IntraLatino Language and Identity

The increasing diversity of the U.S. Latino population has given rise to a growing population of “mixed” Latinos. This is a study of such individuals raised in Chicago, Illinois who have one Mexican parent and one Puerto Rican parent, most of whom call themselves “MexiRicans.” Given that these two varieties of Spanish exhibit highly salient differences, these speakers can be said to experience intrafamilial dialect contact. The book first explores the lexicon, discourse marker use, and phonological features among two generations of over 70 MexiRican speakers, finding several connections to parental dialect, neighborhood demographics, and family dynamics. Drawing from critical mixed race theory, it then examines MexiRicans’ narratives about their ethnic identity, including the role of Spanish features in the ways in which they are accepted or challenged by monoethnic, monodialectal Mexicans and Puerto Ricans both in Chicago and abroad. These findings contribute to our understandings of dialect contact, U.S. Spanish, and the role of language in ethnic identity.

James Stanford, Dartmouth College:
IntraLatino Language and Identity: MexiRican Spanish is an impressive, state-of-the-art investigation of Spanish dialect contact within Mexican/Puerto Rican families in the U.S. In this innovative study of intrafamilial contact, Potowski analyzes a diverse and detailed linguistic data set using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her results provide new contributions toward theoretical and empirical issues in sociolinguistics, including dialect contact and acquisition, the role of ethnicity, phenotype, migration, generational change, and construction of identity. Integrating her analyses on multiple linguistic levels (lexical items, discourse markers, phonology, clustering of linguistic features), Potowski provides timely perspectives on Spanish contact in the U.S. The book is clear, well informed, and thoroughly researched -- an authoritative, state-of-the-art source on Spanish dialect contact that will be valuable not only for linguistics, but also sociology, social psychology, anthropology, critical mixed race studies, cultural studies, area studies, and many other related disciplines