A Sociolinguistic View of the Mexican-American Speech Community: A Review of the Literature

Sociolinguistics, itself a relatively young field of scholarly endeavor, more and more has been reflecting an interest in Mexican Americans insofar as they, like blacks and American Indians, constitute a distinct linguistic-social group that is grappling with the problems common to poor ethnic minorities in the United States. This paper intends to survey the literature existing to date on the Chicano speech community as viewed from a sociocultural vantage point.