Spanish Dialectal Contact in the United States

Spanish speakers of varying regional and national origin routinely interact linguistically in the United States. Spanish dialectal contact results from this interaction, and it is the focus of the current chapter, which aims to accomplish three goals: (1) to identify several challenges that scholars face when studying dialectal contact, (2) to survey a selection ¹ of studies that demonstrate how this topic can be carefully and effectively examined, and (3) to articulate generalizations about Spanish dialectal contact within the framework of contemporary sociolinguistic theory. The next section highlights a number of obstacles to gaining insight into the linguistic outcomes of Spanish dialectal contact. Then a range of studies is presented that examine the linguistic behaviors of particular groups of Spanish speakers in specific locales of the United States. These studies share a methodological focus on sociolinguistic variables, or linguistic features whose expression is constrained by social and linguistic factors and which, in a U.S. context, function as barometers of intergenerational maintenance or change. The following section articulates a number of generalizations that emerge from these studies, proposing that contact between speakers of different regional origins is one of many causes of intergenerational change in the linguistic behavior of Spanish speakers in the United States. It also suggests that the social signaling potential or indexicality of highly salient linguistic features, and particularly those with strong regional associations, is very likely amplified by dialectal contact in the U.S. The final section concludes the chapter.