Bilingual Review/ Revista Bilingüe (BR/RB) © 2023, Volume 35, Number 1 32
The Use of Spanglish in Latin Rap Music: An Analysis of Inter- and Intraclausal Code-
Switching
Osmer Balam, PhD
The College of Wooster
Jacob Shelton
The College of Wooster
Abstract
The present study sheds light on the linguistic nature of Spanish/English code-switching – one of
the multiple manifestations of Spanglish – in music. In contrast to previous work that examines this
phenomenon in tracks released within the last two decades, this paper focuses on Latin rap from the
1990s, an era when several U.S. Latino rappers employed Spanglish to assert and show pride in
their bilingual linguistic identity and ability to mix their languages. More specifically, we analyzed
the grammatical structure of Spanish/English code-switching in Latin rap songs characterized by
the productive use of code-switching. To this end, we analyzed 316 switches from12 songs in order
to elucidate the structure and variety of these inter- and intraclausal switches. Results show that
whereas interclausal switches favor switching from Spanish to English, intraclausal switches are
characterized by unidirectional mixing patterns from English to Spanish. While the matrix language
of the dataset was predominantly English, the majority of nouns, adjectives, prepositions, relative
pronouns, and coordinate/subordinate conjunctions were realized in Spanish. We discuss the
implications of these findings in relation to our current understanding of the diverse language
practices that characterize Spanish/English code-switching varieties.
Keywords: code-switching in music, Spanglish in music, Spanish/English code-switching, Latin rap
music, interclausal and intraclausal code-switching
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