New media representations of Spanish heritage speakers

Abstract

Although much has been said about the role of traditional media in shaping the public image of visible minority communities in the United States, there has been relatively little to no discussion of how US Latinx’s social media use may affect the ethnolinguistic identity and Spanish language vitality of Latinx Spanish heritage speakers, especially regarding those whose self-perceived linguistic skills are already negative to begin with. Drawing mainly from the work of van Dijk (e.g., 2006 ; 2014 ), we seek to further our understanding of how intraethnic language attitudes and monoglossic ideologies shape the social representations of these Spanish heritage speakers and, in turn, recognize how these social representations can be detrimental for the already vulnerable status of US Spanish and its speakers. To illustrate this point, we engage in a discussion of what is, to our knowledge, the first academic report on the so-called # nosabokids and #nosabokidsbelike ; a discriminatory social media trend to recently receive considerable attention among Hispanic youth. We caution that this phenomenon may exacerbate the already difficult task of maintaining the heritage language in the context of the United States.