scholarly journals "Macho": The singularity of a mock Spanish item

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-85
Author(s):  
Adriana Rosalina Galván Torres
Keyword(s):  
Mexican American ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Semantic Extension ◽  
Neutral Term ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Semantic Shift ◽  
Racist Discourse ◽  
English I

This paper scrutinizes the path of the semantic extension of the originally neutral Spanish term macho‘male animal’ to the pejorative ‘animal-like man’. Semantic pejoration belongs to one of the techniques that Hill (1995b) identifies when describing Mock Spanish, a type of racist discourse used by monolingual English speakers when using single Spanish words. My objective was to identify if the origin of this pejoration and its subsequent proliferation had some relation to Mock Spanish. Methodologically, this is conducted by means of a lexical research of diachronic corpora in Spanish and English. I trace the origin of macho as an exclusively Spanish and neutral term to an international word with a pejorative connotation. My analysis leads me to conclude that the semantic shift of macho, at least in its written form, developed in both sides of the Mexican-American border in the first half of the XX century. Macho as an ‘animal-like man’ acquires a negative meaning northwards and a positive southwards. The latter during the Nationalist uproars of the Mexican Revolution.

The Mexican Revolution in Chicago

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Flores
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Wide Range

This book examines the political, labor, and assimilation history of Mexican immigrants in metropolitan Chicago during the first half of the twentieth century. Beginning in the mid-1920s and extending into the years of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Cold War, Mexican immigrants engaged in a wide-range of political activism, and their political beliefs were shaped by the Mexican Revolution. Mexican immigrant political activists included men and women, middle-class businessmen and professionals, and blue-collar laborers from urban and rural backgrounds. Over time, Mexican immigrants formed distinct conservative, liberal, and radical transnational societies that competed with each other to mold the identities and influence the political beliefs of the broader Mexican, Mexican American, and Latino populations of Chicago and Northwest Indiana. Initially, Mexican conservatives, liberals, and radicals all defined themselves as patriots loyal to the Mexican state, but over the course of the 1920s and 1930s, profound political events in Mexico and in the United States led the conservatives to become the most critical of the Mexican state and the most amenable to U.S. naturalization. While the liberals and radicals tended to decline U.S. citizenship, conservative Mexican Catholics become U.S. citizens in great numbers, and they did so because they sought to protect themselves from both the anticlerical policies of Mexican government and from the deportation policies of the United States government.

Emissary from a Revolution: Luis Cabrera and Woodrow Wilson

1979 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-371
Author(s):  
Kendrick A. Clements
Keyword(s):  
Mexican American ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
American Policy

In January of 1914 a young Mexican lawyer named Luis Cabrera, who was already on his way to becoming one of the most important figures of the Mexican Revolution, arrived in Washington on a special mission for the First Chief of the Constitutional movement, Venustiano Carranza. Cabrera's task was to persuade President Woodrow Wilson to lift a ban on the sale of American arms and munitions to Mexican factions, and his success in this effort encouraged Carranza to turn to him in a variety of other Mexican-American crises during the next three years. In the course of three difficult negotiations he became well-known in Washington and played a role in the development of American policy toward the Mexican Revolution. Though less important then Wilson's own agents in the shaping of American policy, Luis Cabrera should be better-known to those who would understand Wilsonian policy toward Mexico.

Eye tracking investigation into semantic convergence in fully fluent Spanish–English bilingual adults

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 508-529
Author(s):  
Virginia C Mueller Gathercole ◽  
Hans Stadthagen-González ◽  
Samia Mercedes DeCubas
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Word Type ◽  
English Word ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Conceptual Space ◽  
Semantic Extension ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Participant Group

