The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

Here’s a Story
Chicano English: Understanding a Significant Dialect and its Writers
118
Jacqueline Diaz
Fall 2001
I still remember when Maria and Truong came storming in to my dorm room after English class our
freshmen year: they were upset. Shaking essays in my face, they complained that the professor had told
them they had “ESL issues” and even asked the loaded question, “Is English your first language?” Maria
and Truong were angry because English was their primary language, they saw themselves as average
American, English speaking eighteen year olds that just happened to have Spanish and Asian surnames.
While they did speak second languages fairly well, they couldn’t write in them and couldn’t figure out
why their writing would seem “accented”—it just seemed normal to them and it was normal, just not
“standard.” What they hadn’t realized and what their professor didn’t know, was that they spoke and
wrote in non-SAE dialects that were structurally influenced by their parents’ primary languages of
Vietnamese and Spanish; consequently, these two students felt a sense of cultural betrayal by being
labeled, essentially, as linguistic outsiders.
It is important to distinguish students like Maria and Truong, who write in non-SAE dialects from
those students who truly write in English as their second language because they have different needs—
this is not always easy though. As tutors and teachers, we are generally taught about African American
dialects of English as well as regional dialects, but rarely do we discuss the emerging English dialects that
borrow structural features from the languages of growing, initially immigrant, populations. For example,
students like Maria and Truong are generally discussed as “ESL” students rather than students who speak
or write in alternate dialects of English—it’s just been easier to do this instead of taking the time to
address the needs of writers of all the variants of English.
Passive Bilingualism & SSL Speakers
It is difficult to explain how or why the many variants of English exist and emerge, except to
acknowledge that English, like all other languages, is constantly changing to meet the needs of its
speakers. When English comes into contact with another language, or when people who speak other
languages begin to speak primarily in English, the possibility of creating new dialects of English is
present. The United States, being a unique mecca of language contact, has developed many dialects of
English. For example, in California, where there is a large and growing Latino population, Chicano
English or ChE is an important dialect to be aware of when tutoring and teaching.
Linguists Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman, describe ChE as “a distinct dialect of American
English…which is the native language of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans (1998,
419). These linguists also say that ChE is heavily influenced by Spanish and differs both systemically
and phonologically from SAE (1998, 419). ChE most likely emerged as a natural English language
development that began when bilingual Spanish and English speakers began code-switching—a process
where bilingual speakers use both of their languages within a single phrase or sentence (Fromkin &
Rodman, 1998, 418). And while no one can tell for certain, it is safe to say that ChE is becoming more
common in part, because of passive bilingualism and the growing numbers of Spanish as a Second
Language speakers.