Spanish 394 - Spanglish

A cultural study of language in the Hispanic world (Spain, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States), this course spans almost 500 years, from the arrival of Spanish to the Americas with Columbus' first voyage, to present-day "pocho lingo" in Los Angeles.  It focuses on the verbal interactions between the missionaries to Florida and the Southwest and the indigenous populations, the linguistic repercussions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, the age of acculturation in the early half of the twentieth century, the political agitation of the Chicano Movement as manifested in word games, and the hip-hop age of agitprop.  Students will analyze works by Junot Díaz, Ana Lydia Vega, Giannina Braschi, Susana Chávez-Silverman, Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, and others.  Topics like translation, bilingual education, lexicography, advertising, sports, and the impact of mass and social media will be contemplated.  Emphasis will be made on the various modalities of Spanglish, such as Dominicanish, Cubonics, and Nuyorican.  Plus, the development of Spanglish as a street jargon will be compared to Yiddish, Black English, and other minority tongues.  Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: SPAN 211 or consent of the instructor.  Fall semester.  Professor Stavans.