The Mexican Diaspora: On the Negotiation of Identity of Heritage Spanish Speakers in Mexico and the United States

Armando Guerrero
Spanish and Portuguese
UC Los Angeles

Previous studies have mentioned the linguistic and cultural shock heritage speakers (HS) are met with when visiting their country of origin (Zentella 1997). Nevertheless, there is little scholarship that utilizes empirical evidence to analyze the in-the-moment negotiations of HS identity and linguistic competence in Mexico. This project aimed to understand this social phenomenon using sociolinguistic and ethnographic tools– Labov’s (1994) model for identifying a speech community and Silverstein’s (2003) indexical order for the semiotic mapping during in-the-moment interaction. The participants of the study were HS enrolling at UNAM in Mexico City. The project hypothesized that speakers would strongly resist cultural conceptualization of their identity by Mexicans, yet either accept its presence and foster a relationship or shy away from Mexico altogether. This relationship is important to Californian identity, with a Mexican-rich history and an ever-increasing population of Mexican-origin.