“Hablo pocha, ¿no?”: Countering linguistic hegemony through community corpora

Pervasive language ideologies of linguistic purism frequently result in the teaching of prestige language varieties. In the U.S./Mexico borderlands, derogatory labels for Chicano language varieties include poch@ and/or moch@. The present study presents a mixed methods analysis of these terms found in two sociolinguistic corpora in South Texas (Corpus Bilingüe del Valle, Bessett & Christoffersen, 2019-) and Southern Arizona (Corpus de Español en el Sur de Arizona, Carvalho, 2012-). Out of the 184 interviews, 43 included the terms poch@ and/or moch@. Out of these 43 interviews, 21 (48.8%) included at least one negative evaluation and 35 (81.4%) included at least one positive evaluation. A qualitative discourse analysis revealed positive and negative language ideologies related to pocho. The negative ideologies include: pocho as 1) not speaking a language well, 2) not correct or perfect, 3) ugly, and 4) harming, damaging or ruining Spanish. For instance, Tania states, "They don't speak it. They assassinate it." However, positive language ideologies include pocho as 5) a marker of solidarity and instrumental, 6) bilingual competence and ability, 7) identity and language pride, 8) meaningful, and 9) cultured, cool, and unique. In one excerpt, Eduardo states powerfully, "It's our pocho dialect y nos entendemos'. ('…and we understand each other') This discourse analysis demonstrates how language ideologies of poch@/moch@ are enacted and accepted but also rejected and subverted by bilinguals in the U.S./Mexico borderlands, and by extension, how such ideologies reflect power asymmetries. Furthermore, these corpora provide rich data and excerpts such as these which educators can use to provide opportunities for students to critically examine dominant language practices (Leeman, 2005). Additionally, the corpora can serve as an alternative to traditional textbooks in order to promote positive evaluations of the local language.