ABSTRACT
Mestizaje, for the purpose of this chapter, is defined as a hybrid language composed of Spanish and English that is particular to the Mexican American. Mestizaje is not to be confused with bilingualism (that is, the ability to speak two languages). Nor is it a bastardization of either or both of its parent languages. It is, instead, a carefully constructed third language that borrows from each of its parent tongues such components as sentence structures, parts of speech, and words. One example would be the phrase “parquear el carro,” to park the car. The pronunciation is Spanish, and the suffix -ar is also borrowed from that parent tongue, as in “estacionar,” the actual Spanish word for parking one’s car. The root word, “parq,” comes from the English “to park.” Blend the two and the result is something vaguely recognizable and at once completely foreign to speakers of either Spanish or English. Mestizaje is not a language of exclusivity, though. Quite the contrary, it is a tongue necessitated out of a desire to be counted where a people had previously gone uncounted. The above is a prime example of the language spoken in the “alternative space, the third country between the United States and Mexico,” the Mexican American space in the United States mentioned in Chicano Poetics: Heterotexts and Hybridities by the late Alfred Arteaga (1997, p. 34), poet and University of California, Berkeley Professor of Chicano and Ethnic Studies.
