Resumen de Spanglish: a study of code-switching among spanics in the United States and implications for further research
Spanglish is a language variety practiced among Hispanics living in the United States , especially those of Mexican, Puerto Rican or Cuban descent. Also referred to as code-switching, it is characterized by the inclusion of both English and Spanish components either between or within sentences. Code-switching is a prerequisite for participation in a bilingual conversation, and increased esposure to this practice enhances a speaker¿s proficiency in producing mixed language sentences with the code alteration appearing at random syntactical junctures within each sentence. The speaking of Spanglish is a sociopolitical identity marker among Hispanics. Seven texts of prose, poetry and song lyrics that exhibit varying degrees of code switching are examined, and it is found that there is a very close relation between the frequency of words in English and Spanish and the length of phrases in each language with a slight preference for English in both cases.
