The Use of Spanglish in Latin Rap Music: An Analysis of Inter- and Intraclausal Code-Switching

Abstract

The present study sheds light on the linguistic nature of Spanish/English code-switching – one of the multiple manifestations of Spanglish – in music. In contrast to previous work that examines this phenomenon in tracks released within the last two decades, this paper focuses on Latin rap from the 1990s, an era when several U.S. Latino rappers employed Spanglish to assert and show pride in their bilingual linguistic identity and ability to mix their languages. More specifically, we analyzed the grammatical structure of Spanish/English code-switching in Latin rap songs characterized by the productive use of code-switching. To this end, we analyzed 316 switches from 12 songs in order to elucidate the structure and variety of these inter- and intraclausal switches. Results show that whereas interclausal switches favor switching from Spanish to English, intraclausal switches are characterized by unidirectional mixing patterns from English to Spanish. While the matrix language of the dataset was predominantly English, the majority of nouns, adjectives, prepositions, relative pronouns, and coordinate/subordinate conjunctions were realized in Spanish. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to our current understanding of the diverse language practices that characterize Spanish/English code-switching varieties.