Spanish in the U.S.

With more than forty million speakers of Spanish in the United States, this course explores the linguistic, cultural, and historical construct of the Latino population in the country. Throughout the semester, we will ask what does Spanish in the United States sound like, as we document similarities as well as differences from speech communities across the country. This course addresses linguistic features of Spanish in the United States by examining cases of dialects of Spanish in contact with each other, Spanish in contact with English, and the notion of Spanglish. We review how Spanish is produced and perceived in a variety of domains, including public spaces, politics, and education, so as to understand not only the ways speakers construct and negotiate their language practices, but also the social meaning behind such application.

Required Text: A. M. Escobar and K. Potowski 2015. El español de los Estados Unidos. ISBN: 9781107451179