Intro: Recognize the importance of language, its role in containing/limiting the formation of identity.

1. Language

1. Living Languages

1. Languages are organically evolving
2. Standards of grammar and speech are temporally specific
3. There is no "right" language, i.e. more worthy of respect

1. Spanish as Cultural Expression

1. Expressing One’s Heritage: my language(s) = my ethnicity, my people
2. Personal "languages:" local variants, pidgins, Creoles representative of broader social identifications (c.f. family, friends, political allies, etc.)

1. Language and the Body: "languages are warm, friendly, and happy, or stiff/rigid, aggressive and cold, distanced and serious" –M.L.

1. Bearers of Intentional Attitudes: language is not a neutral medium through which the content of a message is conveyed –languages are in themselves capable of bearing the qualities typically ascribed to agents
2. Linguistic Expression: as a performative, language is a complex expression that does things (an utterance is an act) and part of its "doing" (its act) is performed through the body (hand gestures, posture, head movement, volume, tone, etc.)
3. My language = My body = My expressions = myself (my identity)
4. Social Sanctions: certain complex expressions are permitted, rewarded, or penalized according to cultural standards –serious or "proper" English is done from the neck up, c.f. Lucius Outlaw

1. Tradition of Silence

1. Essentialism: belief in the one right x (language, manhood, culture, etc.)
2. Terrorism (White to Brown)

1. Institutional authority –legitimacy of verbal expression
2. Presence: historical and current visibility of "legitimate" language in poetry, media, novels, music.
3. Targeted Linguistic Demands: connection between social mobility and language is neither uniformly applied nor equally weighted (c.f. "ever notice how people who speak like you never amount to something" & President Bush)
4. My Language is My Laughter: restricting the use of Spanish is tantamount for telling one they cannot express themselves –that they should hold back their "voice" if they want to be taken seriously

1. Out-Chicano Another (Brown to Brown): claims to cultural authenticity are sensitively guarded –fear of exposing oneself. (keeps one silent)

1. Naming & Self-Identifying

1. Asserting & Coping Out (Spanish, Hispanic, Mexican, Mexican-American, mestizo/Mexica, Chicano).

1. Reasons for identifying names (assert the following): linguistic group, specific linking to other groups, national origin, place one lives, race & ancestry, political awareness.
2. Because each term asserts something, we pick and choose often the least offensive assertion –using that term to "safely" identify ourselves

1. Resistance: cultural identity term can signify a defiant stance –Chicano, mestizo, Mexica