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Language, Identity and Justice
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November 17, 2026

With linguistic and cultural diversity increasingly under attack, Ana Celia Zentella’s work becomes more and more poignant
Now more than ever, questions of the interplay and interdependency between academic work and activism are crucial. This book traces these questions through the work of one thinker, Ana Celia Zentella, who has made important contributions to the development of both linguistics and anthropology over the course of her career. The book presents key pieces of her anthropolitical work, the lived experience of language use, and activism. It traces how her thinking has evolved and how her activism has informed her academic work, and vice versa. The book will be both a valuable introduction to her work for new students, and an accessible selection of reading for scholars wishing to trace the development of key current debates in linguistics and anthropology.
Ana Celia Zentella has dedicated her career to advancing linguistic justice through groundbreaking studies of language, race, and identity. Originating in bilingual barrios yet resonating globally, her scholarship reveals how anthropolitical forces constrain marginalized speakers while inspiring generations to pursue linguistic liberty and human dignity for all.
Ana Celia Zentella is Professor Emerita, UC San Diego, USA. A central figure in what she has named 'anthropolitical linguistics', she has studied varieties of Spanish and English, Spanglish, language socialization in US Latinu families, and linguistic intolerance facilitated by English-only laws and anti-bilingual education legislation.
Adam Schwartz is an Associate Professor of Language, Culture and Society at Oregon State University, USA, and is a critical applied linguist.
Bonnie Urciuoli is Emerita Professor of Anthropology at Hamilton College, USA. Her areas of interest are linguistic, semiotic, and cultural anthropology.
Cristian Aquino-Sterling is the Keith and Lynn Whitworth Distinguished Chair in Classical Education at Dalton State College, USA, and co-founder and director of www.icberg.org.
Ana Celia Zentella: Acknowledgments
Bonnie Urciuoli, Adam Schwartz, Cristian Aquino-Sterling: On Anthropolitical Worlds: Una bienvenida
Chapter 1: A Nuyorican’s View of Our History and Language(s) in New York, 1945–1965 (2005)
Chapter 2: “Tá bien, you could answer me en cualquier idioma”: Puerto Rican Codeswitching in Bilingual Classrooms (1981)
Chapter 3: Returned Migration, Language, and Identity: Puerto Rican Bilinguals in dos worlds/two mundos (1990)
Chapter 4: The ‘Chiquitafication’ of U.S. Latinos and Their Languages, OR, Why We Need an Anthropolitical Linguistics (1995)
Chapter 5: The Grammar of “Spanglish” (1997)
Chapter 6: “José, can you see?”: Latin@ Responses to Racist Discourse (2003)
Chapter 7: “Dime con quién hablas, y te diré quién eres”: Linguistic (In)Security and Latina/o Unity (2007)
Chapter 8: Language and Dialect Contact in Spanish in New York: Toward the Formation of a Speech Community (with Ricardo Otheguy and David Livert) (2007)
Chapter 9: Books as the Magic Bullet (2015)
Chapter 10: “Socials,” “Poch@s,” “Normals” y lo demás: School Networks and Linguistic Capital of High School Students on the Tijuana-San Diego Border (2016)
Ana Celia Zentella: Afterword
Index