MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In the last decade, a large number of Latinxs immigrant families have moved to the east side of Baltimore, this fact has influenced how the local government and immigrant ally organizations reach the Hispanic/Latinx community by embracing diversity and finding ways to create communication. The aim of this work is to learn about language diversity in the area and the different channels in which language is conveyed and accessed by the Latinx population. This study examines the Linguistic Landscapes (LLs) of three neighborhoods in the east metropolitan area of Baltimore: Upper fells point, Butchers Hill, and Highlandtown. The study consists of the analysis of pamphlets in both English and Spanish as well as murals, which were salient in the neighborhoods. For the LLs analysis, two frameworks were used. The first is the approach of Kress & Van Leeuven (2006), from ‘the grammar of visual design,’ and the second is the approach of Huebner (2009) on Instrumentalities, registers and codes (Shohamy, & Gorter, 2009), and Gumpertz in “Interethnic communication.” Findings indicate that although there are clear efforts to integrate the Latinx community to participate and engage in neighborhood events, the communication between communities can be interrupted because of poor interpretation of text and visuals. Such findings contribute to the literature on place-belongingness and hybridity. Language felt as an element of intimacy (hooks 2009: 24), which resonates with one’s auto-biographical sphere and, as such, contributes to generate a sense of feeling ‘at home’. Hybridity as an outcome, understood as a process of in-between (Bhabha, 1994), a space of creative cultural production (Gilroy, 1993) travel trajectories (Clifford, 1994), culture transformation (Hall, 1995) cultural mixing where the diasporic arrivals adopt aspects of new hybrid culture or ‘hybrid identities’ (Chambers, 1996; Brah & Coombs, 2000).