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Tag Archives: acculturation
Aflac and Amateur Spanglish
I’m yet to see how “Tu vales por two” resonates with bilinguals because “two” sounds contrived. The Spanish phrase is, “Vales por dos.” Replacing “dos” for “two” does not make this phrase Spanglish. It makes it incorrect in English and in Spanish and for that matter in Spanglish.
This is a good example of amateur Spanglish, non-fluent Spanglish or Spanglish for beginners. For Spanglish to work, it has to be a mix of emotionally-charged words in Spanish that are commonly known among Spanish speakers which do not translate in well English or words that were first learned in English and never learned in Spanish because they are too long or impractical.
Spanglish is an “insiders” language that is learned through socialization and mingling with other Spanglish-speakers. Spanglish is spoken among a subculture of in-group members who grew up speaking Spanish and English simultaneously.
“Latino” Preferred in California
By Mari D. González
The term Latino/a is preferred in California because it is associated with a sense of self-power, “for more educated Californians, ‘Latino’ is the new Chicano in that it evokes their indigenous roots, a shared history of struggle and the colonization of the people in Latin American countries.” Alcoff, L. M. (2005). Latino vs. Hispanic: The politics of ethnic names. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 31(4), 395-407.
Missing the Mark on Culture
By Mari D. González
The blog “Are Marketers Missing the Mark?” by Hispanic Market Weekly states that “An attitude-based acculturation model provides a more focused lens for looking at Latinos and capturing the estimated $500 billion in purchasing power held by bicultural Hispanics” based on a report from Culturati Research & Consulting.
Let’s clarify that the largest percentage of bilingual Latinos/Hispanics do not need to acculturate; they enculturate instead. They acquire the culture in their first years of life through schooling and media in English. Acculturation is for people such as immigrants who move from one society or culture into another.
Ethnic marketing is prone to these wrong and misleading statements. Let’s also clarify that Hispanic marketers are not experts in cross-cultural theories or cultural anthropology and should not be haphazardly using terms that are outside their field or field-specific that they ignore. They need to either learn more about social sciences or leave such studies to the experts because they are “missing the mark.”
Nota en español sobre “Spanglish”
Page 51 of Book IX from the Florentine Codex. The text is in Nahuatl written with a Latin script. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Escrito por Mari D. González
De acuerdo a mi último estudio, los jóvenes quienes aprenden español en su casa – ya sea porque sus padres se lo exigen o porque sus padres no hablan ingles- y que aprendieron ingles a temprana edad, prefieren, al hablar casualmente con sus amigos(as), usar las palabras y frases en español que aprendieron en casa y mezclarlas con términos o frases en ingles que aprendieron en la escuela.
Este proceso de “back and forth” de una lengua a otra no necesariamente incluye palabras comúnmente conocidas como Spanglish.
En mi opinión, las palabras en español inglesadas o anglicismos denotan conceptos nuevos o variaciones de conceptos ya conocidos que se añaden al vocabulario en el lenguaje que fueron aprendidas manteniendo el sonido español por la popularidad de su uso y la funcionalidad que ofrecen.
El use de Spanglish es más común en los mexicanos quienes nos aferramos a un español menos castellano y más Náhuatl y en personas para quienes no es práctico buscar en el diccionario español-ingles la traducción al español de palabras nuevas en ingles.
Hispanic Marketing and Culture
By Mari D. González
In the past four years, I have studied how effectively cultural research has been utilized by marketers to target ethnic groups, specifically Latinos/Hispanics in the U.S. On my most recent research, I focused on youth because they represent a demographic group that is bilingual and bicultural and because they are most susceptible to new trends and technology.
I investigated the type of cultural knowledge marketing researchers use to target Latino/Hispanic youth and the effectiveness of their interactive advertising campaigns. The study explored how the ever-growing access to digital media changed the way the food and beverage companies do business with Latino/Hispanic youth. The purpose of the study was to provide further understanding on marketing to U.S. Latinos particularly acculturated youth who shift back and forth between two cultures and that has shaped the focus of my academic research.
The study was presented at the LISA Forum Berkeleyand the academic paper was published at the Journal for Internationalisation and Localisation at Lessius Hogeschool in December, 2009.
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