Amelia Tseng’s Empanadas, pupusas, and greens on the side: Language and Latinidad in the nation’s capital offers a richly textured sociolinguistic account of how Latinx migrants and their descendants have made Washington, DC home through language. The book centers everyday linguistic practices as acts of placemaking, identity negotiation, and self-determination within a city more commonly imagined through its political institutions than its communities. Through ethnography, interview, and close attention to language in use, Tseng demonstrates how Latinidad in DC is produced relationally across race, class, migration histories, and shifting urban landscapes
The book opens with a vignette that situates the reader within a Latinx DC soundscape, the famous drum circle in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood known as the barrio of Washington, DC. This opening moment signals Tseng’s broader commitment to grounding theory in lived experience. Introducing a raciomultilingual framework, Tseng frames language not simply as a system of forms, but as a social practice embedded in place. The introduction establishes the book’s methodological and theoretical orientation, situating the study within sociolinguistics while deliberately moving beyond narrow analyses of phonetics and grammar. Tseng outlines her ethnographic approach, including ethnographic observation and participant interviews sourced through community networks, and makes explicit commitments to reciprocity and beneficence. These methodological reflections are particularly valuable for emerging scholars and students learning how sociolinguistic research is designed and carried out, and points to a larger strength in the text—consistent and clear definitions of sociolinguistic terms and methodological approaches.
Theoretical framing is a strength of Tseng’s analysis. Building on Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa’s raciolinguistic scholarship, Tseng advances a ‘raciomultilingual’ perspective that explicitly centers multilingualism within the analysis of race and language. ‘By centering multilingualism, a raciomultilingual approach considers how racial categories and notions of languages and language varieties are co-constructed compared to normative ideologies of monolingualism and prescriptivism’ (25), Tseng urges readers to move beyond one language, one race narratives that allow for the proliferation of deficit-based comparisons of multilingual language practices to that of monolingual language native speaker ideals. She demonstrates how linguistic ideologies circulate broadly while taking on specific meanings at the local level. Through this lens, language is understood not only as a structure or proficiency but as a system tied to social meaning, power, and interpretation. Within the DC context, this means not only focusing on the racial histories of a city shaped by African American migration and presence, but also looking at the class dynamics, the gendered nature of labor and culture, and the ways in which shared educational spaces make room for the development of contact varieties of Spanish and English amongst Latinx community members. Her discussion of social indexicality and prestige speech illuminates how certain varieties become associated with urban sophistication, immigrant status, or socioeconomic mobility, while others are downgraded or stigmatized.
Early chapters (1 and 2) provide demographic and social context for understanding Latinx life in DC. Tseng carefully traces patterns of migration, settlement, and socioeconomic stratification, highlighting how immigration status, international relations, and class shape access to resources and mobility. In doing so, she shows how privilege operates unevenly within Latinx communities, with certain national origins and migration pathways afforded greater legitimacy than others. These dynamics, shaped by colonial logics both in Latin America and the United States, inform not only material conditions but also sociolinguistic attitudes, including perceptions of prestige, correctness, and authenticity of varying Spanish and English dialects. In chapter 3, Tseng outlines the sociolinguistic status of Spanish in DC, noting the dominance of Salvadorian Spanish as numerical but not necessarily socially hegemonic. By highlighting both the prevalence of the dialect and its social and cultural stigmatization, Tseng demonstrates how social stigma shapes the spread—or suppression—of dialectal features across different ethnic and linguistic varieties. Tseng extends this argument in chapter 4, considering the influence of African American English on DC Latinx languaging practices and creating a parallel between the dominance of Salvadoran Spanish with African American English alongside their continued social stigmatization, noting the ways that both dialects are referred to under the monikers of ‘street’, ‘slang’, and ‘ghetto’ languaging practices.
In chapter 5, Tseng situates the sociopolitical realities of Spanish and English language practices within broader ideological frameworks, including concerns about language loss among future generations, debates over political and social identity among racialized groups, and the idealization of native monolingualism and standardized language norms circulating in Washington, DC. In doing so, she is able to construct an image of how DC Latinxs construct both their own identity and that of others through their languaging practices. Chapter 6 crystalizes these themes through an extended narrative centered on Marco, a second-generation Washingtonian of Salvadorian and Mexican heritage. Marco’s life history reflects broader social processes that shape DC Latinidad. Raised in working class Latinx and Black neighborhoods during a period of economic struggle and demographic change, Marco’s sense of belonging is deeply tied to the city. His experiences with migration, military service, and family life are narrated through strategic shifts in language and style that index local rootedness. Through Marco’s story, Tseng presents her case for the prototypical DC Latinx identity, illustrating how authenticity is constructed in opposition to gentrifier identities and how changing urban conditions intensify desires for continuing presence and recognition. Marco’s linguistic practices function as both personal expression and social argument, asserting his claim to DC at a moment when displacement threatens long standing communities.
The conclusion synthesizes the sociolinguistic tools and theories developed throughout the book, returning to questions of language, race, and power and representation. Tseng argues that a sociolingual perspective not only advances sociolinguistic theory but also offers insights relevant to the social sciences and humanities more broadly. By foregrounding hegemonic gazes and their impact on how language is evaluated, the book raises pressing questions about whose language counts and why.
Beyond directly informing sociolinguistic scholars, Empanadas, pupusas, and greens on the side speaks directly to a variety of stakeholders, including undergraduate students and graduate scholars, teacher educators, Latinx languagers across the country, and particularly DC Latinx community members themselves.
One of its strengths is its structural flexibility. While the book can be read productively from start to finish, individual chapters also stand on their own. Chapters outlining demographic context and sociolinguistic processes are particularly well suited for undergraduate courses on Spanish in the United States (or ethnic studies), multilingualism, or sociolinguistics. The clear definitions of key concepts and the integration of empirical data with theory make the text accessible without oversimplifying complex ideas.
For undergraduate students and graduate scholars, the book offers a model for how to move between ethnographic description and theoretical interpretation. Tseng’s attention to reflexivity, ethics, and community engagement provides a valuable example of how sociolinguistic research can be both rigorous and accountable. Readers interested in sociolinguistics, heritage language education, or urban studies may find it useful to engage chapters selectively, depending on their focus.
The book also offers a multiethnic and anti-essentialist framework that is particularly valuable for programs preparing educators to work with multilingual learners. Tseng’s analysis encourages teachers to move beyond deficit perspectives and to recognize students’ linguistic practices as historically grounded, socially meaningful, and intellectually rich. For instructors of Spanish as a heritage or world language, the text provides concrete examples of how language ideologies shape classroom dynamics and student identities. Educators and practitioners may approach the book as a resource for rethinking language ideologies in classrooms and institutions. The narratives documented throughout challenge deficit frameworks and invite researchers to recognize linguistic fluidity as a strength rather than a problem or disadvantage.
Beyond its significance for students, educators, and institutions, the book’s interventions extend to those most directly impacted by these language ideologies: Latinx speakers navigating their linguistic lives within and beyond the classroom. The text is particularly valuable for Latinx Spanish heritage and Latinx English languagers across the country, who are frequently confronted with negative ideologies about their language practices both within family contexts and across broader social domains such as education and media. Through her analysis, Tseng not only validates these linguistic practices but also creates space specifically for DC Latinxs to locate and make sense of potential feelings of displacement, disparagement, and linguistic insecurity produced by the city’s larger sociopolitical realities.
Ultimately, the book allows for multiple reading strategies, reflecting its core argument that language and identity are not linear or fixed but dynamic, contextual, and deeply relational.
