The gradual loss of mood distinctions in Los Angeles Spanish

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Silva-Corvalán
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Gradual Loss ◽  
Diachronic Development

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on a change affecting Spanish in contact with English in the United States: namely, simplification and loss of Subjunctive (Sub) mood morphology. Conversational data from 17 Mexican-American bilinguals living in the eastern section of Los Angeles are analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The speakers represent three different immigrant groups, according to length of family stay in the United States. The variation between Indicative (Ind) and Sub usage attested in the Spanish-speaking world results from the continuing modifications which have affected the distribution of Ind and Sub forms through the diachronic development of Spanish: previously obligatory contexts for the use of Sub are now categorically Ind or allow both Sub and Ind to different degrees across social and geographic parameters. In the Spanish of Los Angeles, the internal tendencies toward a reduction of the obligatory use of the Sub are strengthened, as may be expected in a situation of language contact in which obligatory contexts for the use of a form are more resistant to change than those that allow a selection between two or more forms with closely related meanings.

Forging Aztecness: Twentieth-Century Mexican Musical Nationalism in Twenty-First Century Los Angeles

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 127-146
Author(s):  
KRISTINA F. NIELSEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Cultural Frameworks ◽  
Music Research ◽  
Siglo Xx

Abstract (Spanish/English)Forjando el Aztecanismo: Nacionalismo Musical Mexicano del Siglo XX en el siglo XXI en Los ÁngelesHoy en día, un creciente número de músicos mexico-americanos en los Estados Unidos tocan instrumentos indígenas mesoamericanos y réplicas arqueológicas, lo que se conoce como “Música Azteca.” En este artículo, doy a conocer cómo los músicos contemporáneos de Los Ángeles, California, recurren a los legados de la investigación musical nacionalista mexicana e integran modelos antropológicos y arqueológicos aplicados. Al combinar el trabajo de campo etnográfico con el análisis histórico, sugiero que los marcos musicales y culturales que alguna vez sirvieron para unir al México pos-revolucionario han adquirido una nuevo significado para contrarrestar la desaparición del legado indígena mexicano en los Estados Unidos.Today a growing number of Mexican-American musicians in the United States perform on Indigenous Mesoamerican instruments and archaeological replicas in what is widely referred to as “Aztec music.” In this article, I explore how contemporary musicians in Los Angeles, California, draw on legacies of Mexican nationalist music research and integrate applied anthropological and archeological models. Pairing ethnographic fieldwork with historical analysis, I suggest that musical and cultural frameworks that once served to unite post-revolutionary Mexico have gained new significance in countering Mexican Indigenous erasure in the United States.

The Los Angeles "Zoot Suit Riots" Revisited: Mexican and Latin American Perspectives

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Griswold del Castillo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Origin ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
Zoot Suit

The so-called Zoot Suit riots in Los Angeles in June of 1943 made Latin Americans more aware of the negative racial attitudes within the United States toward Mexicans. Through the publicity surrounding the riots, they also first learned of the existence of a large ethnic group of Mexican origin. This knowledge, however, often came with an additional message that the Mexican American culture was not worthy of esteem by respectable people. / Los disturbios llamados "Zoot-Suit" que ocurrieron en Los Angeles en Junio 1943 hizo saber a los latino americanos que las actitudes de los norteamericanos hacia los mexicanos no eran muy positivas. A través de la publicidad durante los disturbios, aprendieron por la primera vez de la existencia de un gran grupo étnico de origen mexicano en los Estados Unidos. Desgraciadamente esta información vino con otro mensaje que la cultura de los mexicoamericanos no era digna de honor por la supuesta gente decente.

Uh, bueno, em … : Filled pauses as a site of contact-induced change in Boston Spanish

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Erker ◽  
Joanna Bruso
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Filled Pauses ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Linguistic Inquiry ◽  
A Site ◽  
Do So

AbstractThere is mounting evidence that the filled pauses that pervade spontaneous speech constitute a rich site of linguistic inquiry. The present study uses a comparative variationist method to explore possible effects of language contact on pause behavior, examining 3810 filled pauses produced by 24 Spanish-speaking residents of Boston, Massachusetts. Interspeaker differences in pause behavior correlate with intensity of contact. Participants who have lived in the United States for a larger fraction of their lives, who use English more frequently, and who do so more proficiently fill pauses differently when speaking Spanish than do those who have spent less time in the contact setting and whose English skills and usage are more restricted. Results show that a greater degree of contact corresponds to increased use of centralized vowels in phonologically filled pauses (i.e., more frequent use of [a(m)] and [ə(m)] at the expense of [e(m)]). This pattern is interpreted as evidence of contact-induced change.

Caged Birds

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Lytle Hernández
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Ground Zero ◽  
Mexican Community ◽  
History Of ◽  
Immigrant Detention ◽  
The U.S

The fifth chapter continues to chart the rise of Mexican and Mexican American incarceration in the United States. Like Magon’s rebellion, it is a tale that unfolded in Los Angeles and across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Like the history of immigrant detention, it is a story about the collision of deportation and incarceration. But in particular, Chapter 5 examines how, during the 1920s and 1930s, the politics of controlling Mexican immigration to the United States directly prompted the criminalization of unauthorized border crossings and, in turn, triggered a steady rise in the number of Mexicans imprisoned within the United States. Home to the largest Mexican community within the United States, Los Angeles was ground zero for the politics and practices of Mexican incarceration in these years.

