The Use of Spanish as a Literary Device in Selected Texts by Sandra Cisneros and Esmeralda Santiago

Abstract

Linguists disagree on exactly how many languages exist, but the most common estimate is usually around 7,000 (Anderson). Of these some seven thousand languages, English has emerged as the foremost language spoken in the United States, with some 83% of Americans responding to a government census as English-only speakers (Ryan). However, the remaining seventeen percent of the population surveyed all spoke at least one other language: that is, approximately 60.5 million Americans. With so many multilingual people living in the United States, one would expect that linguistic diversity would also appear in American novels. Readers have to question what it means to be bilingual, as well as how and why bilingual authors use a second language in their writing.