‘It’s our secret handshake’ : Spanglish as the unmarked code of survival and solidarity on the El Paso–Ciudad Juárez border

Speakers of Spanglish in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands routinely face a double stigma: from the Mexican interior as ‘pocho’ and from the Anglo-American mainstream as deficient, ‘unprofessional’, or even cognitively impaired. While extensive research has documented these stigmatising ideologies, far less attention has been paid to the emic perspectives through which border residents construct their mixed code as legitimate, normative, and even sophisticated. The study addresses that gap by analysing metalinguistic commentary drawn from ethnographic interviews with twelve residents of the El Paso–Ciudad Juárez transnational metropolis. Thematic analysis reveals two dominant discursive frames that underpin a coherent local language ideology. The first, the ‘Secret Handshake’ frame, positions Spanglish as an intimate marker of shared identity, cultural pride, and in-group belonging. The second, the ‘Language of Survival’ frame, constructs it as a pragmatic necessity for navigating the economic, bureaucratic, and professional demands of daily cross-border life. Together, these frames redefine linguistic hybridity as a sophisticated, context-appropriate tool, thereby establishing Spanglish as the unmarked communicative code of the region. The article argues that this locally produced ideology represents a powerful act of linguistic self-determination, challenging top-down, monolingual norms and offering a new perspective on language normalisation in high-intensity transnational contact zones.