La investigación del español del Suroeste: Problemas y métodos

This is the second of two articles dealing with the epistemology of the analysis of Spanish in the Southwest of the United States of America. The content of this part is basically linguistic, with social implications, and mostly synchronic. The historical references, however, are never set aside. In the first place, it is important to make a distinction between the real melting languages and theoretical misinterpretations. English and Spanish are combined with social and literary implications in the diverse slang forms of the area: pachuco, caló, among others. Spurious interests, however, have given force to fantastic hypotheses brought to a climax by the invention of an allegedly “new” language, called Spanglish. This lexical choice is unfortunate, because it takes advantage of the existence of a more innocuous use of the word, simply referring to all forms of contact between the two languages. Four aspects are therefore mixed up and mistaken: the invention of an allegedly “new” language, in spite of a total lack of unification; the constant code-switching with different modalities and extent; the bad quality of certain translations; and the cultural relegation of Hispanics to speakers of a ghetto language. The set of two articles ends with a graphical presentation of a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats). The conclusion refers to Judeo-Spanish and the dangers of ghetto languages, as well as to the role of education.