Article published In:
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict: Online-First Articles

Identities in conflict

Latinos in Spain

ORCID logo | University of North Carolina at Charlotte
ORCID logo | Universitat de València

This paper explores the construction of Latino identity in Spain. The term Hispanic (Latino later became the label of choice) was added to the US census in the 1970s, initially as an ethnic category, but it has undergone a process of racialization, making Latinos a distinct racial group in the US. The concept of Latinidad has been extensively studied in the US context. This paper adopts a netnographic approach to examine how Latinidad is constructed in Spain. To conduct this qualitative research, NVivo was used to analyze a reference corpus of over 5,000 online comments triggered by a video discussing the situation of Latinos in Spain that had been posted on YouTube by El País. The study employs a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from fields like identity, impoliteness, and raciolinguistics. It particularly focuses on perceptions of visible minorities and attitudes towards language varieties different from European Spanish.

Keywords: Latinidad , Latino identity, immigration to Spain, identity claims and attributions im/politeness, raciolinguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Hispanics and Latinos – the American gaze
  • 3.Latinos and Spaniards – the Spanish gaze
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Data
    • 4.2Framework and procedure
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Discursive struggle over the term Latino
    • 5.2Latino identity – Claims and attributions
    • 5.3Spaniard identity – Claims and attributions
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 23 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00107.gar
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