Ricardo Otheguy
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 745646 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Ricardo Otheguy |
| PRENOMES | Ricardo |
| SOBRENOME | Otheguy |
| ASSINATURA | OTHEGUY R |
| AFILIAÇÕES | City University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0970-4544 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 25 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 63 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 24 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1979 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Don’t hire the magician
Culturally Specific Messaging and the Explanation of Contact in Impacted Bilinguals
A sketch is offered of a framework that would abandon the familiar notion of a language and the accompanying question of whether it has changed under contact. The framework would focus instead on speakers and on the linguistic consequences of people contact. Speakers in contact settings are not failing or deviating from a language's norm while attempting to say the same things that are said in non-contact settings; rather, they are succeeding at …
Rejecting abyssal thinking in the language and education of racialized bilinguals
Following Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the authors of this article reject the type of “abyssal thinking” that erases the existence of counter-hegemonic knowledges and lifeways, adopting instead the “from the inside out” perspective that is required for thinking constructively about the language and education of racialized bilinguals. On the basis of deep personal experience and extensive field-work research, we challenge prevailing assumptions abo…
American myths of linguistic assimilation
This study examines the behavior of 331 Spanish speakers, 269 immigrants to the United States and sixty-two native-born individuals, through questionnaires and sociolinguistic interviews. Results show that increased US life experience correlates with expanded use of English in both private and public domains of life. Additionally, greater use of English co-exists with maintenance of fine-grained patterns of structured linguistic variation in Span…
Plurilingualism and translanguaging
The concepts of plurilingualism and translanguaging are explained and distinguished, showing how each has contributed to transformations in the study of bilingualism and multilingualism. The terms have introduced different epistemologies related to multilingual speakers. The two concepts have different socio-political grounding, a difference that has contributed to carving divergent paths in educational practice. Plurilingualism, whose educationa…
A translanguaging view of the linguistic system of bilinguals
Two conceptions of the linguistic system of bilinguals are in contention. The translanguaging approach supports what we call a unitary view, arguing that bilingualism and multilingualism, despite their importance as sociocultural concepts, have no correspondence in a dual or multiple linguistic system. In our view, the myriad lexical and structural features mastered by bilinguals occupy a cognitive terrain that is not fenced off into anything lik…
Bilingualism in the community
Reviewed by: Bilingualism in the community: Code-switching and grammars in contact by Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine Travis Ricardo Otheguy Bilingualism in the community: Code-switching and grammars in contact. By Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine Travis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. 254. ISBN 9781108415828. $110 (Hb). Linguists have long asked whether one finds in bilinguals, in addition to lexical transfer, crosslingu…
Interrogating the Language Gap of Young Bilingual and Bidialectal Students
This article describes how the belief in the existence of a language gap has negative educational consequences for bilingual and bidialectal children from minoritized communities. This article first positions the idea of the language gap within the “achievement gap” discourse that has long been prevalent in educational circles. We then identify conceptual problems related to the ways that the language gap has been constructed, problems that we se…
Contact and coherence
Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages
The concept of translanguaging is clarified, establishing it as a particular conception of the mental grammars and linguistic practices of bilinguals. Translanguaging is different from code switching . Under translanguaging, the mental grammars of bilinguals are structured but unitary collections of features, and the practices of bilinguals are acts of feature selection, not of grammar switch. A proper understanding of translanguaging requires a …
Social class and gender impacting change in bilingual settings
This study examines the role of social class and gender in an ongoing change in Spanish spoken in New York City (NYC). The change, which has to do with increasing use of Spanish subject pronouns, is correlated with increased exposure to life in NYC and to English. Our investigation of six different national-origin groups shows a connection between affluence and change: the most affluent Latino groups undergo the most increase in pronoun use, whil…
Spanish in New YorkLanguage Contact, Dialectal Leveling, and Structural Continuity
The more than 2 million predominantly bilingual Spanish speakers from different parts of Latin America who live in New York City make it an ideal setting to study language contact and dialectal leveling. The Spanish feature under study is presence versus absence of subject personal pronouns (e.g., yo canto, “I sing” ~ canto, “I sing”). Variationist sociolinguistic research is conducted through bivariate analyses of pronoun occurrence rates and mu…
On so-called Spanglish
The word ‘Spanglish’, used most often to describe the casual oral registers of the speech of Hispanics in the USA, is an unfortunate and misleading term. Speakers of popular varieties of Spanish in the USA would be better served by recognizing that they are already speakers of Spanish. The present article is intended as a technical discussion of the empirical foundations for our position that there is no justification for the use of the term Span…
