Page 292 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

Chapter 10 Language: Making Verbal Sense of the Message 259

The 2006 Sundance Film Festival award winner, Quinceañera, tells the story of a young
Latina girl, Magdalena, who becomes pregnant on the brink of her 15 birthday and is
cast out by her parents, forcing her to live in a very different culture than that of her
middle class upbringing.

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the United States constitute several rather than a single demographic group.
Two such reference groups are Mexican Americans and Chicanos/Chicanas.
The Mexican American group comprises people who immigrated from Mexico
to border states, such as California and Texas, following World War II. Accord-
ing to Garcia and Alvarez, people who consider themselves Mexican Americans
are generally older and more conservative than those who identify themselves
as Chicanos or Chicanas, who are generally younger and more militant.
Chicanos and Chicanas came of age in the 1960s and gained some attention
in the 1970s. They perceived Mexican immigrants who wanted to assimilate
with the predominant Anglo culture as sellouts. To distinguish themselves from
the Mexican American group, Chicanos and Chicanas adopted specifi c patterns
of behaving, including their own code words. The list of code words included
vendido (sellout) and socios (the old boy network). Today, members of this de-
mographic group sometimes refer to each other as veteranos (veterans). Thus,
referring to Chicanos/Chicanas as Mexican Americans in a speech could prove
inappropriate even though you were trying to be responsive to ethnicity. As
speakers, we need to learn as much as possible about the language preferences
of our audiences. Otherwise, we may inadvertently lose at least some of them.
The varied preferences of Spanish-speaking people apply to many other de-
mographic groups as well. Some African Americans prefer being referred to as
Black. And though they may be too polite to tell you so, the Chinese, Hmong,
Japanese, Korean, Laotian, and Vietnamese prefer being referred to by their
nationality rather than being categorized as Asian.