Vowels

When compared to English phonology, the Spanish vowel system does not distinguish between tense and lax peripheral vowels, nor does it employ distinctive sets of so-called long and short vowels, or a set of r-colored allophones of the long vowels. Finally, it does not have a set of diphthongs, in addition to a set of off-gliding vowels. Consequently, when an ELL initially reworks the five-monophthong Spanish vowel system, certain phonemic approximations and mergers tend to occur. For example, Santa Ana (1991: 154–160) spectrographically measured the naturally occurring speech of a seventeen-year old ELL male. His still developing English (his preferred language) was impressionistically marked with phonemic mergers, and the absence of off-glides, particularly in the high vowels, /i/ and /u/. The instrumental study provided evidence of two mergers, /i/ ~ /ɪ/ and /ε/ ~ /æ/. The spectrographic analysis further indicated that he did not employ the English stressed vowel reduction system.

In striking contrast to this ELL, native speakers of ChcE share the catalog of vowel phonemes, as well as most of the associated surface phonological features, of their local U.S. English dialect (García 1984; Penfield and Ornstein-Galicia 1985; Galindo 1987; Santa Ana 1991; Veatch 1991; Mendoza-Denton 1997; Fought 1997, 2003; Thomas 2001). For example, Los Angeles ChcE shares with most other Euro-American dialects four historical or on-going vowel mergers, including the so-called ‘short o’ merger, which may be stated in terms of J.C. Wells (1982) lexeme sets (Veatch 1991: 184). In other AmE dialects, as in ChcE, the LOT class of lexemes merges with the THOUGHT, CLOTH and PALM lexeme sets. While the PALM or ‘broad a’ merged some time ago, Labov (1991) and others see the LOT or ‘short o’ and THOUGHT or ‘long open o’ to be a merger that is currently advancing. Second, ChcE also does not distinguish the BATH and TRAP lexeme sets. Third, Chicanos pronounce the familiar merry, Mary, and marry identically, that is, they share the merger of intervocalic non-high front vowels. Lastly, unlike some Southern U.S. English dialects, ChcE seems to have merged the NORTH and FORCE lexeme sets. The similarity of the ChcE inventory of vowel phonemes led Veatch to suggest that the ChcE system of stressed vowels may be the local Euro-American English system (1991: 188).

Nevertheless, ChcE elicits a quick and often negative judgment from local matrix dialect speakers. So the question remains what linguistic norms are flouted when Chicanos speak their home dialects. In an attempt to synthesize the work of our (above mentioned) colleagues, we suggest four characteristic differences:

I. ChcE is more monophthongal, especially in monosyllabic words, than other AmE dialects.

II. ChcE is articulated with greater vowel space overlap of front vowels than other AmE dialects.

III. ChcE may have a different system of vowel reduction than other AmE dialects.

IV. ChcE has several linguistic variables (that is to say, variably-occurring ethnic dialect features, discourse markers and prosody contours) that signal Chicano community identities.

ChcE speakers use (IV), the ChcE-specific linguistic variables, in conjunction with other more widely-shared variables, such as (u-fronting) and negative concord, in complex ways to express their multifaceted identities, as shown by Fought, who begins to tease out the simultaneous use of numbers of variables to express complex identities.

The ChcE-specific variables are local community variables, including Greater Los Angeles (ε), (ʃ/ʧ​ merger), and Texas (-ing), California (ɪ) and the Th-Pro discourse marker. We have yet to definitively locate a pan-ChcE linguistic variable, which in part is a consequence of the relative lack of sociolinguistic research on this dialect. Alternatively, it might be due to the separate beginnings of ChcE in different regions of the Midwest and Southwest (but cf. Bayley 1994 and Santa Ana 1996). However, the four characteristic phonological differences mentioned above characterize both bi- and monolingual ChcE speakers (Santa Ana 1991; Fought 2003).

Regarding (IV), we think that these ChcE identity markers are reflexes of Spanish-speaking ELL transfer features that were refashioned when local Chicano communities in distinct locales established themselves. For now, this hypothesis remains untested because no study has addressed the 20^th century formation of ChcE dialects. Nor has anyone documented the creation of a new ChcE dialect. The new immigrant Mexican communities throughout the U.S. South and in northeastern cities, however, offer key sites to investigate on-going social processes that are possibly creating linguistic variables in new ChcE speech. For example, Spanish-speaking immigrants have only recently begun to work in agribusiness in large numbers in the U.S. South. At times they do not come from traditional sites of Mexican migration, bringing new Spanish dialects to the U.S. In addition to the interesting English that will develop, since their U.S. settings are new, Mexican Spanish may not hold sway over other Spanish dialects, as is the case in the Chicano urban centers established in the 20^th century. These significant demographic changes portend significant sociolinguistic changes. Furthermore, the politics of immigration have changed (Finks 2003). All of these factors offer opportunities for innovative explorations of language contact.