Family and SOcial Pressures Press languages together?
There are an abundance of languages in this world, and countless social pressures that come along with them. Along with the endless amounts of languages there has been a great deal of code meshing. One of the most popular if not the most popular forms of code meshing is Spanglish. According to Araceli Osorio, “Spanglish is increasingly spoken everywhere in the US in everyday situations. In the Us English is obviously a language that is widely used, so Spanglish has definitely become more popular. This “third language” is seen as taking over standard Spanish in the US. This language shift is viewed as detrimental for US Spanish speakers compared to Spanglish speakers in other countries” (Osorio, Araceil). With such an increase in Spanish speaking people coming to the United States Spanglish is on the rise. There are so many different meanings of what Spanglish is to diverse groups of people. Some think Spanglish is a great combination of two great languages, while others think it is an impure language for underprivileged populations. There are also outside influences from ones self that affect the thoughts of code meshing. Families have huge effects on the languages people speak or don’t speak. Social pressures from teachers, friends, or public figures also have very large effects on the languages people speak as well. From these different pressures the new “language” of Spanglish has seemed to form. From families pressuring for their family to speak Spanish and almost the rest of society wanting to have an English only world the birth of Spanglish happened.
Family RUles
Ones family plays an enormous role in the language or languages that a person speaks. The family that surrounds and raises children teach them languages. For children to learn languages there is no formal education needed. Just the constant talking and exposure of the language is very effective in the learning of a language while children are growing up. In Sophie Cemaj’s, who is a trilingual sophomore at Emory University majoring in chemistry, learned Spanish as her first language. Cemaj learned Spanish the same way everyone learns his or her first language through the exposure of the language. In an interview with Cemaj, she says, “In my house we only speak Spanish. Even my dog knows Spanish” (Interview with Sophie). She can speak Spanish, Hebrew and English, but with all of her family she speak Spanish. Not with just her immediate family but with her extended family as well. She says that this has always been this way. Cemaj not only speaks Spanish at home by coincidence but her family speaks Spanish with purpose. She explains this when she says, “In my house my oldest brother would always get mad at myself and my younger brother when we spoke English. He would always say ‘in this house we speak Spanish!’”(Interview with Sophie). Cemaj’s brother is set on speaking Spanish in their house because he is afraid of loosing the language. Cemaj explained that if she did not speak Spanish at home she would rarely ever speak it. Having the whole Cemaj family speaking together in Spanish it keeps the Language alive. It seems the Spanish language would not been passed down if they spoke English at home. This is an obvious example of the pressures from families to speak certain languages at home. The importance of the different languages to each family may change but the fact that family determines what languages are spoken is the same. Maria, a subject in Araceli Osorio’s dissertation on The role of Spanglish in the social and academic lives of second generation Latino students: Students’ and parents’ perspectives, shares her experience with her family and languages. She says “With my grandchildren I only speak Spanish but they can only answer me in English and well that’s the way it is. We communicate how we can because they don’t really speak Spanish but understand a lot” (Osorio, Araceil). They are unable to speak back in Spanish because the only time they are exposed to Spanish any more is when their grandmother is around then and it just is not enough. When her grandchildren think of Spanish it is highly likely that they think of their grand mother. Due to other influences they are not solely exposed to Spanish.
Social Pressures call the Shots
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Other large influences on the languages people speak are from pressures out side of the home. Teachers at school, media, friends parents, peers are all people who through social pressures can influence people language choice. The influences can be as small as a parent talking to one of their children’s friends in English. Or it can be as big as the English only policies that says all documents of the United States are to be printed in English first and then can be translated into other languages. Gloria Alafe a freshmen student at Emory University in her blog post on multilingualism recalls an article she read when she says, “ Miranda was a twelve-year old girl who attended Sacred Heart Catholic Academy which is locate in Wisconsin. When she was teaching a fellow classmate some words in her native language her teacher got mad at her and asked “would you like it if I spoke in Polish and you didn’t understand” (Staff, 2012). For words that translated to “hello” and “I love you” from “posoh” and “ketapanen” she was suspended and benched from the school (Staff, 2012)” (Alafe, Gloria). Gloria notes that this young girl was being punished because of societies not accepting of other languages. By punishing this twelve-year-old girl it is being reinforced for her to just speak English, and is giving her native language a negative connotation. She will associate her native language with punishment, which will make her not want to speak her native language. Imagine being a 12 year old girl being yelled at by her teacher for speaking in a way that she had know her whole life. She must have been mortified and probably never spoke her native language in class again, or at least for a very long while. Gloria relates to this experience when she says, “I was amazed that this level of discrimination still happens. I know when I was in elementary school and middle school I was made fun of and even the teachers would sometimes act indifferent towards me. However, I did not experience anything on the scale Miranda did” (Alafe, Gloria). Not only are there situations that are “anit-non-english” being written about in scholarly journals but they are happening to people who you sit next to in class. Teachers seem to play a very large part in making young students feel the need to speak English and nothing else while at school. This then makes students who know other languages to suppress them and just speak English at school and with their school friends. Society has certain connotations about English as well. Suhanthie Motha, the author of Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching, writes about Canagarajah’s experience “learning English was a complicated affair, with the language representing both power and wealth on one hand and a history of colonialism on the other” (Motha, Suhanthie). Motha recognizes that for some people knowing English shows a sign of higher status and control. These ideas come from society and make people more inclined to learn English.
