One of the interesting things about the United States is that there are so many opportunities to engage in cross-cultural communication within the country itself. The United States is less homogenous than most societies. There are a number of speech communities within its borders. This creates multiple problems, and multiple opportunities.
The intent in this paper is to look at two ethnographic explorations of disparate speech communities; one, the Mexican-American community of the late 1940s and one the modern African-American speech community. It also must be understood that there are variations within these communities, too. Nonetheless, it might be helpful to look at some of the characteristics of communication within these communities and consider some of the problems people within the communities might have in communicating with each other.
George Barker's focus was Tucson, Arizona in the mid-1940s. Barker chose that city because it had a large group of Mexican-Americans who were assimilated to varying degrees. The acculturation process, in some instances, had been virtually completed, while in other cases, individuals had just arrived from Mexico. Barker lived right in the middle of the barrio in the Spanish-speaking community, using three different kinds of language (1) standard Mexican Spanish, (2) the Sonoran dialect, and (3) the southern Arizona dialect. His field experience was extensive and exhaustive, providing a good look at the speech community of that time, with all its variations (Barker, 1972). This speech community was shaping for individuals who would be in their 50s and older at this time.
What might be helpful in thinking about cross-cultural communication and some of its exigencies is to imagine a Mexican-American man or woman in their 60s attempting to communicate with an African-American man or woman in their 20s. This also, of course, adds generational differences (and could include gende...