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Kultur Dokumente
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JANE H. HILL
Departmentof Anthropology
Universityof Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
HILL /
"SpanishAccents"and "MockSpanish":
Linguisfic
OrderandDisorderinWhitePublicSpace
To illustratea linguistic-anthropologicalapproachto
these issues, I build on an analysisby Urciuoli ( 1996), recenteringit from herresearchon bilingualPuertoRicans
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Spanish by Whites is often grossly nonstandardand ungrammatical. Hill (1993a) includes examples ranging
from street names, to advertising,to public-healthmessus manos,originallyresages. WashYourHandslLava
ported by Penalosa (1980) in San BernardinoCounty,
California,can be found in restroomsall over the southwesternUnited States.Penalosaobservedthatthis example is especially remarkablesince it has as many grammaticalerrorsas it has words.8An excellent case was the
reprintingby theArizonaDailyStar(August10, 1997) of
an essay by the ColombianNobelist GabrielGarciaMarquez thatoriginallyappearedin theNewYorkTimes(August 3, 1997). All of the diacriticson the Spanishwordsand the problemof accent markshad been one of Garcia
Marquez's main points were missing in the Starversion. Tucson is the home of a majoruniversityand has a
large Spanish-speakingpopulation,andthe audiencefor
thepiece (whichappearedon theop-edpageof the Sunday
edition)no doubtincludedmanypeoplewho areliteratein
Spanish. Clearly, however, the Starwas not concerned
aboutofferingthis audiencea literatetext.
While Puerto Rican code switching is condemnedas
disorderly,Whites "mix" their English with Spanish in
contexts rangingfrom coffee-shop chat to faculty meetings to the evening networknewscasts and the editorial
incorpagesof majornewspapers.Their"MockSpanish'b9
poratesSpanish-languagematerialsinto English in order
to create a jocular or pejorative"key."The practices of
Mock Spanishinclude,f1rst,semanticpejorationof Spanish loans: the use of positive or neutralSpanishwords in
humorousor negative senses. Perhapsthe most famous
example is macho,which in everyday Spanish merely
means"male."EquallyimportantareSpanishexpressions
of leave-taking,like adiosandhastala vista,usedin Mock
Spanish as kidding (or as serious) "kiss-offs" (MockSpanish "adios" is attested in this sense from the midnineteenthcentuiy). A second strategyborrowsobscene
or scatological Spanish words for use as Mock-Spanish
euphemisms, as on the handwrittensign "Casa de PeePee"on the doorof the women's restroomin the X-raydepartmentof a Tucson clinic, a coffee cup thatI purchased
in a gift shop near the University of ArizonaMain Gate
thatbears the legend "Cacade Toro,"and, of course, the
case of cojones,exemplified below. In the thirdstrategy,
elements of"Spanish"morphology,mainlythe suffix -o,
often accompaniedby "Spanish"modifierslike muchoor
el, areborrowedto createjocularandpejorativeformslike
"el cheap-o,""numerotwo-o,"or"muchotrouble-o."In a
WeekinRerecentexample, heardon PBS's Washington
view,moderatorKen Bode observedthat,hadthe "palace
coup" in the House of Representativesin July 1997 not
been averted, the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
would have been "Newt-o Frito."The last majorstrategy
of Mock Spanish is the use of"hyperanglicized" and
parodicpronunciationsand orthographicrepresentations
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Analysis reveals that Mock Spanishprojects,in addition to the directlyindexedmessage thatthe speakerpossesses a "congenial persona,"anotherset of messages:
profoundly racist images of members of historically
Spanish-speakingpopulations.These messages are the
productof what Ochs ( 1990) calls "indirectindexicality"
in that, unlike the positive direct indexes, they are never
acknowledgedby speakers.In my experience,Whites almost always deny thatMock Spanishcould be in any way
racist.Yet in orderto "makesense of' Mock Spanish,interlocutorsrequireaccess to verynegativeracializingrepresentationsof ChicanosandLatinosas stupid,politically
corrupt,sexuallyloose, lazy,dirty,anddisorderly.It is impossible to "get" Mock Spanish-to find these expressions funny or colloquialor even intelligible unless one
has access to these negativeimages.An exemplarycase is
a political cartoonin my collection, showing a pictureof
Ross Perot pointing to a chart that says, among other
things, "Perotfor E1Presidente."This is funnyonly if the
audience can juxtapose the pompous and absurdPerot
with the negative image of a banana-republicdictator,
drippingwith undeservedmedals. It is only possible to
"get""Hastala vista, baby"if one has access to a representationof Spanish speakersas treacherous."Manana"
works as a humoroussubstitutefor "later"only in conjunction with an image of Spanish speakersas lazy and
procrastinating.My claim thatMock Spanishhas a racializing function is supportedby the fact thaton humorous
greeting cards (where it is fairly common) it is often accompanied by grossly racist pictorialrepresentationsof
"Mexicans."
