The Language of Multiple Identities among Dominican Americans
Open accessAbstract
As a group whose members are Hispanic, American, and largely of African descent, Dominican Americans must negotiate distinctive issues of identity in the United States. Language is central to these negotiations, both as a symbol of identity and as a medium through which to construct and display local social meanings. Dominican Americans use linguistic forms from multiple varieties of two codes, Spanish and English, to situationally activate various facets of their multiple identities. This multivariety linguistic and interactional construction of identities undermines implicit assumptions of uniformity and essentialism in U.S. linguistic and ethnic/racial categories, particularly in the construction of the category "African American."
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Cardi B's ratatá Spanish signals her diasporic Dominican identity shaped by contact with English, African American English, and nonstandard Dominican Spanish.
“Her ratatá Spanish not only signals her diasporic Dominican identity-shaped by contact with English, African American English, and nonstandard Dominican Spanish (Bailey, 2000, p. 195)-but also serves as a political tool for engaging with issues of racial and ethnic solidarity, reflecting the hybridity of U.S. Latinx linguistic practices.”
From Sounds Like Politics: Cardi B and the Discourse of Español Ratatá (2026) · cites this paper as Bailey, 2000
In “Multiple Dominican Identities and Heteroglossic Language” (page unavailable in our copy), Bailey describes Dominican American speech as drawing on English, African American Vernacular English, and regional nonstandard Dominican Spanish, and explains how Spanish can signal Dominican ethnolinguistic identity. The paper does not analyze Cardi B or her ratatá Spanish, so it supports the general linguistic framework but not its application to her. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredSecond-generation Dominicans in the United States often identify with African Americans through shared linguistic practices such as African American English as resistance, but do not identify themselves in terms of phenotype as African American or Black; rather they identify in terms of language as 'Spanish.'
“As Bailey (2000) notes, while second-generation Dominicans in the United States often identify with African Americans through shared linguistic practices-such as the use of African American English as a tool of resistance against white hegemonic discourses-they “do not identify themselves in terms of phenotype-as African American or Black-but rather in terms of language-as ‘Spanish’” (2000, p. 191”
From Sounds Like Politics: Cardi B and the Discourse of Español Ratatá (2026) · cites this paper as Bailey (2000)
Cardi B's ratatá Spanish serves as a political tool for engaging with issues of racial and ethnic solidarity.
“Her ratatá Spanish not only signals her diasporic Dominican identity-shaped by contact with English, African American English, and nonstandard Dominican Spanish (Bailey, 2000, p. 195)-but also serves as a political tool for engaging with issues of racial and ethnic solidarity, reflecting the hybridity of U.S. Latinx linguistic practices.”
From Sounds Like Politics: Cardi B and the Discourse of Español Ratatá (2026) · cites this paper as Bailey, 2000
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Sounds Like Politics: Cardi B and the Discourse of Español Ratatá
Delgado, R., Mora-Moreno, S., & Cervantes-Gómez, X. V. (2026) · Latino Studies · doi:10.1057/s41276-026-00579-w
- Authors
- Bailey, B.
- Affiliations
- University of Massachusetts Amherst (US)
- Corresponding author
- Bailey, Benjamin
- ORCID
- Bailey, Benjamin
- Venue
- Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2000-12
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 190-223
- ISSN
- 1055-1360 (ISSN-L)
- 1548-1395
- OpenAlex
- W2051109920
- Cited by
- 121
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 1.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- works.bepress.com
- Locations
- Journal of Linguistic Anthropology (publishedVersion)
- ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Multilingual Education and Policy
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Linguistic Variation and Morphology
- Keywords
- Dominican Americans, multiple identities, language and identity, Spanish-English bilingualism, code-switching, African American identity, essentialism, social construction of identity
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