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In:Spanish Sociolinguistics in the 21st Century: Current trends and methodologies
Edited by Cecilia Montes-Alcalá and Miguel García
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 42] 2025
► pp. 68–90

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Chapter 3
El code-switching is hitting la aldea

Evidence from Loíza, Puerto Rico

 | The University of Texas at Austin
Published online: 15 May 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.42.03vis
Abstract
As a result of the United States’ acquisition of Puerto Rico in 1898, there have been extensive economic and cultural exchanges between the two countries (Orama-López, 2012), alongside decades of language disputes driven by political purposes (Millán, 2012). This persistent linguistic contact situation has encouraged the study of code-switching (CS), a phenomenon widely examined from the perspective of its social determinants (Myers-Scotton, 2002; Gardner-Chloros, 2009). There have been several sociolinguistic studies conducted in Puerto Rican diasporas in the United States over the past decades (Torres, 1997, 2002; Flores-Ferrán, 2014; etc.); nevertheless, CS has received relatively little attention within the island (Dupey, 2012; Guzzardo et al., 2019; Acosta-Santiago, 2020). The present paper examines CS in Loíza, an isolated Afro-Hispanic community (Rivera-Rideau, 2015) where English is increasing its presence. The focus is on the category of bilingual discourse markers (DMs) (so/entonces, you know/tú sabes, like/como que, etc.), which are ubiquitous in the colloquial speech of Puerto Ricans (Flores-Ferrán, 2014). Data were collected in Loíza through semi-directed sociolinguistic interviews and analyzed within the framework of Variational Pragmatics (Schneider & Barron, 2008) to examine patterns of variation in the use of DMs, as well as to determine the social variables that trigger CS. Findings show evidence of how English, after 127 years of presence on the island, is spreading even in rural communities such as Loíza. Nonetheless, Spanish remains overwhelmingly the language of life and everyday affairs among all members of Puerto Rican society (Denton, 2014).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Research questions and objectives
  • 2.Background literature
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data collection procedure
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Discourse marker like
    • 4.2Discourse marker so
    • 4.3Discourse marker como que
    • 4.4Discourse marker tú sabes
  • 5.Answering the research questions
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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