Alayla Navarro, Apoorva Gunti, Jester Mediano, Kaitlin Carlos, Steven Arias
Through social media, the exercise of language has never been more documented. Online communication in the Anthropocene is commonplace in many parts of the world, expanding the prevalence of language mixing, such as Spanglish. This can be brought on by different factors. Our research aims to track how over time, Spanglish became a relatively common way of speaking in social media apps like Instagram. We present data analyzing three different social media accounts on Instagram that employ the use of Spanglish vocabulary, exhibiting a positive correlation of Spanglish use over time. The analysis is done on the Instagram comments under posts targeting the Hispanic community. The comments were randomly chosen and manually examined, where we looked at whether the comment had Spanish/Spanglish and what the comments meant. The increase was documented over the time period of 2018-2024, where Instagram users utilized Spanglish the least in 2018 and the most in 2024. We also expand on this idea and analyze the prevalence of both Spanglish and the use of Spanish in an English-language dominated social media platform, such as Instagram, where the latter saw a larger increase over the time period we documented.
Introduction and Background
Because of different factors like stigmatization, languages like Spanish have constantly been derided in the United States. Up until recently, the use of Spanish has been a point of contention. Through rising acceptance of Spanish in popular media such as TV shows, movies, and through the popularization of Spanish-speaking artists, Spanish itself has made its way into mainstream acceptance in the United States. This phenomena can also be seen in social media like Instagram where comedic accounts like meme pages whose main language is Spanish is followed by hundreds of thousands of people. Through those social media pages, the use of Spanglish also became increasingly common as the acceptance of Spanish slowly became accepted. By tracking comments and responses from those Spanish meme pages on Instagram ranging from 2018 all the way to 2024, we aim to see how the use of hybrid language increased over time.
Methods
The project design sought to examine the frequency of hybrid language use and code-switching among online bilingual Spanish and English-speaking individuals over time. The expressions to be analyzed were sourced from the comments sections of three Instagram accounts that foreground Latin American culture, have large follower bases, and have posted consistently for the time span this study examines: perolike, so.mexican, and corridoybandas.
From these accounts, three posts from 2018-19, 2021, and 2024 were taken from each. 50 comments were selected as impartially as possible from those 9 posts, and collated into tables that marked expressions as either fully English, or as having some presence of Spanglish or Spanish. After investigating the increasing or decreasing prevalence of Spanglish use with these comments over the span of 6 years, expressions were then translated and interpreted to determine how users authenticate or negate aspects of culture and personal identity.
Results
After compiling Instagram comments and categorizing them, we created tables tracking the change in frequency of the use of Spanish and Spanglish on Instagram comments over the time period of 2018 to 2024, shown in figures one and two. Figure one has data in tally form and figure two has data in percentage form.
We then used this data to create a graph, in which all three Instagram accounts show a positive correlation over time, indicating an increase in the use of Spanglish within the comment sections of these accounts. Figure three shows this graph.
We also went further and analyzed the prevalence of Spanglish and Spanish. We separated these two categories specifically to understand and categorize hybrid-language use versus the use of a different language in an English-predominant social media platform. A table of data distributing Spanish, Spanglish, and English Comments between the three Instagram accounts, separated by year, is listed below in figure four.
We took this data table and transformed the data into a column chart, as listed below in figures five, six, and seven.
Based on these distributions, although the use of both Spanglish and Spanish generally have increased, the use of Spanish has increased at a greater rate than Spanglish. This increase is specifically highlighted with the @corridosybandas Instagram account.
Discussion
According to Crooks (2004), new communication technologies, such as social media platforms like Instagram, have influenced the formation of linguistic and social identities from its users, allowing for shifts and adaptations of the language. To further expand on past literature findings, we identify Spanglish as an indexical tool used to assert a sense of belonging with a twist. Our findings indicate that within the Spanish-speaking culture, Spanglish users exploit Spanish’s emergent language development and constant linguistic varieties it possesses at the user’s convenience, with intention (Wentker and Schneider, 2022). This is seen during 2018-2019 in comments of the account @so.mexican where the use of Spanglish was low and was predominantly English. This is similar to the finding by Maliani (2021), where 43% of Indonesian bilingual speakers inserted English words in their tweets. Although this article explored the different forms of code mixing, our research took this trend to the next level by looking into the context of which these words were used. Our research identified a trend where users consistently chose Spanish word insertions that referred to cultural traditions or types of relations used by that community. For example, the use of “la dieta”, “otro taco” (“the diet” “another taco”) from the commenter indicated that users have experienced this cultural concept of risking your diet for tacos, a deeply desired food by people within this community. This asserts belonging within the community by relating to an experience shared by other members.
Another form of word insertion commonly found was the use of relational words translated into Spanish, such as “Tio,” “Tia,” and “Mami”, respectively translating to “uncle”and “aunt”, and the slang word for “beautiful girl”. We can conclude, with these insertions, that this Spanglish use was intentional, with the goal of connecting to the community and identifying as a member themselves.
A second finding expanding beyond current literature is the user’s demonstration of their own Spanglish ideologies and how they express these expectations when someone does not follow them. From past literature, we have understood the following: code-switching is intentional and asserts sense of belonging, social media allows for adaptation and variation of language, code-switching differs from face-to-face and online uses, and non-native English speakers have increasingly opted to use their native language within online platforms (Crooks, 2004; Dailey-O’Cain, 2017; Maliani, 2021; Wentker and Schneider, 2022). In 2021, users critiqued a post on their use of Spanglish, which stated “When todos andan muriendo de frio but tienes tu cobija de tigre” (translating to: “when everyone is dying from the cold but you have your tiger blanket”). The commenters corrected the post by sharing what Spanglish is and described their “improper use” of it as “forced” and “dumb.” This demonstrates how in addition to social media allowing for Spanglish users of varying levels to be confident in using Spanglish more frequently, those who consider themselves experts in this language can inform and correct other users through social media platforms as well. This adds to past literature because it opens up a new door for a different view on Spanglish. With this finding, we can have a small piece to the bigger picture of Spanglish use. We can now look further and ask ourselves, what is Spanglish from the perspective of fluent Spanglish users, what ideologies and expectations do they have in terms of Spanglish linguistics and how might this perspective change depending on the region in which this speaker resides?
Conclusion
In conclusion, the normalization and usage of Spanglish, a hybrid language that incorporates elements from both English and Spanish, has increased and become relevant in digital spaces like social media. Despite Spanglish’s contested history, it serves as a means of cultural affiliation and experience for many in the Mexican and Latin American communities. Although the research contains limitations, such as not knowing the location of users, the results are indicative that an increase in usage and frequency has occurred.
References
Cook, S. E. (2004). New Technologies and Language Change: Toward an Anthropology of Linguistic Frontiers. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 103-115. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25064847
Dailey-O’Cain, Jennifer. “Language Ideologies, Multilingualism, and Social Media.” Trans-National English in Social Media Communities, edited by Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017, pp. 23–60. Springer Link, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50615-3_2.
Maliani, P. (2021, August). Code mixing as language style in communication through Social Mediatwitter.Researchgate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357686277_CODE_MIXING_AS_LANGUAG E_STYLE_IN_COMMUNICATION_THROUGH_SOCIAL_MEDIA_TWITTER
Piasente, J. (2013). Looking for identity in a multicultural world: The Case of Spanglish in the United States.
Wentker, M., & Schneider, C. (2022). And she be like ‘tenemos frijoles en la casa’: Code-switching and identity construction on YouTube. Languages, 7(3), 219. https://doi.org/10.3390/ languages7030219