Norma Mendoza-Denton is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, and the founder and director of the Linguistic Anthropology Research and Teaching Laboratory
Summary
In this ground-breaking new book on the Norte_a/Sure_a (North/South) youth gang dynamic, cultural anthropologist and linguist Norma Mendoza-Denton looks at the daily lives of young Latinas and their innovative use of speech, bodily practices, and symbolic exchanges to signal their gang affiliations and ideologies. She analyzes their use of language as well as social and cultural practices such as the circulation of poetry, photographs, and drawings, and also their practices around makeup and bodily presentation. Through this detailed exploration, Homegirls examines the localized North-South rivalry between the bilingual, English-speaking and Americanized Norte girls and the Mexican or Latin-American-oriented, Spanish-speaking Sur girls. Mendoza-Denton uncovers a new dimension to studies of youth styles, where gang members are innovative not only in terms of dress, make-up, and music, but also by participating in crucial processes of language variation and change. This engrossing ethnographic and sociolinguistic book reveals the connection of language behavior and other symbolic practices among youth, and their connections to larger social processes of nationalism, racial/ethnic consciousness, and gender identity.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. La Migra
2. Beginning Fieldwork
3. Norte and Sur: Government, School, and Research Perspectives
4. Hemispheric Localism: Language, Racialized Nationalism and the Politicization of Youth
5. Muy Macha: Gendered Performances and the Avoidance of Social Injury
6. Smile Now Cry Later: Memorializing Practices Linking Language, Materiality And Embodiment
7. Icons and Exemplars: Ethnographic Approaches in Variationist Sociolinguistics
8. Variation in a Community of Practice
9. That's the whole thing [t5iN]!: Discourse Markers and Teenage Speech
