Americans create hybrid spaces in Costa Rica: a framework for exploring cultural and linguistic integration

Abstract

This study explores the ways in which English-speaking immigrants negotiate new linguistic and cultural landscapes. I examine immigration and intercultural communication in a more complex and nuanced manner by researching the ways in which expatriates or ‘high-end’ immigrants relocate and interact with host cultures. I conducted 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 40 in-depth interviews in Costa Rica to explore this phenomenon. I employ critical discourse analysis to analyze the data in the theoretical framework of hybridity as the participants create interesting linguistic and cultural spaces in Costa Rica. In these moments of contingency and conflict we are forced to renegotiate the concept of immigration and construction of immigrant. This study illustrates both practical and theoretical intercultural implications as relatively affluent English-speaking migrants have begun to move outside their homelands. This movement of people creates a need for scholars to rethink definitions of immigrants as non-traditional immigrants relocate to new cultural and linguistic terrains.

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