Negotiating language on the radio in Los Angeles 1

Approximately ten million inhabitants reside in Southern California’s greater Los Angeles County. A truly multi-cultural region, more than a third (35.1%) of these individuals have immigrated to the US from another country, and more than half of the city’s residents (54.1%) speak a language other than English at home (U.S. Census, 2010, 2015). Paralleling much of the southwestern US, Los Angeles has a long history with speakers of Spanish, some of whom having just recently immigrated from Latin America, while others are descendants of families who lived in the area while it was still part of Mexico. With an estimated 3.7 million Spanish speakers in total, ² present-day Los Angeles constitutes a complex site for the negotiation of language forms, uses, preferences, and ideologies.