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Spanglish: PorquE no Los Dos?!
From family in the Spanish culture promoting the preservation of the language and modem day American society pushing the use of English, a mix of the languages was born; Spanglish. Spanglish is exactly what is sounds to be, it is a mix of Spanish and English words. Spanglish which seems to be a very simple meshing of languages causes very complex opinion. One negative point that Araceli Osorio touches upon is, “Many researches see Spanglish as a bastard for of Spanish. Primary used by the poor and the ignorant” (Osorio, Araceil). People who are not fluent in English or Spanish can use Spanglish which can give the language the overtone that it is used only by uneducated people. That is not the same opinion shared by everyone. Others think, ““Spanglish is not an indication of class. It is used by politicians and radio and Tv personalities on a daily basis and the users of Spanglish are constantly creating new vocab to meet their language needs” (Osorio, Araceil). There is such a wide range of people using Spanglish because there are people of all different backgrounds that are feeling the same stresses from families and American society. Some people speak Spanglish all the time and other very rarely code mesh. Cemaj in her interview says, “The only time I ever speak Spanglish is when I cannot remember how to say a English word in Spanish or vice versa. Or sometimes if I’m trying to tell my brother a joke and I do not know how to say it in Spanish I will just say it in English, but that’s really it. I am always conscious of when I speak Spanglish. But it is not often when I do speak it” (Interview with Sophie). After talking to Sophie Cemaj it seems that she has separated her two different “language worlds” so well that it feels wrong to mix them. The preservation of her Spanish is definitely being helped in this situation since she speaks Spanish way less than English.
Final THoughts on such a importante matter
Language is an incredible element of the world that is constantly being changed and shifted. At the same time languages stay the same for enormous amounts of time. In the same way a great magnitude of pressure is required to make a diamond, innumerable tensions have helped to create Spanglish. From family to friends all different groups of people with give reasons as to why it is best or most appropriate to speak specific languages. While there is a great appreciation for the art of code meshing, especially in terms of Spanglish, there still are negatives. There is discrimination against code meshing such as Spanglish. People, in the United States, in schools and out in the public eye still are not accepting of anything but English. On the other hand there are still a large amount of people who feel the same way but about a different language. Many people are still very turned off to learning different languages. Whether it is because of family pride or lack of interest people are continuously being closed minded to code meshing and languages that are not their own. In a world where there is constant change of languages and migrations of different people, others need to be more accepting. From a long time ago the people of the world have been more welcoming then before but there is still a lot of work to be done.
Photographer: MELISSA Defrank
Works Cited
Alafe, Gloria. "BLOG." The Allure of Multilingualism. N.p., 27 Feb. 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2015. <http://multilingualismgloralafe.weebly.com/blog>.
"Interview with Sophie." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICjLJFqIU4A>.
Motha, Suhanthie. Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching: Creating Responsible and Ethical Anti-racist Practice. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Osorio, Araceil. The Role of Spanglish in the Social and Academic Lives of Second Generation Latino Students' and Parents' Perspectives. Diss. The U of San Francisco, 2010. N.p.: n.p., n.d. ProQuest. Web. 18 Mar. 2015.
Alafe, Gloria. "BLOG." The Allure of Multilingualism. N.p., 27 Feb. 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2015. <http://multilingualismgloralafe.weebly.com/blog>.
"Interview with Sophie." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICjLJFqIU4A>.
Motha, Suhanthie. Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching: Creating Responsible and Ethical Anti-racist Practice. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Osorio, Araceil. The Role of Spanglish in the Social and Academic Lives of Second Generation Latino Students' and Parents' Perspectives. Diss. The U of San Francisco, 2010. N.p.: n.p., n.d. ProQuest. Web. 18 Mar. 2015.
