Bilingualism is good but codeswitching is bad: attitudes about Spanish in contact with English in the Tijuana - San Diego border area

ABSTRACT

A qualitative study of language attitudes toward Spanish in contact with English in San Diego county reveals that while Spanish-English bilingualism is highly valued, Spanish-English codeswitching is disfavored. While studies in other border communities along the U.S.-Mexico border have found similar general results, the present study contributes to the field in a few novel ways: the San Diego area is an understudied location in border Spanish; four populations were interviewed for this study on both sides of the border (first and second-generation speakers of Spanish in San Diego county and in the city of Tijuana); although first-generation speakers in San Diego and Tijuana express the most negative views about codeswitching, San Diego parents emerge as uniquely positioned to understand the language experience of their children and thus act as catalysts for attitudinal change; second-generation Tijuana speakers are the least biased against codeswitching; second-generation San Diego speakers internalize the stigma against codeswitching, which results in linguistic insecurity. This study explores internal linguistic discrimination across borders and generations in the Tijuana-San Diego area.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I use “generation” only to distinguish between parents and adult children within a family, not to refer to the order of immigration, as other studies use it.