| Minimal attention has been afforded to the motivations and perspectives regarding the use of Spanglish in social and academic settings. The purpose of this study is to explore the motivations and applications that encourage linguistic connections between English and Spanish among second generation Latino students and their parents. Furthermore, this study strives to promote awareness and understanding among Spanish educators, researchers, and the Latino community of the situational appropriateness of the use of Spanglish.;As an ethnographic research, data was collected through individual and focus-group interviews in Spanish, observations in social and academic settings, and a language choice questionnaire was administered to 32 students. All data was tape recorded, transcribed, and translated from Spanish into English. The main participants were six Latino high school students and their parents from a small community in Northern California. Research questions: (1) what are the experiences of second generation Latino students and their parents with regards to their use of Spanglish? (2) what are the students' reflections on how their use of Spanglish affects their success in both social and academic situations? (3) what role does the family play in the use of Spanglish?;The results of this study include that students perceive Spanglish as a natural and necessary medium of communication in their daily lives in the United States. Moreover, the use of Spanglish provides participants with a sense of social identity in their community. The loss of their heritage language was not due to Spanglish but to English immersion in their school and at home. These participants expressed the need to include all language variations in the classroom. Although the participants in this study recognized Spanglish as an informal form of communication, they acknowledged that people from all income and educational levels of society use Spanglish. Yet, participants were aware of distinguishing the situations in which the use of Spanglish was appropriate. |