Advances in the study of lexical, phonological and grammatical variation and contact in Spanish in New York
As the second most widely spoken language in the City after English, Spanish in New York has long been the object of scholarly attention. Recent publications have reported on work based on data from the Otheguy-Zentella corpus, one of the largest corpora of spoken Spanish ever gathered in the United States. The corpus provides the common thread for research in this issue, which addresses problems having to do with phonology, lexicon, and grammar …
A multilevel statistical analysis of changes in language use among first-generation immigrants in a bilingual setting
The subject pronouns of English (which are nearly categorical) have contributed to a cross-generational increase in occurrence rates of Spanish pronouns (which are variably overt or null) among second generation speakers in New York. But is the passage of time also associated with overt pronoun rate increases among first generation immigrants? Analysis of a large corpus of verbs (n = 51,478) revealed that first generation speakers who arrived in …
Emergent literacy skills in bilingual children
The study examines emergent literacy skills in a group of young English Language Learners who are dominant in their native language, Spanish. We investigate the relative contribution of syntactic comprehension in the L1 and L2 to the development of emergent reading skills in English. Participants were bilingual kindergarteners from two public schools in New York City. Two main tests were administered: a test of syntactic comprehension, given in b…
Affirming Differences, Valuing Variation and Dismissing Dialects in Modern Linguistics
Dialectology and sociolinguistics have given rise to the notions of dialect difference and sociolinguistic variation. An evaluation of these concepts in terms of usefulness to scholars, social relevance to laymen, and solid intellectual coherence and soundness yields high marks on the first two criteria, while pointing to problems with regard to coherence. The scientific and social contributions made possible by the concept of dialectal differenc…
Language and Dialect Contact in Spanish in New York
Subject personal pronouns are highly variable in Spanish but nearly obligatory in many contexts in English, and regions of Latin America differ significantly in rates and constraints on use. We investigate language and dialect contact by analyzing these pronouns in a corpus of 63,500 verbs extracted from sociolinguistic interviews of a stratified sample of 142 members of the six largest Spanish-speaking communities in New York City. A variationis…
Overt nonspecific Ellos in Spanish in New York
In general Spanish, references to nonspecific third-person plurals are usually made by means of a verb occurring with the null form of the subject pronoun, as in llamaron del banco , rather than by means of a verb occurring with the overt form of the subject pronoun. In contrast to the position in this discussion, the literature presents null pronouns in these nonspecific 3pl contexts as resulting from a categorical syntactic rule, when in fact w…
Signal, Meaning, and Message
This is the second volume of papers on sign-based linguistics to emerge from Columbia School linguistics conferences. One set of articles offers semantic analyses of grammatical features of specific languages: English full-verb inversion; Serbo-Croatian deictic pronouns; English auxiliary do ; Italian pronouns egli and lui ; the Celtic-influenced use of on (e.g., ‘he played a trick on me’); a monosemic analysis of the English verb break. A second…
Signal, Meaning, and Message
Tu Mundo
The Value of Speaking a Lote in U.S. Business
How much value do foreign languages really have in a country like the United States, where the most proficient speakers of languages other than English (LOTEs) tend to be immigrants with little influence or power and where the rich and powerful tend to have little knowledge of LOTEs? This article first discusses the role of English and LOTEs in the history of the United States and in our current position within a global community. It then present…
Transferring, switching, and modeling in West New York Spanish
Article Transferring, switching, and modeling in West New York Spanish: an intergenerational study was published on January 1, 1989 in the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language (volume 1989, issue 79)
Being polite in Ecuador
Language and Dialect Contact in Spanish in New York
Subject personal pronouns are highly variable in Spanish but nearly obligatory in many contexts in English, and regions of Latin America differ significantly in rates and constraints on use. We investigate language and dialect contact by analyzing these pronouns in a corpus of 63,500 verbs extracted from sociolinguistic interviews of a stratified sample of 142 members of the six largest Spanish-speaking communities in New York City. A variationis…
Contact and coherence
Social class and gender impacting change in bilingual settings
This study examines the role of social class and gender in an ongoing change in Spanish spoken in New York City (NYC). The change, which has to do with increasing use of Spanish subject pronouns, is correlated with increased exposure to life in NYC and to English. Our investigation of six different national-origin groups shows a connection between affluence and change: the most affluent Latino groups undergo the most increase in pronoun use, whil…
Transferring, switching, and modeling in West New York Spanish
Article Transferring, switching, and modeling in West New York Spanish: an intergenerational study was published on January 1, 1989 in the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language (volume 1989, issue 79)
American myths of linguistic assimilation
