Response to "Mexican vs. Chicano Spanish"

In the interest of full disclosure: I was born and raised Chicano, for as much and as little as that entails.

I see a couple of factors that contribute to the problems you are discussing in your blog: 1) The problematic effect of the term "Chicano" applied to a language. 2) A classic case of a social attitude carrying over into the perception of something that should be neutral, in this case language. The effect created by these two problems is that our ability to find valuable extrapolations from this article is greatly reduced. These articles should be useful to us in establishing trends and being able to look for pedagogical ramifications, but the application of such a broadly defined term like Chicano to this data set makes it so diverse that few useful extrapolations can be made from it. Likewise, the introduction of social attitudes into the analysis of language trends complicates the picture to the point where the most you can extract from the data are statements regarding the attitudes themselves.

The definition of the term Chicano is among the most problematic that I have wrestled with. Not only because there is no consensus on the exact parameters of what constitutes a Chicano, but also because it is a term that originated as a form of resistance among a subordinated population. As a result it is a term that has been scorned by both the population being resisted against and by those of the same subordinated population who disagree, for myriad reasons I won't try to document, with at least some component of the resistance of Chicanos. The problematic nature of the term Chicano is exemplified in the readings you reference in this blog. Rosaura Sanchez is very liberal with her use of the term, applying it essentially to all Mexican-Americans who were born north of the border. In contrast, Valdes uses a variety of labels for the same population and makes only indirect reference to Chicanos. I think this leads to a blurring of the lines defining who is saying what about whom, and the intentions/connotations carried therein. In class, Damián expressed that, in his perception, whosoever shall self-identify as Chicano is consequently and necessarily Chicano. This is more restrictive than Sanchez's application of the term, but still posits no qualitative characteristics uniform to the Chicano population other than their own desire to be called Chicano. Consequently, the utility of arguing language to be "Chicano" when founded on such a nondescript definition of that term, as in Sanchez's article, is negligible at best, and probably goes as far as counterproductive.

The blog "Mexican vs. Chicano Spanish" states, "I have met many Mexican Americans that cringe when they hear Chicano Spanish, even more so if they are classified or labeled in the "category", and will often say 'no hables como un Chicano'." This is a classic example of a social attitude manifested in a language attitude. The act of cringing when another person talks is a judgment behavior regarding their language. However, as we see in our linguistic studies, language should be seen as a value neutral means of expression. No dialect of a language is worth more than another. A person's reality is communicated through their language. Differences in speech (other than those attributable to developmental differences) usually reflect reality differences. When someone says don't speak like a Chicano, the logical question to ask is, why not? What is implied is that it being Chicano is inferior to being Mexican. Whether you agree with the implication or not, it is easy to see that this is a situation where the judgment of the Chicano person is more important than the judgment of language. In my opinion, this judgment of language provides nothing to the linguistic picture of Southwest Spanish other than to emphasize the compounded discrimination faced by heritage language learners in their effort to learn the language that belongs to them every bit as much as it belongs to a native speaker from any Spanish-speaking nation.

In my opinion, the value of Sanchez's article is diminished by such a nondescript and problematic term for her language set. Doing so doubly plagues her article. On the one hand it leaves the data set broad to the point that few concrete extrapolations can be made from it, and on the other it invites all of the scrutiny that has been independently extended to the term Chicano. It would seem that only in the case of substantial payoff would one invite such a problematic term into their research.