Aims and Objectives: This article examines semantic convergence of bilinguals’ two languages in the case of words that overlap semantically but are not fully isomorphic in meaning and application. To what extent do the type of bilingual, type of category, and relative semantic width across the languages matter? Design: The primary method involves eye tracking while participants chose pictures corresponding to an English word heard. The data examine potential differences in simultaneous Spanish–English bilinguals’, early Spanish L1–English L2 bilinguals’, and monolingual English speakers’ durations and numbers of fixations on potential candidates for referents. Data and Analysis: Thirty-eight participants were administered the task in relation to 48 English words from three types of words (classical, radial, and homophonic), half with wider semantic extension in English, half with wider semantic extension in Spanish. Durations and numbers of fixations were analyzed with ANOVAs with participant group, word type, and semantic width treated as variables. Findings/Conclusions: Data revealed minimal influences from Spanish on English with homophonic words, but for classical categories, and to some extent radial categories, bilinguals showed influence from Spanish on English words: participants considered referents that would be relevant for Spanish but not English. Originality: Eye tracking provides a window into the online processing of words and their referents, and thus provides more subtle clues to bilinguals’ processing of these categories relative to monolinguals’. The results support a special status relative to semantic convergence for words whose referents correspond to categories whose members lie close together in the conceptual space. Significance/Implications: For us to best account for semantic convergence in bilingual speakers, these data indicate that the type of category and the category structure in the conceptual space matter, the relative widths of the categories in bilinguals’ two languages matter, the task demands matter, and the type of bilingual matters.

scholarly journals Aspects of Semantics of Standard British English and Nigerian English: A Contrastive Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adetuyi, Chris Ajibade ◽  
Adeniran, Adeola Adetomilayo
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
British English ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Loan Words ◽  
Contrastive Study ◽  
Semantic Extension ◽  
Bush Meat ◽  
Semantic Shift ◽  
Cultural Features

The concept of meaning is a complex one in language study when cultural features are added. This is mandatory because language cannot be completely separated from culture in which case language and culture complement each other. When there are two varieties of a language in a society, i.e. two varieties functioning side by side in a speech community, there is tendency for misconception. It is therefore imperative to make a linguistic comparative study of varieties of such languages. In this paper, a semantic contrastive study is made between Standard British English (SBE) and Nigerian English (NE). The semantic study is limited to aspects of semantics: semantic extension (Kinship terms, metaphors), semantic shift (lexical items considered are ‘drop’ ‘befriend’ ‘dowry’ and escort) acronyms (NEPA, JAMB, NTA) linguistic borrowing or loan words (Seriki, Agbada, Eba, Dodo, Iroko) coinages (long leg, bush meat; bottom power and juju). In the study of these aspects of semantics of SBE and NE lexical terms, conservative statements are made, problems areas and hierarchy of difficulties are highlighted with a view to bringing out areas of differences. The study will also serve as a guide in further contrastive studies in some other levels of languages.

Religion: Official, Popular, and Otherwise: From the Heart of Our People: Latino/a Explorations in Catholic Systematic Theology . Orlando O. Espin, Miguel H. Diaz. ; Hispanic Catholic Culture in the U. S.: Issues and Concerns . Jay P. Dolan, Allan Figueroa Deck. ; Mexican-Americans and the Catholic Church, 1900-1965 . Jay P. Dolan, Gilberto M. Hinojosa. ; Popular Religion and Modernization in Latin America: A Different Logic . Cristian Parker. ; The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular Catholicism . Orlando O. Espin. ; Digging the Days of the Dead: A Reading of Mexico's Dias de Muertos . Juanita Garciagodoy. ; Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican-American Women . Jeanette Rodriquez. ; As If Jesus Walked on Earth: Cardenismo, Sonora, and the Mexican Revolution . Adrian A. Bantjes. ; Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940 . Mary Kay Vaughan. ; Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico: The Agraristas and Cristeros of Michoacan . Jennie Purnell. ; Mexico's Hidden Revolution: The Catholic Church in Law and Politics since 1929 . Peter Lester Reich. ; Crossing Swords: Politics and Religion in Mexico . Roderic Ai Camp. ; Evangelism & Apostasy: The Evolution and Impact of Evangelicals in Modern Mexico . Kurt Derek Bowen.

