Digging Deeper

    One of my central concerns in our reading of various studies of "Southwest" or "Chicano" Spanish is what neat little packages are produced as a result of the studies. We have seen several efforts to catalogue phenomena present in a generalized language group, each of which produces useful and interesting results, even if never truly attending to the motivational complexity intrinsic in language employment. Missing from the discussion of language in the Southwest is its nature as contingent on a constructed identity. It has been mentioned in several articles that language is a signifier of identity; this has been done to this point without a significant exploration of this relational nature nor the implications of hybridity at more than a superficial level.

    It is important to understand the constructedness of identity in this target population-- which find themselves along the continuum of interstitiality between resistant and acquiescent to myriad hegemonic agents influential in identity formation. Chican@s situate themselves historically among colonizers and colonized, belonging to a class long steeped in both the winning and losing side of the struggle for cultural primacy. What makes the Chican@ unique, in that sense, is that unlike the Mexican mestizo in diaspora, the Chican@ finds himself caught between currents that transcend generational limits. Chican@ "authenticity" is always in question because it is not germane to any geospatial context. Whereas a characteristic of a Mexican can be attributed to "the way things are in Mexico" just the same way as the characteristic of an Anglo can be pawned off as "Americanness", the Chican@ as an identity is further complicated by the lack of geospatial authenticity that has plagued it since it was "from Mexico" and will continue to do so until it reasserts its primacy as an identity or folds itself into the proverbial hegemonic "melting pot".

    The question of geospatial authenticity may be less influential in the case of New Mexicans who reside in their "querencia", a term used affectionately to describe their homeland. To be certain, residence in a given place for longer than the scope of the collective memory is foundational in the establishment of "authenticity". However, there are myriad influences at work in hybridity, not the least of which concern economic status, sexuality, religion, gender, power, and relational identity in an area of contact between more than one culture. While these are all factors that are important in the formation of identity universally, the elusiveness of their definition is further exacerbated by the complex "mixed" nature of Chican@s as a mestizo people. The classic testament to this can be seen in definitions of what it means to be Chican@ as posited by Gloria Anzaldúa, Oscar "Zeta" Acosta, Sandra Cisneros, and Richard Rodriguez.

    I'll conclude my thought on the problematic nature of identity as it relates to language employment in Chican@ context, by acknowledging the limitations of what can be accomplished in a blog. My rumination over this topic is intended only to shed light on the superficiality and overgeneralization of clumping the "Southwest" into an ostensibly homogeneous group, not to assert some authority or even "new" perspective on this topic.