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The language practices of Latinos in the US continue to attract attention from politicians, educators, journalists, linguists and the general Hispanic and non-Hispanic public. While monolingual speakers of English in the US expect Hispanics to shift to English like other minority language speakers have done in the past, monolingual speakers of Spanish expect them to speak "pure" Spanish. Even Spanish-English bilingual speakers criticize Latinos for mixing Spanish and English or speaking Spanglish. This term has been rejected by some linguists who claim that it is technically flawed and only applies to casual oral registers. In this paper I consider the linguistic nature, sociolinguistic functions and attitudes towards Spanglish, I show that Latinos are using this hybrid, heteroglossic variety beyond casual oral registers, and I suggest a broader perspective which not only considers the linguistic features of Spanglish but also the political, social and cultural issues involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents some thoughts on the usage of the so called "Spanglish" language in the United States. Its aim is that of looking at the potential facilitative effect the usage of Spanglish has in helping hispanic and non-hispanic speakers, who do not share either English or Spanish, to achieve communicative goals in particular communicative contexts. The literature has acknowledged that Spanglish relies on code-switching and code-mixing, switches and mixtures which can also be described as characteristics of the hybrid identity of many Latinos in the United States. In this paper we propose to look at the phenomenon of Spanglish in its hybrid aspect, which, from our perspective, is what makes it complex and fascinating from the perspective of mixed identities in intercultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]