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Vanderwood
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Mexican American Women ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
The People ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
The Catholic Church

On the genitive's trail: data and method from a sociolinguistic perspective

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRIDGET L. JANKOWSKI ◽  
SALI A. TAGLIAMONTE
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Blue Collar ◽  
Canadian English ◽  
Youth Group ◽  
Semantic Extension ◽  
Variation Patterns ◽  
Semantic Shift ◽  
The Individual

Research on the English genitive (e.g. Rosenbach 2007: 154) reports increasing use of the s-variant. This has been explained as extension to inanimate possessors, a semantic shift (e.g. Hundt 1998; Rosenbach 2002), or due to the pressures of economy in journalism, a register change (Hinrichs & Szmrecsanyi 2007; Szmrecsanyi & Hinrichs 2008). The present work reports on a large-scale sociolinguistic investigation of the genitive in vernacular Canadian English using socially stratified corpora and individuals of all ages. The results show that human, prototypical possessors are 96 per cent s-genitive and non-humans are 95 per cent of-genitive. Within the small envelope where both forms are possible, we discover that variation patterns quite differently depending on animacy. For humans, use of the s-genitive is stable in apparent time and correlates with whether or not the possessor ends in a sibilant. In contrast, non-human collectives/organizations reveal an increasing use of s-genitives in apparent time and a favouring effect of short possessors, persistence (when an s-genitive has occurred recently in the previous discourse) and when the individual has a blue-collar job. Groups comprising humans (collectives and organizations), such as our church's youth group, and places that are possible locations for humans (countries, cities, etc.), as in Toronto's best restaurant, are the prime conduit for this change. These findings from vernacular speech confirm the extension of the s-genitive in inanimates by semantic extension.

Using Spanish as the Language of Instruction with Mexican-American Head Start Children: A Re-Evaluation Using Meta-Analysis

1983 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa K. Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Head Start ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
English Language ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Control Treatment ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Language Of Instruction ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Head Start Children

Data from an earlier study of a cognitively-based English-language training program for 67 Mexican-American Head Start children were re-analyzed using meta-analysis. A comparison of posttest and follow-up test results on various instruments showed that the use of Spanish as the language of instruction resulted in larger effect sizes than did the use of English, both languages, or a control treatment using arts, crafts, and music activities. Recently expressed doubts about the efficacy of beginning instruction in non-English speakers' native languages are questioned.

Familiarity, comprehension and use of Indian English only

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Srishti Nayak ◽  
Inder Singh ◽  
Catherine Caldwell-Harris
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Method ◽  
American English ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Indian English ◽  
English Only ◽  
The Us ◽  
Written Form ◽  
American English Speakers

Indian English only (IndE-only), e.g. “I’ll meet you here only”, is rejected as poor English by many IndE speakers. In the present study, we used a mixed method to investigate familiarity, comprehension and use of IndE-only in 20 L1 IndE speakers in the US. Participants completed a psycholinguistic task comprising syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic judgments of IndE, standard English, and grammatically or semantically odd control sentences. L1 IndE speakers’ task performance was compared to a control group of 33 American English speakers. Results showed that IndE speakers were familiar with syntactic aspects of IndE-only consistent with the literature, and were able to extract significantly more information about implicatures and conversational contexts compared to the control group. L1 IndE speakers were also interviewed about their attitudes towards IndE and IndE-only. Qualitative results indicated that despite some stigmatization, mostly in the written form, IndE-only exemplifies the emerging identity of L1 IndE.

Expatriate Citizenship

2018 ◽  
pp. 101-136
Author(s):  
Alberto Varon
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
National Citizenship ◽  
Step Down

This chapter demonstrates how Mexican Americans conceptualized U.S. national citizenship through a transnational lens, specifically through political developments in the Mexican Revolution. It examines México de afuera, a well known expatriate phenomenon, but by focusing on its impact on Mexican American manhood, this chapter shows how the ideology developed into “expatriate citizenship,” a way of deliberating the nation’s place as an emergent global superpower and on the contradictions posed between exported democracy and domestic citizenship. This chapter offers an extended reading of Josefina Niggli’s overlooked 1947 novel Step Down, Elder Brother as expatriate citizenship.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document