Hill -- Language Race and White Public Space
Context & Scope of Article
Author: Jane H. Hill, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona
Publication: American Anthropologist (1998)
Central Goal: Explain how linguistic practices—especially “Mock Spanish”—construct and sustain White public space, reproduce racism, and render whiteness invisible while hyper-visibilizing racialized speakers (e.g., Chicanos, Latinos, African Americans).
Methodology:
• Ethnographic observation of everyday white speech
• Collection of mass-media artefacts (ads, greeting cards, TV, film, newspapers)
• Engagement with prior linguistic-anthropological research (Urciuoli 1996; van Dijk 1993; Smitherman 1994; etc.)
Anthropological Approach to Racism
Anthropology’s “contradictory heritage”: both scientific racism & early antiracist scholarship.
New imperative: treat racism as centrally as “race” in bio-anthro.
Racism framed as “apparent irrationality” that is actually historically grounded, politically functional, and meaning-making.
Key theoretical lenses:
• Racial formation processes (Omi & Winant 1994)
• Racial practices (Winant 1994)
• Global racialscapes (Harrison 1995)Puzzle: If “race” is scientifically baseless, why do educated people act as racists? → Because racist world-views organize political–economic power (Smedley 1993).
Linguistic Anthropology & the “Culture of Language”
Traditional antiracist pedagogy: prove all languages are equal (Boas 1889; Labov 1972).
Limitation: ignores dominant linguistic ideologies of whites & ignores that stigma targets people’s experiences/bodies (Baldwin 1979).
New direction: analyze racializing discourses themselves—the signs, contexts, ideologies, and policing practices that constitute racism.
Guiding premise (Urban 1991): Culture resides in concrete, publicly accessible signs, esp. discourse.
Key Concept – White Public Space
Definition (after Page & Thomas 1994): arenas where whiteness is “invisibly normal”; racialized groups are hyper-visible, policed, and marginalized.
Constructed via two linked processes:
Intense monitoring of racialized speakers for linguistic “disorder.”
Invisibility of equivalent or worse “disorder” when produced by whites, because it is recast as casual, humorous, or authentic.
Moral & political significance: site where racial hierarchy is naturalized in everyday interaction.
Puerto Rican Case Study (Urciuoli 1996)
Inner sphere: household/neighborhood talk → fluid code-switching; Spanish/English boundaries blurred; high competence.
Outer sphere: encounters with strangers/gatekeepers → sharp policing of language boundaries; speakers anxious about accents, vocabulary, fillers (e.g., “you know”).
Consequences:
• Bilinguals feel silenced/incompetent in public.
• Mistakes read as proof of inherent racial “disorder” or danger.
• Success in “orderly” English risks accusation of “acting White.”Spanish is only “licensed” publicly in folklorized, “safe” contexts (e.g., ethnofestivals).
White Linguistic Normalcy: “Orderly Disorder”
Whites routinely violate Spanish grammar, pronunciation, orthography; errors are forgiven or celebrated.
Heavy Anglo accents in Spanish: tolerated—even in graduate language classes.
Written blunders widespread: e.g., “Wash Your Hands / Lava sus manos” (should be Lavarse las manos).
Newspapers omit Spanish diacritics (e.g., Arizona Daily Star reprint of García Márquez, 1997).
Whites freely mix English & Spanish in casual and elite settings (faculty meetings, newscasts, op-eds).
Mock Spanish – Forms & Strategies
Semantic Pejoration
• Neutral/positive Spanish words gain negative or joking sense: macho, adios (as flippant “kiss-off”), hasta la vista.Borrowed Obscenity/Euphemism
• Spanish taboo words as playful mild curses: Casa de Pee-Pee, Caca de Toro, Albright’s “not cojones but cowardice.”Morphological Mockery
• Add -o, el, mucho to English: “el cheap-o,” “mucho trouble-o,” PBS’s “Newt-o Frito.”Hyper-Anglicized Pronunciation/Spelling
• “Grassy-ass,” “Fleas Navidad,” “Hasty Lumbago,” “Hosta la vista” (Glasgow gardening headline).
Historical depth: attested since late century; part of -century “middling style” that let elites signal egalitarianism via slang.
Semiotics of Mock Spanish
Direct Indexicality (speaker-acknowledged):
• Signals speaker is cosmopolitan, humorous, easy-going, regionally authentic.
• Example: Terminator 2—boy teaches cyborg “No problemo” + “Hasta la vista, baby” to make him seem human.Indirect Indexicality (covert, denied):
• Requires racist stereotypes (lazy, corrupt, dirty, stupid) for interpretation; listeners must access these images to “get the joke.”
• Reproduces ideology that Spanish speakers are disorderly/dangerous.
