A Sociolinguistic Diaspora: Latino Practices, Identities, and Ideologies ed. by Rosina Márquez Reiter and Luisa Martín Rojo (review)

A Sociolinguistic Diaspora: Latino Practices, Identities, and Ideologies, edited by Rosina Márquez Reiter and Luisa Martín Rojo, discusses the dynamic interplay of linguistic and sociocultural phenomenon of Latino diasporas in established, emergent, and virtual communities around the globe. This text specifies various ever-evolving individual/group Latino identities and the struggle to distinguish from and/or associate with either differing Spanish-speaking groups or the linguistic majority of a host country. For example, Chapters 1 through 4 highlight well-established Latino communities in the United States and detail aspects of their changing assumptions surrounding Spanish language dialect superiority (Chapter 1); Latino pan-ethnicity through inverted Spanglish and spatial diasporic re-imagining (Chapter 2); linguistic preferences between English/Spanish on the radio (Chapter 3); and linguistic identities negotiated through LGBTQ+ association (Chapter 4). The text goes on to describe newer, emergent Latino diasporic communities in the European Union and beyond by explaining Spanish and English linguistic capital from participants in both Madrid and London (Chapter 5); the isolation and commodification of Colombian identity in Barcelona, Spain (Chapter 6); the hybridization of and spatial idealization between Spanish and Italian (Chapter 7); the struggle for linguistic and cultural maintenance both at school and at home in London (Chapter 8); and the dynamic interplay of Spanish polite speech or educación reimagined in Hebrew in Israel (Chapter 9). The book ends with two chapters on the unique construction of virtual communities through several types of technologies by discussing afforded benefits and possible emotional paradoxes to transnational diasporic families due to persistent technological advances, such as constant internet connectivity and mobile phone use (Chapter 10). The text also engages Community of Practice blogging by Latino migrants and possible future migrants to Quebec (Chapter 11). The afterword itself states: “What the book does is liberate the diaspora, in this case the Latino diaspora, offering the freedom of voice that comes from being considered empowered actors and speakers with a critical consciousness” (200). Therefore, this text is able to paint an immensely unique picture of the varying Latino diasporas across the globe.

Throughout the book, there is a focus on language identity and the cultural construction involved in transnational/migrant contexts for Latino diasporic communities. This emphasis offers a great contribution to the field of sociolinguistics and adds to the literature on the ways in which these diasporas emerge and continue to develop. Many of the chapters attributed immigration to political and economic unrest in South America, while several chapters also discussed the ways in which linguistic and cultural assimilation either do or do not take place in each resulting diasporic context for various reasons. Nearly all of the chapters employed ethnographic methods and qualitative research designs. These multiple viewpoints on what it means to be Latino in a diasporic context help to provide the audience with a clearer understanding of the dynamic linguistic, cultural, and identity-producing interactions at play on a global scale. While this text would have benefited from a final section that made connections across each chapter, through discussions of migration, deterritorialization, linguistic hybridity, and identity, each contributing author offered a piece of the puzzle that helped to move the whole book beyond a singular perspective to explain a fuller perspective of Latinidad beyond the context of North America.

While this collection of chapters surrounding Latino sociolinguistic diasporas is certainly pertinent to the fields of Sociolinguistics, Linguistics, Spanish Linguistics, and Pragmatics, it also could be viewed as extremely useful in the fields of Language Education and Global Studies. For example, Arnd Witte’s Blending Spaces: Mediating and Assessing Intercultural Competence in the L2 Classroom is a linguistic text that has implications for teaching foreign languages, by demonstrating the concept and construction of a third linguistic space. Language learners may use this third space to better understand and develop multilingually, which is particularly relevant when considering Chapters...