Abstract/Summary

In the northern and southern limits of the Latin-American territory, the Spanish language is rapidly and uncontrolledly expanding, causing two linguistic hybridization phenomena: the well-known Spanglish (Spanish-English) and the incipient Portunhol (Spanish-Portuguese). Due to these regions’ actual relevance in the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language -which can be assumed to be greater in the future- these phenomena require attention in order to increase our comprehension of them and to decide whether they deserve to be included in the Spanish language classroom. Given the fact that the academic discussion concerning these phenomena seems to be focused on linguistic and macro-social issues, this research aims to offer a new ethnographic micro-subjective perspective of the topic based on the interpretative analysis of two interviews made with two natives of the regions where Spanglish and Portunhol exist. The analysis of such interviews reveals that the two phenomena are quite different, such that each demands a different approach in the Spanish as a foreign language classroom. While Portunhol is considered mainly to be an accident arisen from the contact of two languages in borderland regions, Spanglish is understood to be a symbolical linguistic identity device, with the range of its use going far beyond the border between the USA and México.