting process to analyze, as well as why people use it even in social networks where people who do not speak both languages can see it. There are thousands of people who live in this situation and it is important to know if they are aware of the use of Spanglish and their perceptions of it because as speakers and even owners of their language they could assimilate in one way and people who are just viewers or listeners could see it in a different way.
Context of the research 3
The areas related to the subject are the following: Linguistics primarily due to the use of words or phrases from both languages, English and Spanish; second, Sociolinguistics to identify factors that allow participants to speak using these language varieties;. Interlanguage was also a vital part of the field because it helped us understand the process involved in the acquisition of a language other than the original language.
Location of the research 4
Furthermore, identity played an important role in the current research because it implies how the person views himself and his language as part of a community and how dense cultural aspects are. Although people live in the US, there is no guarantee that they speak English and Spanish fluently, but they try to use both languages.
Aims 5
Research Questions 6
Chapter summary 6
Chapter number three presents the process I followed to obtain data and analyze it. Firstly, this problem is presented in the second language acquisition process where the participants use a language other than his mother tongue and when these participants use two languages alternatively it is called interlanguage.
Spanglish, Spanish or English? 8
For example, Spanish speakers often start speaking Spanish and take some borrowings from English or vice versa depending on the context. So Spanglish is used by Spanglish speakers with Spanglish speakers, but only under certain conditions.
Learning vs. Acquisition of a Second Language 10
A Hispanic learning English in his native country is not the same as a Hispanic learning English in an Anglo country. It is easy for them to automatically switch from one language to another.
Between Spanish and English, Interlanguage 11
Code-switching and code-mixing 12
Identity as a reason of Spanglish 13
Chapter summary 13
Spanglish is known as a hybrid language or, as Stavans (2002) said, it is only part of the encounter between the Anglo- and Spanish-speaking civilizations. During acquisition, people take words from one language to integrate them into another, and this combination is known to researchers as code-switching.
Overview 15
Participants of the research 15
Methodology of this research 16
Data Collection 16
Each participant had their own texts and the use of highlighted sentences was important to distinguish English from Spanish. These interviews included questions about their background, languages they spoke, their opinion on the use of Spanglish, and I showed them their texts to get an opinion on what they wrote.
Chapter summary 18
Finally, the last section was about their writing, because in this part the interviewer showed participants the text or texts in Spanglish that they had written and they had to give a personal opinion about it, what they noticed and whether they liked it or not. not and why not. Finally, the data were classified and compared in categories previously mentioned to obtain results. This chapter presents results obtained from the data analysis to answer the research questions of this project.
Two fundamental goals were central to this study: first, to investigate the use of Spanglish in social networks and why participants used Spanglish. These responses revealed participants' views on Mexican American people's use of Spanglish, a different viewpoint than researchers and educators such as Lipski (2004), who defines Spanglish as; “This grotesque creation contains not only numerous syntactic code-switching violations, but also phonotactically improbable combinations in both languages…, and phonetic imitation of popular or uneducated Spanish. The results highlighted important aspects of the use of Spanglish, the situations in which it is used and who tends to use it.
Interviews 19
- Participant N° 1 David 20
- Participant N° 2 Tania 20
- Participant N° 3 María 21
- Participant N° 4 Eva 22
- Participant N° 5 Miriam 23
- Participant N° 6 Jimena 24
- Participant N° 7 Isa 24
- Participant N° 8 Omar 25
In the second part, she told me she spoke English and Spanish and she. Her opinion of Spanglish was that it is used by many Mexicans living in the US. She considered that she only used Spanish once a month and didn't really like mixing languages.
She spoke Spanish and learned it because her parents spoke it and learned English at school. She used it where she lived and it was a very important part of her work as a journalist. She was from California, United States, and was living in Ontario at the time of the interview, where she had lived for fifteen years.
Data Collection 26
Words or phrases in Spanish were in red and English in blue, as in the example below, which helped distinguish how much text the participants had mixed up. After that, there were two more tables to separate any words or phrases in Spanish and English to make it easier to analyze the situations when people used them. In order to analyze the written texts in Spanglish, it was necessary to categorize them in order to have a clearer and more understandable analysis in order to obtain reliable results.
To start the analysis it was necessary to divide each text into English and Spanish, so there were two different tables depending on the language. In each table there were 9 categories to compare the two languages and then gave more details to draw a general conclusion. In the following paragraphs we can see how participants switched between Spanish and English when they wrote and according to the categories the reader will compare under which conditions people used more Spanglish.
Describing Situations 28
The sentences included descriptions from different situations and vocabulary that was presented and frequently used so that there were no problems understanding the meaning.
Expressions 29
And the last expression, number 4, might be difficult for people who are not involved in Mexican culture because words like birria, tapatio, el américa, los camoteros, and torta ahogada are difficult to understand if the reader is not familiar with Mexican culture so there is a cultural factor embedded in this sentence. Like the previous expressions, these also showed some attitudes that wanted to show pleasure in the first sentence, love in the second and a strong anger or just to emphasize what comes next in the third expression.
Wishes 30
Feelings 31
Congratulations 31
I love you Sister!& nice with the famm!(: love you :D hope you like the pictures haha (5) Happy birthday grandpa.
Opinion 32
Chapter summary 34
In addition, identity was a very important role on this project, because let's examine the perception of the participants. They confirmed that when they speak in Spanglish, they do it just for fun and if these people could choose one of the two languages, most of them chose Spanish because it represents their roots and their parents' language. However, others were aware of the role that English plays in their lives when they said that English gives people more opportunities and that being bilingual in the US facilitates communication with English speakers.
She only used it with friends and felt that English was just as important as Spanish because of her job. Then, each text was analyzed and categorized according to its usage to identify the reasons why people use Spanglish in their writings. In addition, there are conclusions and interpretations gathered throughout the research process, as well as some limitations and recommendations for further research that I want to consider.
Results 36
RQ1: How is Spanglish used in Social Networks? 37
It is important to mention that one of the important findings was that people who use Social Networks do not have rules to write properly, so when people write in Spanish they write as if they are speaking because of the immediacy of communication through the Internet. English is also used to congratulate a friend, cousin or relative; is introduced more than Spanish. Basically, the decision to write more in English in the above situations is because the participants used English in everyday communication and these uses apply in familiar contexts and with friends, because it is the environment where the participants used.
They probably felt more secure using English because it is necessary when speaking with native people in the US. According to the data in this study, Spanish was used by Mexican Americans because it is their mother tongue and their parents' language. If we analyze the use of Spanish, it is used when expressing feelings because participants felt more confident and probably had more words to express themselves.
RQ2: What are Hispanic people´s opinions about the use of Spanglish in
However, the use of Spanish differs from their use of English because some Spanish words are only used in Mexican contexts, such as Primero Dios, sigule echando ganas, a darle con todo!. Others felt that using Spanglish was important because it allowed them to keep Spanish alive. Almost all the participants adopted Spanglish because it is normal for them to immerse themselves in both languages.
So the data show that context is part of Spanish usage because it also determines whether a person should use one or the other language correctly. For example, David who was a soccer player said that his use of Spanish was just for fun and for fluency. In contrast, Miriam's context was completely different because her work as a journalist meant using Spanish and English in an appropriate and comprehensible way.
Limitations of the Research 40
Suggestions for Further Research 40
Personal Reflection of the Research Experience 41
Interviewer: And do you think you and your friends are the only ones who speak Spanglish? Can you read these texts and tell me; What do you notice and think about this?
