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Research and writing leading to a book on English language use among Puerto Rican youth living on the island. 

Recent statistics suggest that there are more Puerto Ricans in the mainland United States than on the island of Puerto Rico. Despite undeniable presence, scholarship depicts islanders as holding conflicting beliefs that place being “Puerto Rican” and “Being American” at ideological odds. The presence/absence of English is often treated as key to negotiating aspects of identity relations, as English is projected as the language of “the Other,” “the colonizer,” and “the island elite.” My ethnographically grounded study of adolescent communities challenges previous findings about resistance to English, the uses of English, and the ideologies attached to the language. Under a framework of identity construction, I explore how the island youth make sense of the meanings of English, and subsequently draw on and orient to these meanings in interaction. This will be the first monograph that focuses on English in island Puerto Ricans, contributing to the growing bibliography of English in the U.S. and World Englishes.