La voz gringa: Latino stylization of linguistic (in)authenticity as social critique

Abstract

Through discourse analysis of a transcribed conversation in a southern California Mexican restaurant, I identify a discursive practice in which Latina/os mock a white woman’s pronunciation of Spanish. Specifically, I examine how participants call attention to linguistic features associated with whiteness in her pronunciation of puto, a pejorative Spanish slang term used to refer to gay men, similar to the use of ‘faggot’ in American English. By using Valley-Girl-esque phonology (Eckert, 2000; Fought, 2006; Goodwin and Alim, 2010), higher pitch, and politeness formulas, participants draw on linguistic correlates intricately tied to ideologies of whiteness. I call this practice la voz gringa, and show how its use simultaneously calls into question multiple social identities, disrupts the dominant sociolinguistic ordering of white Mainstream English with respect to Latina/o language, and challenges racial/ethnic power dynamics between whites and Latina/os.