“Pink Cheese, Green Ghosts, Cool Arrows/Pinches Gringos Culeros”

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the multiple forms of stigmatization mapped onto students’ English and Spanish language practices and demonstrates some of the complex ways that they attempted to fashion linguistic escape routes from these discriminatory perspectives. Students felt pressured to signal their Spanish language proficiency, but they sought to do so without calling into question their ability to speak “unaccented” English; they were faced with the task of speaking Spanish and English simultaneously without being perceived as possessing an accent. The chapter argues that students combined specific Spanish and English linguistic forms as part of the enregisterment of language and identity in ways that differ from what has been previously described as “Mock Spanish.” This analysis introduces the notion of “Inverted Spanglish” and suggests that it is a racialized index of US Latinx panethnicity and a parodic take on the school-based category of “Young Latino Professional.”