@inproceedings{01JPMC5XFMP4511SJASG1W3VES,
  abstract     = {{The city of Miami in South Florida is characterized by high proportions of Hispanic people (mostly Cubans, but also Latinos from many other Latin American countries) in its population. Consequently, the city features high degrees of English-Spanish bilingualism, which has resulted in a distinct speech variety for the linguistic community of Miami (MacDonald, 1985), featuring various language contact effects such as linguistic convergence and codeswitching. The study presented here focuses on intensification in this contact variety, in both unilingual contexts (e.g. very cheap, un canastón) and contexts showcasing language contact effects (e.g. full barato, muy modern). Miami bilinguals have the intensifying systems of both English and Spanish at their disposal, which differ considerably in terms of the strategies, both lexical and morphological, they can use to intensify (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Crystal, 2007; Bosque Muñoz & Demonte Barreto, 2000); speakers’ choices in terms of intensifiers shed light on the factors at play in the formation of this contact variety. In order to investigate this variety, the 56 conversations of the Miami Corpus of BangorTalk are analyzed. It seems that intensifiers from both languages converge into a single system that employs fewer, more prototypical forms, similarly to what has been proposed for the diminutive construction in the same community (Vanhaverbeke & Enghels, 2021). It also seems that the choice for certain types of intensifying constructions is used by speakers to construct social meaning (Silverstein, 2003) and is thus conditioned by certain sociolinguistic factors; similar processes have been observed for other Hispanic communities in the United States (Michnowicz, Ronquest, Chetty, Green, & Oliver, 2023). By mapping the influence of these numerous factors and processes, the current study aims to shed light on the formation of contact varieties in cities like Miami, where people from numerous origins and language backgrounds come into contact.}},
  author       = {{Claassen, Simon A.}},
  booktitle    = {{Reader XXIV Congreso de la Asociación Alemana de Hispanistas 2025}},
  language     = {{spa}},
  location     = {{Hamburg, Germany}},
  pages        = {{81--82}},
  publisher    = {{Universität Hamburg}},
  title        = {{Intensification strategies in the contact variety of the city of Miami}},
  url          = {{https://www.slm.uni-hamburg.de/romanistik/forschung/tagungen/deutscher-hispanistiktag-2025/programm/reader-hispanistiktag-2025.pdf}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}