4: “No Me Diga”: Contrasting Portrayals of Spanish in In The Heights (2021) and West Side Story (2021)

Presenter(s)

Elena Wierich

Abstract or Description

In recent years, the area of film studies has begun to acknowledge the importance of representation. This includes how foreign languages are portrayed in movies marketed towards mostly English-speaking, monolingual audiences. In this paper, I explore how Spanish is portrayed in recent movies, using the 2021 films West Side Story and In the Heights as models, analyzing the parts spoken in Spanish through a linguistic lens. Representation of foreign languages and cultures has evolved significantly in the past fifteen years, creating the need for updated exploration into this area. Results from a careful collection of instances of Spanish, as well as linguistic analysis of both movies, show that West Side Story (2021) and In the Heights (2021) both use Spanish to paint a “linguascape” of Spanish-speaking, without actually using words that non-Spanish-speaking audiences would not be able to understand. Both movies portray Spanish in a fairly inauthentic way, although West Side Story (2021) is a bit more accurate in its portrayal than In the Heights (2021).