2.1 Diglossia, assimilation, and bilingualism among the hispanics  (Page 17/17)

And, finally, the rewards of the symbolic capital are derived from the maintenances of Spanish as the maternal language. It is true that belonging to a speaking community is not the same as feeling like part of a family, a government, or a religion. However, the feeling of belonging to a community of speakers has something of the three things. In this sense, the symbolic role of the language has nothing to do with the functions of communication, persuasion, or thought. This function of integration and reinforcement of self-esteem and identity of the people is probably the first and last reason which so many languages refuse to die. Labov tells the case of a boy in a public school in New York that resisted any attempt of linguistic assimilation within the English standard. Labov attributed this resistance to the deep loyalty that the boy professed to Black English , the language of his gang in the corner of the district. Arnulfo Ramirez (1992) presents the testimony, a bit more dramatic, of a young Texan student:

Cuando nosotros hablamos en chicano, tenemos más feeling que hablar en el standard, porque nosotros asina nos criamos, con esa lengua que inventamos, y asina sufrimos y asina lloramos y asina jugamos, y por eso esa lengua, you know, it’s our feeling (p. 79).

A stirring testimony that reminds us of the linguistic conflict of those second or third generation young Hispanics that form that segment of population between standard English and standard Spanish who have chosen a third rout, that of slang. Perhaps there does not have to be a conflict of linguistic loyalties. Perhaps a variety of a local dialect can coexist with a standardized language. But it is certain that, according to the prospective demographic, The Texan boy by 2020 is going to live in a Hispanic community of 50 million, and that only if he is able in his daily routine to change from Tex-Mex to the standardized Spanish of the U.S. will he be able to play an excellent role in the country where he lives, as well as in the set of the nations that speak Spanish.

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