This study examines the behavior of 331 Spanish speakers, 269 immigrants to the United States and sixty-two native-born individuals, through questionnaires and sociolinguistic interviews. Results show that increased US life experience correlates with expanded use of English in both private and public domains of life. Additionally, greater use of English co-exists with maintenance of fine-grained patterns of structured linguistic variation in Span…
The Value of Speaking a Lote in U.S. Business
How much value do foreign languages really have in a country like the United States, where the most proficient speakers of languages other than English (LOTEs) tend to be immigrants with little influence or power and where the rich and powerful tend to have little knowledge of LOTEs? This article first discusses the role of English and LOTEs in the history of the United States and in our current position within a global community. It then present…
Being polite in Ecuador
A multilevel statistical analysis of changes in language use among first-generation immigrants in a bilingual setting
The subject pronouns of English (which are nearly categorical) have contributed to a cross-generational increase in occurrence rates of Spanish pronouns (which are variably overt or null) among second generation speakers in New York. But is the passage of time also associated with overt pronoun rate increases among first generation immigrants? Analysis of a large corpus of verbs (n = 51,478) revealed that first generation speakers who arrived in …
Bilingual Education Goes to College
Bilingual programs in higher education, unlike such programs at the elementary and secondary levels, are few in number and of recent origin. And it is only recently that they have begun to attract professional and academic attention. As this scholarly and professional interest grows, disagreements over program objectives are likely to increase. We have surveyed official publications, have interviewed faculty and administrators of two college bili…
Being polite in Ecuador
Transferring, switching, and modeling in West New York Spanish
Article Transferring, switching, and modeling in West New York Spanish: an intergenerational study was published on January 1, 1989 in the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language (volume 1989, issue 79)
The Value of Speaking a Lote in U.S. Business
How much value do foreign languages really have in a country like the United States, where the most proficient speakers of languages other than English (LOTEs) tend to be immigrants with little influence or power and where the rich and powerful tend to have little knowledge of LOTEs? This article first discusses the role of English and LOTEs in the history of the United States and in our current position within a global community. It then present…
Tu Mundo
Signal, Meaning, and Message
This is the second volume of papers on sign-based linguistics to emerge from Columbia School linguistics conferences. One set of articles offers semantic analyses of grammatical features of specific languages: English full-verb inversion; Serbo-Croatian deictic pronouns; English auxiliary do ; Italian pronouns egli and lui ; the Celtic-influenced use of on (e.g., ‘he played a trick on me’); a monosemic analysis of the English verb break. A second…
Signal, Meaning, and Message
Overt nonspecific Ellos in Spanish in New York
In general Spanish, references to nonspecific third-person plurals are usually made by means of a verb occurring with the null form of the subject pronoun, as in llamaron del banco , rather than by means of a verb occurring with the overt form of the subject pronoun. In contrast to the position in this discussion, the literature presents null pronouns in these nonspecific 3pl contexts as resulting from a categorical syntactic rule, when in fact w…
Language and Dialect Contact in Spanish in New York
Subject personal pronouns are highly variable in Spanish but nearly obligatory in many contexts in English, and regions of Latin America differ significantly in rates and constraints on use. We investigate language and dialect contact by analyzing these pronouns in a corpus of 63,500 verbs extracted from sociolinguistic interviews of a stratified sample of 142 members of the six largest Spanish-speaking communities in New York City. A variationis…
Affirming Differences, Valuing Variation and Dismissing Dialects in Modern Linguistics
Dialectology and sociolinguistics have given rise to the notions of dialect difference and sociolinguistic variation. An evaluation of these concepts in terms of usefulness to scholars, social relevance to laymen, and solid intellectual coherence and soundness yields high marks on the first two criteria, while pointing to problems with regard to coherence. The scientific and social contributions made possible by the concept of dialectal differenc…
Emergent literacy skills in bilingual children
The study examines emergent literacy skills in a group of young English Language Learners who are dominant in their native language, Spanish. We investigate the relative contribution of syntactic comprehension in the L1 and L2 to the development of emergent reading skills in English. Participants were bilingual kindergarteners from two public schools in New York City. Two main tests were administered: a test of syntactic comprehension, given in b…
Advances in the study of lexical, phonological and grammatical variation and contact in Spanish in New York
As the second most widely spoken language in the City after English, Spanish in New York has long been the object of scholarly attention. Recent publications have reported on work based on data from the Otheguy-Zentella corpus, one of the largest corpora of spoken Spanish ever gathered in the United States. The corpus provides the common thread for research in this issue, which addresses problems having to do with phonology, lexicon, and grammar …
A multilevel statistical analysis of changes in language use among first-generation immigrants in a bilingual setting
The subject pronouns of English (which are nearly categorical) have contributed to a cross-generational increase in occurrence rates of Spanish pronouns (which are variably overt or null) among second generation speakers in New York. But is the passage of time also associated with overt pronoun rate increases among first generation immigrants? Analysis of a large corpus of verbs (n = 51,478) revealed that first generation speakers who arrived in …
