“Dime con quién hablas, y te diré quién eres”: Linguistic (In)security and Latina/o Unity

“Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres” (“Tell me who you go about with and I’ll tell you who you are”) warns that we are judged by the company we keep. My adaptation, “Dime con quién hablas, y te diré quién eres” (“Tell me who you talk with and I’ll tell you who you are”) underscores the defining role of language networks in identity, i.e., “identity is defined as the linguistic construction of membership in one or more social groups or categories” (Kroskrity 2001: 107). Latina/o identity in the USA is often linked to Spanish, presumed to be the heritage language of more than 40 million people with roots in 20 Spanish-speaking Latin American nations, including Puerto Rico. The term “Spanish speakers” is used interchangeably with “Hispanics” or “Latinas/os,” although numerous immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico speak an indigenous language, and most Mexicans and Puerto Ricans – the majority of Latinas/os – speak more English than Spanish because they were born in the USA. Understanding the crucial yet contradictory role of Spanish in Latina/o identity and its repercussions for Latina/o unity requires an anthropolitical linguistic perspective, incorporating socioeconomic and political realities that determine how and why Latinas/os speak as members of different groups at different times, and even at the same time, and how they evaluate those differences (Zentella 1993, 1997a). National varieties of Spanish sometimes emphasize regional borders, but those borders recede when the Spanish language is embraced as a common denominator. In addition, Latina/o bilinguals often blur the boundaries between Spanish and English in ways that reflect new ethnic and racial identities. Above all, distinct ways of being Latina/o are shaped by the dominant language ideology that equates working-class Spanish speakers with poverty and academic failure, and defines their bilingual children as linguistically deficient and cognitively