Language, Race, and White Public Space

TLDR

White public space is constructed by policing racialized speech for disorder while ignoring similar patterns in White speech, exemplified by Mock Spanish—a complex semiotic form that parallels White crossover use of African American English. The study examines whether these linguistic practices can be reconfigured to challenge racial hierarchies in discourse. Mock Spanish signals desirable traits directly while simultaneously reinforcing negative stereotypes of Chicanos and Latinos and normalizing whiteness through indirect indexicality.

Abstract

White public space is constructed through (1) intense monitoring of the speech of racialized populations such as Chicanos and Latinos and African Americans for signs of linguistic disorder and (2) the invisibility of almost identical signs in the speech of Whites, where language mixing, required for the expression of a highly valued type of colloquial persona, takes several forms. One such form, Mock Spanish, exhibits a complex semiotics. By direct indexicality, Mock Spanish presents speakers as possessing desirable personal qualities. By indirect indexicality, it reproduces highly negative racializing stereotypes of Chicanos and Latinos. In addition, it indirectly indexes "whiteness" as an unmarked normative order. Mock Spanish is compared to White "crossover" uses of African American English. Finally, the question of the potential for such usages to be reshaped to subvert the order of racial practices in discourse is briefly explored.