The Politics Of Language In Puerto Rico

Download or read book The Politics of Language in Puerto Rico written by Amílcar Antonio Barreto and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A [book] rich in detail and analysis, which anyone wanting to understand the language debate in Puerto Rico will find essential."--Arlene Davila, Syracuse University This is the first book in English to analyze the controversial language policies passed by the Puerto Rican government in the 1990s. It is also the first to explore the connections between language and cultural identity and politics on the Caribbean island. Shortly after the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898, both English and Spanish became official languages of the territory. In 1991, the Puerto Rican government abolished bilingualism, claiming that "Spanish only" was necessary to protect the culture from North American influences. A few years later bilingualism was restored and English was promoted in public schools, with supporters asserting that the dual languages symbolized the island’s commitment to live in harmony with the United States. While the islanders’ sense of ethnic pride was growing, economic dependency enticed them to maintain close ties to the United States. This book shows that officials in both San Juan and Washington, along with English-first groups, used the language laws as weapons in the battle over U.S.-Puerto Rican relations and the volatile debate over statehood. It will be of interest to linguists, political scientists, students of contemporary cultural politics, and political activists in discussions of nationalism in multilingual communities.

Download or read book The Unlinking of Language and Puerto Rican Identity written by Brenda Domínguez-Rosado and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-04 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language and identity have an undeniable link, but what happens when a second language is imposed on a populace? Can a link be broken or transformed? Are the attitudes towards the imposed language influential? Can these attitudes change over time? The mixed-methods results provided by this book are ground-breaking because they document how historical and traditional attitudes are changing towards both American English (AE) and Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS) on an island where the population has been subjected to both Spanish and US colonization. There are presently almost four million people living in Puerto Rico, while the Puerto Rican diaspora has surpassed it with more than this living in the United States alone. Because of this, many members of the diaspora no longer speak PRS, yet consider themselves to be Puerto Rican. Traditional stances against people who do not live on the island or speak the predominant language (PRS) yet wish to identify themselves as Puerto Rican have historically led to prejudice and strained relationships between people of Puerto Rican ancestry. The sample study provided here shows that there is not only a change in attitude towards the traditional link between PRS and Puerto Rican identity (leading to the inclusion of diasporic Puerto Ricans), but also a wider acceptance of the English language itself on this Caribbean island.

Download or read book The Politics of Language in Puerto Rico written by Amílcar Antonio Barreto and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-01-06 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1991, the Puerto Rican government abolished bilingualism, claiming that “Spanish only” was necessary to protect the culture from North American influences. A few years later bilingualism was restored and English was promoted in public schools. This revised edition of The Politics of Language in Puerto Rico is updated with an emphasis on the dual arenas where the language controversy played out—Puerto Rico and the United States Congress—and includes new data on the connections between language and conflicting notions of American identity. This book shows that officials in both San Juan and Washington, along with English-first groups, used these language laws as weapons in the battle over U.S.-Puerto Rican relations and the volatile debate over statehood.

Download or read book Exposing Prejudice written by Bonnie Urciuoli and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-06-13 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urciuolis award-winning book explores how language and the social construction of race, class, and ethnicity shape the lives of working-class Puerto Ricans living in New York City. Her reflexive ethnographic study is a combination of two absorbing features: her analyses of language and power relations based on key principles in semiotic and linguistic anthropology, paired with the authentic voices of individuals who share their lived experiences of speaking Spanish and English. The subjects conversations, interview responses, and anecdotes are saturated with ideas about what correct English means to them. Through these extended transcripts readers gain insight about languages role in cultural dynamics that tangle minority populations in challenges, such as limiting where individuals and families live and work. Urciuolis provocative research and fieldwork give readers a rich understanding of language as the domain in which racial, ethnic, and class hierarchies are experienced.

Download or read book Remixing Reggaetón written by Petra R. Rivera-Rideau and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-17 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Puerto Rico is often depicted as a "racial democracy" in which a history of race mixture has produced a racially harmonious society. In Remixing Reggaetón, Petra R. Rivera-Rideau shows how reggaetón musicians critique racial democracy's privileging of whiteness and concealment of racism by expressing identities that center blackness and African diasporic belonging. Stars such as Tego Calderón criticize the Puerto Rican mainstream's tendency to praise black culture but neglecting and marginalizing the island's black population, while Ivy Queen, the genre's most visible woman, disrupts the associations between whiteness and respectability that support official discourses of racial democracy. From censorship campaigns on the island that sought to devalue reggaetón, to its subsequent mass marketing to U.S. Latino listeners, Rivera-Rideau traces reggaetón's origins and its transformation from the music of San Juan's slums into a global pop phenomenon. Reggaetón, she demonstrates, provides a language to speak about the black presence in Puerto Rico and a way to build links between the island and the African diaspora.

Download or read book Sponsored Identities written by Arlene M. Dávila and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the creation of an essentialist view of nationhood based on a peasant culture and a unifying Hispanic heritage, and the ways in which grassroots organizations challenge and reconfigure definitions of national identity through their own activities and representations.

Download or read book Imposing Decency written by Eileen Findlay and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The interrelationship between sexuality and national identity during Puerto Rico's transition from Spanish to U.S. colonialism.