From ``Spanish-only'' cheap labor to stratified bilingualism: language, markets and institutions on the US-Mexico border
-
Amado Alarcón
and
Josiah Heyman
Abstract
Recent sociolinguistic research adds new economic sectors, such as the service economy, to the list of key forces that shape unequal, dynamic and complex diglossia (e.g., Spanish in the United States). However, little detailed work has been done on the linguistic characteristics of specific labor sectors in the wider contexts of ``debordering'' and ``rebordering''. In this article we develop in depth the market mechanisms and institutional constraints that shape the valuation and social expansion of Spanish in El Paso, Texas. The study finds that in sectors with low skills and low linguistic intensity, linguistic management policies are effectively ``Spanish-only''. However, as skills increase and there is a greater need for regulated communication in the occupational role, more constraints are observed on how Spanish functions in work use and professional careers.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Towards a sociolinguistics of the border
- A borderlands' perspective of language and globalization
- Linguistic landscapes on the other side of the border: signs, language and the construction of cultural identity in Transnistria
- Scripting the border: script practices and territorial imagination among Santali speakers in eastern India
- Determinants of language reproduction and shift in a transnational community
- From Trujillo to the terremoto: the effect of language ideologies on the language attitudes and behaviors of the rural youth of the northern Dominican border
- From ``Spanish-only'' cheap labor to stratified bilingualism: language, markets and institutions on the US-Mexico border
- Competing language ideologies about societal multilingualism among cross-border workers in Luxembourg
- Nationalist border practices: a critical account of how and why an English language classroom on the US/Mexico border reproduces nationalism
- Third border talk: intersubjectivity, power negotiation and the making of race in Spanish language classrooms
- Mobilizing voices and evaluations across representational boundaries – equitably and adequatively
- Book reviews
- Book review
- Book review
- Small languages and small language communities 76
- The Bajjika language and speech community Abhishek Kumar Kashyap
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Towards a sociolinguistics of the border
- A borderlands' perspective of language and globalization
- Linguistic landscapes on the other side of the border: signs, language and the construction of cultural identity in Transnistria
- Scripting the border: script practices and territorial imagination among Santali speakers in eastern India
- Determinants of language reproduction and shift in a transnational community
- From Trujillo to the terremoto: the effect of language ideologies on the language attitudes and behaviors of the rural youth of the northern Dominican border
- From ``Spanish-only'' cheap labor to stratified bilingualism: language, markets and institutions on the US-Mexico border
- Competing language ideologies about societal multilingualism among cross-border workers in Luxembourg
- Nationalist border practices: a critical account of how and why an English language classroom on the US/Mexico border reproduces nationalism
- Third border talk: intersubjectivity, power negotiation and the making of race in Spanish language classrooms
- Mobilizing voices and evaluations across representational boundaries – equitably and adequatively
- Book reviews
- Book review
- Book review
- Small languages and small language communities 76
- The Bajjika language and speech community Abhishek Kumar Kashyap
