Spanish on the Job

Zentella is one of the foremost researchers in what she has coined "anthro-political linguistics." Her research focuses on the study of U.S. Latino varieties of Spanish and English, Spanglish, and language socialization in Latino families, and is a respected critic of the linguistic profiling facilitated by English-only laws and anti- bilingual education legislation. Her current projects include a remapping of language, identity, and the border by college students who live in Tijuana, Mexico and attend school in San Diego, California, and a sociolinguistic ethnography of a U.S. high school on the Tijuana border. This talk specifically focuses on how Spanish language on the job is increasingly viewed as a negative attribute in the United States and how it is currently being sanctioned.