Spanglish as Literacy Tool: Toward an Understanding of the
Potential Role of Spanish-English Code-Switching in the
Development of Academic Literacy
This article reports findings from a qualitative study of Spanish-English code-switching—or
Spanglish—among bilingual Latina/Latino sixth graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles.
Analysis of the data revealed significant parallels between the skills embedded in students’ everyday
use of Spanglish and the skills that they were expected to master according to California’s sixthgrade
English language arts standards. In particular, students displayed an impressive adeptness
at (1) shifting voices for different audiences, and (2) communicating subtle shades of meaning. It
is argued that this skillful use of Spanglish could potentially be leveraged as a resource for helping
students to further cultivate related academic literacy skills. The article concludes with a discussion
of specific implications for how teachers might begin to leverage Spanglish as a pedagogical
resource by helping students to recognize, draw on, and extend the skills already embedded in
their everyday use of language.
Zulema: Page what?
Caroline: Um.
Zulema: Twenty-something, no?
Caroline: Wait. This one? ¿Como ésta?
Zulema: Sí, circle. ¿Cuál es?
Caroline: Como ésta, mira. Como ésta. Esta está bien bonita.
Zulema: Sí, pero ¿qué page?
Caroline: A ver, ¿qué page? Twenty-one.1
The interaction above took place in a sixth-grade English language arts classroom
at a middle school in East Los Angeles. Students in this classroom often mixed
Spanish and English in conversation, engaging in a hybrid language practice that
many of them called Spanglish, and that most linguists refer to as Spanish-English
code-switching. During the 2007–2008 academic year, I conducted a qualitative
study in this classroom, exploring students’ everyday use of Spanglish, as well as
their attitudes and beliefs about this language practice. Students overwhelmingly
Martínez Spanglish as Literacy Tool 125
invoked what I call deficit rationales (Martínez, 2009) to explain their engagement
in Spanglish, essentially attributing their code-switching to a lack of proficiency
in one of the two languages. In stark contrast to these deficit rationales, I found
that these students used Spanglish in creative, skillful, and intelligent ways to make
meaning in social interaction.
I have discussed elsewhere the ways in which these students used Spanglish as
a semiotic tool, identifying seven key conversational uses—or functions—of this
everyday language practice (Martínez, 2009). In this article, I focus on a subset
of these conversational functions in order to explore two potentially generative
connections to academic literacy learning. Specifically, I discuss how students used
Spanglish to (1) shift voices for different audiences, and (2) communicate subtle
nuances of meaning, noting that these two uses of Spanglish overlap in important
ways with specific literacy skills emphasized in the English Language Arts Content
Standards for California Public Schools (California Department of Education,
1998). Using Lee’s (2007) cultural modeling framework, I argue that Spanglish is a
dynamic and creative language practice that has tremendous untapped potential
as a tool for literacy teaching and learning. Leveraging Spanglish as a resource, I
argue, could have a transformative impact on these students’ academic literacy
development by helping them to recognize, draw on, and extend the skills already
embedded in their everyday use of language.
What Is Spanglish ?
Interactions such as the one above are common in schools throughout the Los
Angeles Unified School District, where bilingual and emergent bilingual 2 Latina/
Latino students constitute a majority of the student population.3 Such interactions
are also becoming increasingly common in school districts nationwide, as demographic
shifts and changing immigration patterns continue to significantly reshape
the nation’s linguistic landscape (Gándara & Hopkins, 2010). Every day, bilingual
and emergent bilingual Latina/Latino students, such as Zulema and Caroline, successfully
communicate their thoughts and ideas using a combination of Spanish
and English, often referring to this hybrid language practice as Spanglish. Linguists
and other scholars refer to this practice as Spanish-English code-switching, noting
that it is an extremely common language contact phenomenon in bilingual communities
worldwide (Auer, 1998; Milroy & Muysken, 1995). In this article, I use the
terms Spanglish and Spanish-English code-switching interchangeably, recognizing
that neither sufficiently captures the complexity involved in this dynamic hybrid
language practice. I employ the latter when discussing relevant research literature,
so as to be consistent with the use of the term in most scholarship. More often than
not, however, I use the former because it is the preferred term among most of the
people that I know who engage in this language practice, including more than half
of the students with whom I have worked over the past 14 years.4
126 Research in the Teaching of English Volume 45 November 2010
Code-switching has been defined as “the juxtaposition within the same speech
exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems
or subsystems” (Gumperz, 1982, p. 59). Since the late 1960s, scholarship on codeswitching
has debunked popular perceptions that it is a deficient or haphazard
language practice. Blom and Gumperz (1972), for example, refuted the notion
that code-switching is not rule-governed, showing that it occurs in systematically
predictable ways. Subsequent research has extended this assertion by emphasizing
that grammatical constraints actually serve to govern the use of code-switching
(Joshi, 1985; Lipski, 1978; Poplack, 1980). Poplack (1980), for example, argued that
“code-switches will tend to occur at points in discourse where juxtaposition of L1
(primary language) and L2 (second language) elements does not violate a syntactic
rule of either language” (p. 586). Other researchers have since challenged Poplack’s
assertion, providing counter-examples and proposing their own explanations of
the factors that constrain code-switching (Joshi, 1985; Mahootian & Santorini,
1995). Although these scholars disagree as to the specific nature of grammatical
constraints, they come to a consensus on the issue of bilingual speaker competence.
