From “Spanish-only” cheap labor to stratified bilingualism: language, markets and institutions on the US-Mexico border.

Recent sociolinguistic research adds new economic sectors, such as the service economy, to the list of key forces that shape unequal, dynamic and com-plex diglossia (e.g., Spanish in the United States). However, little detailed work has been done on the linguistic characteristics of specific labor sectors in the wider contexts of “debordering” and “rebordering”. In this article we develop in depth the market mechanisms and institutional constraints that shape the valua-tion and social expansion of Spanish in El Paso, Texas. The study finds that in sectors with low skills and low linguistic intensity, linguistic management poli-cies are effectively “Spanish-only”. However, as skills increase and there is a greater need for regulated communication in the occupational role, more con-straints are observed on how Spanish functions in work use and professional careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]