ABSTRACT Immigrants are increasingly vilified and constructed as threats to the nation‐state. Their linguistic practices too face parallel stigmatization. Within this context, Spanish is conflated with undocumented status. Against the backdrop of heightened anti‐immigrant sentiment and persistent challenges to Spanish language use, this study explores the role of language in the lives of Latina/o college students who immigrated to the United States during their K‐12 schooling and whose first language is Spanish. Drawing on focus group data from students at a Hispanic Serving Institution in California, we examine how participants make sense of and negotiate linguistic practices that serve as markers of their racialized identities. Our findings reveal that language operates as a site of constant negotiation, shaped by three dimensions of what we term raciolinguistic melancolía: sacrifice, linguistic marginalization, and linguistic negotiation. We contend that raciolinguistic melancolía positions language as an ungrievable loss that cannot be publicly mourned. Through this lens, Latina/o immigrant college students expose the melancholic structures of language enabling them to move past linguistic traumas as they learn to accept and unapologetically celebrate their linguistic identities despite painful experiences associated with racialization practices.
Rodriguez et al. (Sun,) studied this question.