I have labeledMockSpanisha "covertracistdiscourse"
because it accomplishes racializationof its subordinategrouptargetsthroughindirectindexicality,messages that
must be available for comprehensionbut are never acknowledgedby speakers.In this it contrastswith 'ivulgar
racist discourse,"which uses the directreferentialfunction in statementslike, "Mexicansjust don't know how to
work,"or hate speech ("Lazygreaser!"),which seems to
operatethroughthe performativefunctionas a directverbal"assault"(Matsudaet al. 1993).It is notexactlylike the
kindof kiddingaroundthatmost Whiteswill admitcan be
interpretedas racist,as when David Lettermanjoked that
the artificialfat olestra,which can cause abdominalpain
and diarrhea,was "endorsedby the Mexican HealthDepartment"(NewYorkTimes,August24, 1997:F12).Italso
contrastswiththe"eliteracistdiscourse"identifiedby van
Dijk ( 1993). Van Dijk pointedout thatlike Mock Spanish
this type has as one function the presentationby the
speakerof a desirablepersona.Since "beinga racist"is an
undesirablequality, tokens often begin with qualiElcations like "I'mnot a racist,but. . ."andthencontinuewith
a racializingargumentlike "Ireallyresentit thatall these
Mexicans come up here to have babies so thatAmerican
taxpayerswill supportthem."Such qualificationsdo not
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the adolescentyears.We cannotbe surethatthesephenomenaaregenuinelyoutsidethe linguisticorderof racism until we understanddimensions of that order within which age-gradedcohorts may have a
relativelyenduringplace.I havetriedaboveto showhow
linguistic-anthropological
attentionto thehistory,forms,
anduses of Whitelanguagemixingcan help us toward
suchanunderstanding.
Notes
Acknowledgments.
I wouldespeciallylike to thankMariaRodriguez, Bambi Schieffelin, and KathrynWoolard,who have
providedme withvaluablematerialon Mock Spanish.
1. Hall et al. (1978) borrowthe notionof"moralpanic"from
Cohen(1972).
2. In a survey of 34 entries,encompassingabout 100 messages, under the heading "Ebonics"on Linguist, the list that
probablyreaches the largestnumberof linguists, I found only
one explicit mentionof "racism"by an authorwho used the expression "institutionalracism."It is, perhaps,appropriatefor
linguists to focus on their special areasof scholarlyexpertise,
and it is certainlythe case thattheremay be a linguisticdimension to the educationalproblemsconfrontedby many African
Americanchildren,buttheneglectof racismon thelist was quite
striking.It was sometimesaddressedobliquelyandeuphemistically, as with one author'sproposalof the "special"situationof
AfricanAmericansin the UnitedStates.
3. The "alllanguagesareequal"argumentcontinuesin spite
of a warningby Dell Hymes (1973) thatthis claim is technically
incorrectin manysubtleways.
4. Hirschfeld (1996) documentsthe very early association
betweenracedcategoriesandanessentializedunderstandingof
"humankinds' foryoung childrenin theUnitedStates.
5. I ammindfulof Hartigan's(1997) argumentthat"Whites"
are by no means a homogeneous population.Indeed, in other
work (Hill 1995) I have suggestedthatworking-classspeakers
are less likely to use "Mock Spanish"than are other Whites.
Muchof my materialcomes frommassmediathatarepartof the
homogenizing projectof"whiteness,"and thereis no question
thatdifferent"Whites"experiencethisprojectin differentways.
I use "Whites"here (perhapsinjudiciously)as a sort of shorthandrequiredfirstby lack of spaceandsecond becausethe data
requiredto preciselycharacterizethe populationI have in mind
are not available. Certainly it includes White elites such as
screenwritersandnationallysyndicatedcolumnists.
6. Urciuoli (1996:16) points out that it is essential to use
Spanish in the folklife festival context because to translate
songs, the namesof foods, and the like into English would renderthemless "authentic,"thispropertybeing essentialto claims
on "ethnicity"thatareone way to resistracialization.
7. Here the canonical study is the matched-guisetest conductedby Rubin( 1992). Sixty-twoundergraduate
nativespeakers of Englishlistenedto a brieflecture(on eithera scienceorhumanities topic) recordedby a native speakerof English from
centralOhio. While they listened,one groupof studentssaw a
slide of a Whitewomanlecturer.The otherhalf saw a slide of an
Asian womanin the samesettingandpose (andeven of the same
size, andwiththe samehairstyle, as theWhitewoman).Students
HILL /
who heardthe lectureunderthe"Asianslide"conditionoftenreportedthatthe lecturerhadanAsianaccentand,even moreinterestingly, scoredlower on testsof comprehensionof the lecture.
8. It should be Lavarse las manos, the usual directive for
publicplacesbeing theinfinitive(e.g., Nofumar 'No Smoking,'
No estacionarse 'No Parking'),the verb being reflexive, and
body partsare not labeledby the possessive pronounsu unless
they aredetachedfromthebodyof theirowner.
9. Inearlierpublications(e.g., Hill 1993b), I referredto these
practicesas "JunkSpanish."I thankJamesFernandezfor theexpression "Mock Spanish"and for convincing me that "Junk
Spanish"was a badnomenclaturalidea, and the sourceof some
of theproblemsI was havinggettingpeople to understandwhatI
was workingon (manypeople, includinglinguists and anthropologists, assumedthatby "JunkSpanish"I meantsomething
like the "BorderSpanish"of native speakersof Spanish,rather
thanjocular andparodicuses of Spanishby English speakers).
Themostextensivediscussionof MockSpanishavailableis Hill
(1 995).
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