The overwhelming majority of researchers agree that code-switching is not caused
by insufficient competence in one of the two languages, but rather reflects, at the
very least, the same level of grammatical competence as that reflected in the speech
of monolinguals (Lance, 1975; MacSwan, 1999; Poplack, 1981).
Related to this body of research is the observation that bilingual speakers sometimes
switch between two languages in order to sustain interaction when they are “at
a loss for words.” Zentella (1997) referred to this type of code-switching as crutching
or crutch-like switching because, like someone who relies on a crutch to walk, “a
bilingual who is stumped in one language can keep on speaking by depending on
a translated synonym as a stand-in” (p. 98). Crutching has long been the default
motivation for code-switching in the popular imagination. Indeed, laypeople’s
assumptions about Spanglish have historically attributed this language practice
to gaps in vocabulary, lack of education, improper control of language, and/or an
overall lack of proficiency in one or both of the languages in question (Gumperz,
1982; Lance, 1969; Romaine, 1995). As Zentella (1997) has shown, however, this
is not necessarily the primary motivating factor for most code-switching among
bilinguals. In her long-term ethnographic work in a bilingual New York Puerto
Rican speech community, for example, she observed that crutch-like switches constituted
only 25% of the total number of strategic switches that she documented
(Zentella, 1997). Zentella argued that code-switching is “more than a convenient
way to handle linguistic gaps” (1997, p. 99), explaining that it constitutes an active
and creative style of bilingual communication that often functions to establish
social identity and reaffirm ties with one’s community. Indeed, research across
multiple speech communities has demonstrated that code-switching is a valuable
linguistic resource that bilingual speakers utilize for various communicative
purposes (Milroy & Muysken, 1995).
Martínez Spanglish as Literacy Tool 127
Leveraging Diverse Students’ Cultural and Linguistic Resources
The current study builds on a substantial body of educational research that frames
linguistic and cultural diversity as a resource for teaching and learning (García,
2005; McKay & Wong, 1988; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992; Valdés, 2001).
Much of this scholarship informs and/or is informed by a related tradition of
ethnographic research on the everyday language practices of students of color
from working-class communities. Over the past three decades, ethnographers have
debunked deficit notions about these nondominant 5 students by demonstrating the
skill and intelligence embedded in their everyday language practices (Alim, 2004;
Goodwin, 1990; Heath, 1983; Orellana, 2001; Zentella, 1997). Taken together, this
ethnographic work has reframed nondominant students as competent and literate
learners. Educational researchers influenced by this tradition argue that, in order to
meet the educational needs of the nation’s increasingly diverse student population,
schools should promote what García (2005) referred to as a responsive approach
to curriculum and instruction. According to García, this approach requires that
educators acknowledge nondominant students as competent learners and respond
to the cultural and linguistic contexts surrounding their learning and development.
Within this broader body of scholarship, sociocultural researchers have recognized
the multiple resources and contributions that nondominant students bring
to schools, suggesting ways that these assets might be effectively leveraged for
academic learning (Lee, 2000; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992; Orellana &
Reynolds, 2008). In their groundbreaking work, Moll, Amanti, Neff, and González
(1992) demonstrated that many of the everyday social and cultural practices in
which Latina/Latino households engaged as part of familial and extended social
networks could be utilized as funds of knowledge—resources for academic learning
in school. Other scholars have focused on how students
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