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Reviewed by:
  • Spanish Voices: Spanish and English in the Southeastern United States
  • Israel Sanz
Cullinan, Danica, and Walt Wolfram. Spanish Voices: Spanish and English in the Southeastern United States. Raleigh: The North Carolina Language and Life Project, North Carolina State U, 2010. DVD. 53:22.

The DVD Spanish Voices: Spanish and English in the Southeastern United States is one of the newest media resources on Spanish in the United States. It consists of a collection of personal experiences and reflections on the situation of Spanish speakers and Latinos living in the southeastern states. The format of Spanish Voices follows the popular oral history approach to ethnographic research and archiving, by gathering information in the form of oral interviews with members of the community. In this case, the result is a highly informative resource where the protagonists are the speakers themselves.

Spanish Voices includes a main section (26:02) and extras (27:20), organized as follows. The main section starts with an introduction to the historical, social, and demographic background of Spanish in the southeastern United States. It is followed by five sections, each containing a series of reflections by the participants on a specific topic having to do with the sociolinguistics of Spanish in this part of the country: 1) "A Diverse Community," which deals with the diversity of national origins and regional dialects of Spanish among the southeastern Latino population; 2) "Against the Odds," where participants talk about their difficulties maintaining the use of Spanish in their families in the face of overwhelming social pressures to assimilate to English; 3) "Learning English," which focuses on the experiences of Spanish speakers who try to learn English; 4) "Learning Spanish," where native English speakers talk about their personal motives to learn Spanish; and 5) "Spanish and English in Contact," which elaborates on the participants' lives in a bilingual world, including the phenomenon of Spanish-English code-switching as an expression of new hybrid Latino identities. The extras provide additional material on the following topics: "Spanglish," "Music and Dance," "Hispanic American Identity," Maintaining Spanish," and "Quinceañera." Spanish Voices can be viewed in Spanish or English. Since participants use both English and Spanish to offer their comments, subtitling in either language is provided when necessary.

Spanish Voices is a carefully organized resource that is ripe with information on the lives and experiences of people for whom Spanish in the southeastern United States is a part of their everyday reality. Perhaps its most valuable aspect is the fact that it focuses on a relatively new part of the ethnic and linguistic fabric of the United States that is still in need of attention. Its ethnographic and markedly personal approach is also successful: from the very beginning, viewers are made aware that they are going to be listening to people talk about their own lives. Although linguists occasionally offer a more research-based perspective, it is the voices of speakers themselves that play the leading role. Participants (both native speakers of English and Spanish) provide viewers with a wealth of information on the demographic, social, psychological, and linguistic factors determining the use of Spanish alongside English in the southeastern United States. In doing so, they help debunk several false myths, including the perceived reluctance among Spanish speakers in the United States to learn English, or the often invoked [End Page 768] argument that Spanish-English code-switching reveals many Latinos' inability to speak either language proficiently. The arrangement of the contents presented in Spanish Voices is another of its many virtues: participants' views are kept to short clips that complement each other, grouped together according to specific topics. The presentation is consequently easy to follow, and the overall result is engaging and entertaining, despite the accumulation of opinions and the abundance of information. Finally, the authors must also be praised for their emphasis on making this resource available to the general public: academic-spirited minutiae are kept to a minimum, and the availability of English and Spanish viewing options increases the potential audience of this project.

Despite the many praiseworthy aspects of Spanish Voices, there are a few weak points to mention. First, a few more historical or demographic data would have helped contextualize...

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