Abstract
This paper analyzes Junot Díaz’s most recent works The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007. The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead) and This is How You Lose Her (2012. This is how you lose her. New York: Riverhead) by using Muysken’s (2000. Bilingual speech. A typology of code-mixing. Cambridge: CUP) typology of code-switching to illustrate the types of language mixing devices present in these two texts. I point out that Díaz’s innovative use of radical bilingualism is not due to the quantity of sentences including Spanish, rather to the quality of mixing and switching in his works. Further, I elaborate on Casielles-Suárez, Eugenia. (2013. Radical code-switching in the Brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 90. 475–487) study using Torres’ (2007. In the contact zone: Code-switching strategies by Latino/a writers. MELUS 32(1). 75–96) categorization of code-switching strategies utilized by U.S. Hispanic authors. I find that instead of Díaz’s texts gratifying the bilingual reader (Torres. 2007. In the contact zone: Code-switching strategies by Latino/a writers. MELUS 32(1). 75–96) or creating radical hybridism (Casielles-Suárez. 2013. Radical code-switching in the Brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 90. 475–487), that these two works illustrate radical bilingualism. In contrast to the majority of U.S. Spanish-English bilingual texts, which incorporate Spanish by using simple insertions, translations, bold font and italics, Díaz creates radically bilingual works by using a variety of Spanish and English varieties, the indirect influence of Spanish in monolingual English sentences, intra-word insertions, a diversity of insertion types and hybrid noun-phrases.
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© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Duration of syllable nuclei in Spanish
- I’ve heard that one before: Phonetic reduction in speech production as a possible contributing factor in perceptual illusory vowel effects
- Radical bilingualism in Junot Díaz’s texts
- Sintaxis y pragmática del ser como focalizador y las seudohendidas en Colombia (Barranquilla)
- De la consecución a la contraexpectación: la construccionalización de lograr/conseguir + infinitivo
- La producción de significado y la construcción de la identidad social en el uso humorístico del lenguaje
- Language ideologies, family language policy, and a changing societal context in Kansas
- Book Reviews
- Dolores Corbella Alejandro Fajardo: Español y portugués en contacto: préstamos léxicos e interferencias
- Sandro Sessarego Fernando Tejedo-Herrero: Spanish Language and Sociolinguistic Analysis
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Duration of syllable nuclei in Spanish
- I’ve heard that one before: Phonetic reduction in speech production as a possible contributing factor in perceptual illusory vowel effects
- Radical bilingualism in Junot Díaz’s texts
- Sintaxis y pragmática del ser como focalizador y las seudohendidas en Colombia (Barranquilla)
- De la consecución a la contraexpectación: la construccionalización de lograr/conseguir + infinitivo
- La producción de significado y la construcción de la identidad social en el uso humorístico del lenguaje
- Language ideologies, family language policy, and a changing societal context in Kansas
- Book Reviews
- Dolores Corbella Alejandro Fajardo: Español y portugués en contacto: préstamos léxicos e interferencias
- Sandro Sessarego Fernando Tejedo-Herrero: Spanish Language and Sociolinguistic Analysis