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Article published In: Spanish in Context
Vol. 20:1 (2023) ► pp.50–75

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Spanglish and Tex-Mex in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas

Bilinguals’ perceptions and valorizations of speech styles

 | California State University Long Beach
ORCiD logo with link | Southern Illinois University
 | Dallas ISD
Published online: 23 May 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.20027.rod
Abstract
The social meaning of language is embedded in a cultural system of ideas that circulates throughout the historicity of peoples in contact. Border areas are useful for studying the permeability of category constructions, including language boundaries and fluidity of identities. The present study reports survey data from 168 Spanish-English bilinguals in the border region of the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas in the ways they define ‘Spanglish’ vis-à-vis ‘Tex-Mex’ as two distinct ways of speaking. In explaining the contact forms that each label represents and ideologies that have given rise to this distinction, results are discussed using iconization and fractal recursivity (Irvine, Judith and Susan Gal. 2000. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, ed. by Paul Kroskrity, 35–83. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and enregisterment (Agha, Asif. 2005. “Voice, Footing, Enregisterment.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1): 38–59. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Overall, results indicate that for those who make a distinction between Spanglish and Tex-Mex, Spanglish is valorized as more legitimate, whereas Tex-Mex is seen as a localized style of Spanglish also considered more informal.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Enregisterment
    • 2.1What is Spanglish?
    • 2.2What is Tex-Mex?
  • 3.Spanish and English in Texas and the Rio Grande Valley
  • 4.The study
    • 4.1Survey
    • 4.2Participants
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Perceptions of Spanglish
    • 5.2Perceived characterizations of Tex-Mex and Spanglish
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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