Self-Reports of Spousal Violence in a Mexican-American and Non-Hispanic White Population

1991 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan B. Sorenson ◽  
Cynthia A. Telles
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spousal Violence ◽  
Mexican American Women ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Hispanic White

As part of a survey of Los Angeles households, 1,243 Mexican Americans and 1,149 non-Hispanic whites were surveyed about their experiences of spousal violence. Questions to assess violence included both perpetration (whether they had been physically violent toward a partner) and victimization (whether they had been the victim of sexual assault by a partner). Over one-fifth (21.2%) of the respondents indicated that they had, at one or more times in their lives, hit or thrown things at their current or former spouse or partner. Spousal violence rates for Mexican Americans born in Mexico and non-Hispanic whites born in the United States were nearly equivalent (20.0% and 21.6%, respectively); rates were highest for Mexican Americans born in the United States (30.9%). While overall rates of sexual assault were lower for Mexican Americans, one-third of the most recent incidents reported by Mexico-born Mexican-American women involved the husband and approximated rape.

scholarly journals Gateways to the West, Part I: Education in the Shaping of the West

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 418-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Beadie ◽  
Joy Williamson-Lott ◽  
Michael Bowman ◽  
Teresa Frizell ◽  
Gonzalo Guzman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
San Antonio ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnic Origin ◽  
The West ◽  
West Part

In 1950, theDenver Catholic Registerpublished an article describing and challenging the varieties of “prejudice” that a military pilot moving from base to base in the United States might encounter. To “successfully transact business” in the vicinity of various “metropolitan landing fields,” the writer admonished, the veteran must:Remember to be not too sanguine about people of Oriental ethnic origin when talking with a merchant in Seattle, that he must speak about the Jew with a slight sneer in Eastern cities, that the Colored person must be “kept in his place” in Houston, that in reservation country the Indian must be treated as a man would treat a child and that in the San Antonio-Los Angeles-Denver triangle it is wiser to remember that the Mexican-American is a second-class citizen.

The X factor: The struggle to get Latinos in US news stories amid a Latinx push and a changing journalism landscape

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Contreras
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Empowerment ◽  
Urban Affairs ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
The Us

Latinos make up only 5.4 percent of the overall newsroom workforce in the United States. Over the last 15 years, US media outlets have disbanded urban affairs or minority affairs beats and teams altogether. Various studies suggest Latino and African American communities continue to be under-covered by US media outlets, further marginalizing their narratives in the US experience. And for years, US media outlets have struggled on the terms used to describe people of Spanish-speaking heritage: Hispanic, Latino, Mexican American, etc. Now, because of the political empowerment LGBT residents, there is a movement to describe Latinos using the term “LatinX” — a gender-neutral alternative to Latino and Latina. The term was an attempt to incorporate individuals who didn’t identify with a gender or who were transgender. As the US media struggles to accurately portray Latinos, the term “Latinx” faces an uphill battle for mainstream media use amid pressures for basic coverage. The author argues that “Latinx” in stories neutralized gender for the sake of inclusion and could result in ignoring the oppression around gender identity and sexuality.

Critical Perspectives in Youth Gang Formation in the United States

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin D. Lam
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Youth Gang ◽  
Structural Forces ◽  
The U.S

Youth gangs of color in the United States have emerged in the context of larger structural forces. For example, Mexican American, black, and Vietnamese/Asian American youth gang formation in Southern California is tied to their respective racialized communities’ initial movements into the Los Angeles area (from Mexico and Vietnam, and for blacks, from the U.S. South). Structural forces such as political/social unrest and economic instability, both domestically and in their sending countries; the role of the U.S. military and economic apparatus; and (im)migration patterns and trends impact the particularities of youth gang subculture—including protection and self-preservation; ethnic pride and desire for family; having to navigate, resist, and rearticulate youth identities (in and outside the context of schooling); and the desire to garner money, power, and respect in a capitalist context. U.S. racism and state violence have also had an impact on youth gang formation. Anti-youth legislation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in particular, have helped shape the discourse on youth of color, criminality, “gangs,” space, and citizenship over the past three decades. Although such youth are typically on the margins or left out of educational institutions, a critical pedagogy provides a space for engagement and hope.

scholarly journals The Limits of Convergence in Language Contact

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Silva-Corvalán
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Large Groups

AbstractThis article discusses the contact situation between English and Spanish in the United States, a situation characterized by both maintenance of the minority language and shift to English. Of relevance to understanding the linguistic phenomena that develop in this situation of societal bilingualism is the fact that the minority language is constantly being revitalized by interaction with large groups of immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries.The article identifies some of the linguistic changes that affect the minority language at different points in the proficiency continuum or different stages of attrition, and argues that in this particular contact situation convergence toward English is constrained by the structure of the minority language undergoing change.

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