Las Voces del Pueblo:
Latino Languages and Identities
By the year 2005, Hispanics/Latinos will become the largest minority in
the United States. Despite dissimilarities in political histories, immigration
patterns, and obstacles to progress, the peoples who make up this sector of
society are generally regarded as a homogenous group, due to their common usage
of the Spanish language. In Las Voces del Pueblo: Latino Languages
and Identities, the book-in-progress of Ana Celia Zentella, the current
SAR resident scholar investigates how the features of Spanish and English regional
and class dialects alternately harden and blur boundaries as a new pan-US Latino
identity is forged.
"Latinos use their bilingual and multidialectal
repertoire to contest popular notions about how 'American' they are, in ways
that contribute to a more diverse and united nation," says Zentella. "This
book will address the way in which the unity of Latinos is facilitated by widespread
acknowledgement of Spanish as their common language, at the same time that their
distinct varieties of Spanish proclaim their allegiance to a particular national
origin."
"There is no doubt that the various dialects of
the Spanish language are mutually intelligible," Zentella explains, "but
ignoring the differences contributes to what I have called 'chiquita-fication.'" This
process diminishes the complexity of Latino languages and cultures in the United
States, obscures their distinct ways of structuring reality, facilitates the
racialization of Latinos, and feeds into a Hispanophobia which calls for increasing
control over Spanish and Spanish speakers.
Zentella conducted ethnographic research that included
over 270 sociolinguistic interviews with members of New York's principle Latino
communities-Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, and Colombians. The final study
will also include Mexicans.
In addition to Las Voces del Pueblo,
Zentella has worked on another book while at SAR, A Spanish Apple for
the Teacher: The Verbal and Literacy Skills of Latino Children. This
project describes the dialects of Spanish and English spoken by the major Spanish-speaking
groups in the United States, and suggests ways to resolve the language-related
problems of Latino children in school.
Affiliation at time of award: Professor of Black and Puerto Rican Studies
at Hunter College, and in the doctoral programs in Anthropology, Developmental
Psychology, and Linguistics at the Graduate Center, City University of
New York.
Return to Resident Scholars 1998-1999.
