The idea that Chicano English has a low social status is not novel to speakers of the dialect. Ms. Guerra, a San Francisco native who speaks Chicano English, says she feels like people take her less seriously, especially because her “vocabulary and grammar is not good to begin with.” Note that Guerra may think that her vocabulary and grammar is “not good” because she compares to to the standard and what she was taught in school, and does not validate the correctness of her own dialect. Rather than seeing it as a dialect, she thinks she is just not as good in English. Ms. Guerra says that she feels much more comfortable speaking around other people with non-standard dialects, especially her own Chicano dialect. She tries to “play it down” when speaking with Standard English speakers, but there is little difference. For her, as a teenager, there was heavy association with misbehavior, crime, and laziness. This is because the low social status of the dialect results in the speakers being perceived as low in social class.
Perhaps due to this phenomenon, non-speakers and speakers of Chicano English both seem to regard it as a bad thing, and something that should change to strive for Standard English, as supported by the nativist attitude toward Chicano students in California K-12 public schools (Pérez Huber, 2011).
Language is an important marker of group identity or membership (Language, Society, and Culture class notes). To Ms. Guerra, “it is a marker of solidarity, but not in a good way. [...] It makes me [seen as] closer to bad people, like people who are lazy and don’t go to college or do anything.” Still, we tend to emulate language of those with whom we identify (McGuire, dialect). Thus, Ms. Guerra does not emulate Standard English, as she strongly identifies with Latino community in San Francisco, and in her school among her peers. She says “I can tell people are judging me when I talk, but it doesn’t really affect the way I’m going to talk.” This may be because Ms. Guerra has what Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (1998) refer to as a “closed social network” which makes for a higher concentration of vernacular dialect features and perhaps a greater difference from Standard English. Also the “linguistic marketplace,” which designates “the extent to which a speaker’s economic activity necessitates the use of a particular language variety” and can correlate with the closeness to standard language, does not enhance her closeness to Standard English, because her employer and co-workers are bilingual in English and Spanish, and unlike most people, Standard English is not used in her work setting. This is interesting because her use of vernacular dialect does not, like most Chicano speakers, hamper her ability to make gains in the workplace. In this sense, Chicano English is a marker of solidarity not only to her friends and family who share the dialect, …show more content…
For many people, in many places in the U.S. such as Los Angeles, it has historically been an insult to be considered Mexican, with everything from their appearance to their dialect being criticized and stigmatized. Within Chicano communities, however, especially more recently, there is support, celebration, and pride in Mexican heritage (Acuña, Anything But Mexican). This connects with Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (1998)’s concept of “covert prestige,” the
Perhaps due to this phenomenon, non-speakers and speakers of Chicano English both seem to regard it as a bad thing, and something that should change to strive for Standard English, as supported by the nativist attitude toward Chicano students in California K-12 public schools (Pérez Huber, 2011).
Language is an important marker of group identity or membership (Language, Society, and Culture class notes). To Ms. Guerra, “it is a marker of solidarity, but not in a good way. [...] It makes me [seen as] closer to bad people, like people who are lazy and don’t go to college or do anything.” Still, we tend to emulate language of those with whom we identify (McGuire, dialect). Thus, Ms. Guerra does not emulate Standard English, as she strongly identifies with Latino community in San Francisco, and in her school among her peers. She says “I can tell people are judging me when I talk, but it doesn’t really affect the way I’m going to talk.” This may be because Ms. Guerra has what Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (1998) refer to as a “closed social network” which makes for a higher concentration of vernacular dialect features and perhaps a greater difference from Standard English. Also the “linguistic marketplace,” which designates “the extent to which a speaker’s economic activity necessitates the use of a particular language variety” and can correlate with the closeness to standard language, does not enhance her closeness to Standard English, because her employer and co-workers are bilingual in English and Spanish, and unlike most people, Standard English is not used in her work setting. This is interesting because her use of vernacular dialect does not, like most Chicano speakers, hamper her ability to make gains in the workplace. In this sense, Chicano English is a marker of solidarity not only to her friends and family who share the dialect, …show more content…
For many people, in many places in the U.S. such as Los Angeles, it has historically been an insult to be considered Mexican, with everything from their appearance to their dialect being criticized and stigmatized. Within Chicano communities, however, especially more recently, there is support, celebration, and pride in Mexican heritage (Acuña, Anything But Mexican). This connects with Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (1998)’s concept of “covert prestige,” the