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Intercultural Communication Problem in the USA: between English and Spanish
Abstract. When dealing with intercultural communication problems, no one can deny the role of Spanish language in contemporary American society. Spanish language’s influence within the United States of America becomes more and more visible, more intense. The thing is today US Hispanic population number is over 15% of the total country’s population. It is expected that in the next 20-25 years Spanish speakers’ number will be 46% of the total US’ population. Hispanic growing number in the United States increases Spanish language’s influence and converts it into Spanglish that represents intercultural communication’s special form in multi-ethnic American society’s various layers. Spanglish entered the world of media and advertising with unprecedented ease. The trend is the US’ media can no longer resist so-called “linguistic cocktail” and it becomes its trademark. Many researchers, such as A. Zentella, I. Stavans speaking about Spanglish consider it as main source of spreading bilingualism within the country. It should be mentioned also that the US’ media not only take advantages of using Spanglish texts because it is nothing but combination of two the most important languages for the United States, in its contents we can also see two great cultures’ fusion, which gives their audience a feeling of belonging to American society in close contact with their family traditions, culture and language. The detailed analysis allows us to say there are three possible ways of Spanish language’s development in the United States of America: assimilation, diglossia, bilingualism. This article is divided into four sections: the first section represents the detailed analysis of US language policy and its influence on Spanish language’s status within the country; the second one considers Spanglish as a new language of intercultural communication within the USA; the third one gives main findings of using Spanglish in media and advertisement; the final section involves research’s results and conclusions. The research’s methodological basis is comparative analysis allowing to reveal similarities and differences within intercultural communication process.