Sociolinguistic Style, Awareness, and Agency among Southern California Latinx Spanish–English Bilinguals

This study examined different degrees of awareness regarding the stigmatization of Southern California (SoCal) Spanish across four groups of Spanish–English bilinguals from Southern California (n = 87). The participants were presented with Spanish sentences and asked to decide which profile of speaker would likely express that sentence, given six options, such as: “someone living in Los Angeles/SoCal who grew up in Mexico” or “a Spanish-English bilingual who grew up in Los Angeles/SoCal”. Experimental stimuli included seven different linguistic categories of stigmatization, including English contact forms. The participants tended to attribute the stigmatized forms to bilinguals who grew up in Southern California. Central Colloquial and Taboo categories were more salient and perceived as forms used by people in Mexico. In contrast, English borrowings and redundancies seemed to be recognized by the participants, particularly for simultaneous bilinguals who grew up in Southern California, as salient forms of an identified Southern California Spanish variety. The results are interpreted within Exemplar Theory, with certain stigmatized forms indexing “Mexican Spanish” exemplars, and English borrowings identified as exemplars of SoCal Spanish. We advocate for usage-based approaches to understanding language perceptions and critical approaches to interrogating academic discourses.