On so-called Spanglish
The word ‘Spanglish’, used most often to describe the casual oral registers of the speech of Hispanics in the USA, is an unfortunate and misleading term. Speakers of popular varieties of Spanish in the USA would be better served by recognizing that they are already speakers of Spanish. The present article is intended as a technical discussion of the empirical foundations for our position that there is no justification for the use of the term Span…
Spanish in New YorkLanguage Contact, Dialectal Leveling, and Structural Continuity
The more than 2 million predominantly bilingual Spanish speakers from different parts of Latin America who live in New York City make it an ideal setting to study language contact and dialectal leveling. The Spanish feature under study is presence versus absence of subject personal pronouns (e.g., yo canto, “I sing” ~ canto, “I sing”). Variationist sociolinguistic research is conducted through bivariate analyses of pronoun occurrence rates and mu…
Social class and gender impacting change in bilingual settings
This study examines the role of social class and gender in an ongoing change in Spanish spoken in New York City (NYC). The change, which has to do with increasing use of Spanish subject pronouns, is correlated with increased exposure to life in NYC and to English. Our investigation of six different national-origin groups shows a connection between affluence and change: the most affluent Latino groups undergo the most increase in pronoun use, whil…
Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages
The concept of translanguaging is clarified, establishing it as a particular conception of the mental grammars and linguistic practices of bilinguals. Translanguaging is different from code switching . Under translanguaging, the mental grammars of bilinguals are structured but unitary collections of features, and the practices of bilinguals are acts of feature selection, not of grammar switch. A proper understanding of translanguaging requires a …
Contact and coherence
Interrogating the Language Gap of Young Bilingual and Bidialectal Students
This article describes how the belief in the existence of a language gap has negative educational consequences for bilingual and bidialectal children from minoritized communities. This article first positions the idea of the language gap within the “achievement gap” discourse that has long been prevalent in educational circles. We then identify conceptual problems related to the ways that the language gap has been constructed, problems that we se…
A translanguaging view of the linguistic system of bilinguals
Two conceptions of the linguistic system of bilinguals are in contention. The translanguaging approach supports what we call a unitary view, arguing that bilingualism and multilingualism, despite their importance as sociocultural concepts, have no correspondence in a dual or multiple linguistic system. In our view, the myriad lexical and structural features mastered by bilinguals occupy a cognitive terrain that is not fenced off into anything lik…
Bilingualism in the community
Reviewed by: Bilingualism in the community: Code-switching and grammars in contact by Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine Travis Ricardo Otheguy Bilingualism in the community: Code-switching and grammars in contact. By Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine Travis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. 254. ISBN 9781108415828. $110 (Hb). Linguists have long asked whether one finds in bilinguals, in addition to lexical transfer, crosslingu…
Plurilingualism and translanguaging
The concepts of plurilingualism and translanguaging are explained and distinguished, showing how each has contributed to transformations in the study of bilingualism and multilingualism. The terms have introduced different epistemologies related to multilingual speakers. The two concepts have different socio-political grounding, a difference that has contributed to carving divergent paths in educational practice. Plurilingualism, whose educationa…
Rejecting abyssal thinking in the language and education of racialized bilinguals
Following Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the authors of this article reject the type of “abyssal thinking” that erases the existence of counter-hegemonic knowledges and lifeways, adopting instead the “from the inside out” perspective that is required for thinking constructively about the language and education of racialized bilinguals. On the basis of deep personal experience and extensive field-work research, we challenge prevailing assumptions abo…
American myths of linguistic assimilation
This study examines the behavior of 331 Spanish speakers, 269 immigrants to the United States and sixty-two native-born individuals, through questionnaires and sociolinguistic interviews. Results show that increased US life experience correlates with expanded use of English in both private and public domains of life. Additionally, greater use of English co-exists with maintenance of fine-grained patterns of structured linguistic variation in Span…
Culturally Specific Messaging and the Explanation of Contact in Impacted Bilinguals
A sketch is offered of a framework that would abandon the familiar notion of a language and the accompanying question of whether it has changed under contact. The framework would focus instead on speakers and on the linguistic consequences of people contact. Speakers in contact settings are not failing or deviating from a language's norm while attempting to say the same things that are said in non-contact settings; rather, they are succeeding at …
Linguistics (20 obras) · Sociology (19 obras) · Multilingual Education and Policy (16 obras) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (15 obras) · Psychology (15 obras) · Philosophy (12 obras) · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies (10 obras) · Computer Science (9 obras) · History (8 obras) · Neuroscience of multilingualism (7 obras)