Last month on phonoloblog, Bob Kennedy commented on an LA Times story on the difficulty local voters have pronouncing LA mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa's name. Last weekend, there was another story about Villaraigosa and linguistic difficulty in the Times, this time about Villaraigosa's apparent difficulties with Spanish. This article is interesting for purely sociolinguistic reasons -- like many Latinos in the U.S., Villaraigosa's Spanish was not exactly aided along during his early years, with largely predictable effects on his competence in the language -- but I wonder what effect this sort of "candidate coverage" has on the average LA voters who may read it. Will any of them judge the candidate, positively or negatively, on either of these completely irrelevant linguistic grounds?
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Posted by Eric Bakovic at April 29, 2005 10:50 PM