• Simultaneously constructs whiteness as the unmarked norm—white disorder rendered invisible.Contrast with other racist discourses:
• Hate speech → explicit slurs (performative assault).
• Vulgar racism → overt statements (“Mexicans don’t work”).
• Elite racism (van Dijk) → “I’m not a racist, but…” qualifiers.
• Mock Spanish → racist effect without explicit content; disclaimers (“I’m not racist, but adios”) ring nonsensical because racism operates covertly.
Crossover from African American English (AAE)
Whites also borrow AAE forms (“What’s happenin’?”, “Word to your mother”) to index hipness.
Difference: AAE crossover often indeterminate; racial source may be suppressed or invisible to whites but salient to Black audiences.
Mock Spanish usually transparent; Spanish indexicality hard to erase (e.g., “nada” in comic strip).
Raises research question: Why do Mock Spanish tokens remain readable as “Spanish” while many AAE borrowings lose visible blackness?
AAE crossover + Mock Spanish both feed the “homogeneous heterogeneity” that whitens linguistic diversity.
Other “Mock” Varieties
Mock French: “Mercy buckets,” “bow-koo” → relatively rare; genuine French often signals luxury in ads.
Mock Italian: popular mid- century; declining.
Mock Yiddish: common; used by both Jews and non-Jews.
Mock Japanese: largely limited to “sayonara”; honcho’s origin now opaque.
Spanish & AAE remain the richest, most productive sources for white “stylized heteroglossia.”
Potential for Subversion?
Scholars debate whether using racist tokens can undermine racism:
• Hewitt (1986): London teens exchange “nigger”/“honky” teasing to defuse racism → effect fades after age 16.
• Gubar (1997) & Butler (1997): parodic inversions (Ike Ude’s art, reclamation of “queer”) may de-essentialize race/sex.
• Hill’s Caution: Such inversions often become new “orderly disorder” enjoyed by white or elite audiences, reinforcing, not undoing, white public space.Crossing (Rampton 1995; Heath ongoing): multi-ethnic British youth switch into out-group codes (Punjabi girls singing bhangra, Bengali kids using Jamaican Creole).
→ Might signal genuine cosmopolitan community, but durability & impact on racial hierarchy remain uncertain.
Implications & Significance
Mock Spanish exemplifies transformist hegemony (Williams 1989): whiteness incorporates non-white forms, strips them of origin, devalues contributors, yet uses them to craft a national “norm.”
Linguistic order/disorder is racialized:
• Racialized speakers face punitive surveillance for minor deviations.
• Whites enjoy a zone of unmarked mistakes & playful mixing that enhance their persona.For linguistic anthropology:
• Move beyond “language equality” lessons to analytic critique of dominant language ideologies.
• Examine how everyday humor and “harmless” slang reproduce systemic racism.
• Attend to indirect indexicality—meaning effects that speakers deny or overlook.Ethical stakes: Recognizing covert racism in joking & casual language is key to dismantling white supremacy in daily life and institutions (media, education, legislation like “Official English”).
Representative Examples & Media Instances
Saturday Night Live skit: writers exaggerate Spanish pronunciations; Latino actor Jimmy Smits objects.
Political cartoon: “Perot for El Presidente” juxtaposes Perot with banana-republic stereotype.
Greeting cards: “Fleas Navidad” (dog scratching), “Moochos Smoochos,” often with racist imagery.
Film: Terminator 2, Giant (1955 PCA fixed Spanish to avoid offending Mexico).
Public signage: “Casa de Pee-Pee” (women’s restroom), “Adios, Jose” protest placards.
News media: Madeleine Albright’s “cojones” sound-bite; Newt Gingrich as “Newt-o Frito” (PBS).
Everyday speech: “No problemo,” “el cheap-o,” “numero two-o.”
Connections to Broader Literature
Linguistic Ideology studies: Woolard & Schieffelin 1994
Discourse & Racism: van Dijk 1993; Lippi-Green 1997
Resistance theories: Scott 1985/1990; Bhabha 1994
Speech & the law: Matsuda et al. 1993 (hate speech)
Study Tips / Questions for Review
Define direct vs indirect indexicality; provide two original examples of each.
Compare Mock Spanish with AAE crossover: What features remain visibly racialized? Why?
Explain how White public space is maintained through language policing.
Identify real-life moments where you’ve witnessed “orderly disorder.” How were race & power at play?
Debate: Can reclaiming slurs genuinely dismantle racism, or do such efforts get re-captured by white hegemony? Support with cases from text.
(All page-number citations refer to the 1998 American Anthropologist original unless otherwise noted. Spanish terms retain original orthography except where quoting anglicized forms.)