Language, Place, and Identity in a New Destination Community: Latino Voices in Georgia

• In Event: Georgia Places: Language, Race, and History in Place-Based Georgia Education

Abstract

While varieties of Latino English have been studied in traditional destination communities (TDCs) (Zúñiga & Hernández-León 2005, 2009) like Texas (e.g. Galindo 1987; Bayley 1994; Bayley 1997; Thomas 2019), California (e.g. Santa Ana 1991; Fought 2003; Mendoza-Denton 2008), or the Mid-Atlantic (e.g. Labov et al. 1968; Poplack 1978; Wolfram 1972, 1974), where the Latino populations are multigenerational, the ethnolect is largely undocumented in new destination communities (NDCs) like the Southeastern and Midwestern regions of the US, including Georgia. With this emerging ethnolect comes the emergence of ethnic identities, which are not homogeneous, along with narratives from (and about) the ethnolect’s speakers. The symposium authors will present the findings of a mixed-methods, sociolinguistic analysis of Latino English (LE) in Georgia giving specific attention to the narratives that arose from speakers’ interviews and to propose a methodology for building a community and narrative focused corpus of Latino English voices in Georgia.
This project presents the results of two methodologies designed to understand the relationship between language and place. The first consists of the mixed-methods analysis from sociolinguistic interviews of 44 young adult Latino English speakers (Author, 2022). First, the qualitative analysis investigates how LE speakers construct their ethnic and place orientation identities using a discourse analysis approach. A thematic analysis of the sociolinguistic interview questions that focused on Latinidad, Southernness, rootedness, and discrimination resulted in subsets of themes that aided in placing speakers along identity continua. To illustrate this method, below is an excerpt from a speaker who identifies as Southern and also participates in linguistic behaviors that are associated with Southern English. This speaker sees being Southern and Latino as two compatible identities.

I think I could be considered your typical Latino, but not really because I
was pretty much raised in Georgia. So I'm more of a “Southern Belle” I would say than a
Hispanic. Um but don't get me wrong - I still embrace my Hispanic culture. My roots are
also um being Mexican.

The second approach considers language use in digital platforms, consisting of samples collected in the Metro Atlanta area from social media sources such as Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok. These fora provide a glimpse into issues that concern bilingualism, place association, and linguistic identity, as illustrated by a participant on Twitter: “It just makes me mad that you call yourself Hispanic but you can’t speak Spanish.”
Building upon these findings and methods as pilot data, we further propose building a new resource for speakers Spanish and Latino English in Georgia. The corpus will utilize an audio and text survey that guides participants through a series of questions that offer an opportunity to reflect on their experiences as multilingual speakers in Georgia. Finally, we discuss the ways in which we are working alongside the community to develop the corpus and implement responsive research practices that put the community at the center of the research (Hudley, 2013).

Authors

• Lewis Howe, University of Georgia

• Shannon Rodriguez, Gwinnett County Public Schools