Code Switching In Spanglish

In the film Spanglish and the YouTube video ‘Learning Spanglish’, the concept of ‘Spanglish’ and the phenomenon of ‘code switching’ or ‘ping ponging’ is illustrated. The movie demonstrates how an English speaker tries to communicate with a Spanish speaker with the use of a translator. It is made clear that there is a language barrier. There is a sense of miscommunication and mispronunciation between the Spanish speaker and English speaker. In the YouTube video, the speaker explains and gives examples of Spanglish, allowing the viewer to learn in a step by step process. With the use of humour, the YouTube video works as a “beginner’s guide” or tutorial. It is discussed how English words have made their way into Spanish and how there are English words that do not exist in Spanish. The solution to this is to take the English words and “dress it up in Spanish drag”, meaning to take the English word and make it ‘sound’ Spanish. Both examples exhibit how culture is

With the increase of Spanish being spoken in a country that mostly speaks English, Hispanic people have created a form of communicating with the combination of these two languages. ‘Code switching’ could be argued to be a linguistic and a sociocultural phenomenon. ‘Code switching’ is predominantly found in Latino and Hispanic households since their culture consists of speaking Spanish, but by living in the United States, culture involving English has integrated with the Hispanic culture, creating ‘Spanglish’ as a form of communication. By speaking Spanish, these communities are keeping hold of their identity and ethnic heritage, but in a sense, ‘Spanglish’ has become a branch of their identity, especially to those who identify as Latino-American or Hispanic-American. This is discussed in the text Is “Spanglish” the third language of the South? by John Lipski. He