"I ALWAYS KNEW IT... DIGO, QUIZÁS NO ERA PERFECT": TRANSNATIONAL ACTS OF IDENTITY IN THE SPEECH OF A RETURNEE MIGRANT

ABSTRACT The following paper addresses the topic of transnationalism in U.S. territory Puerto Rico. As a previous Spanish colony and current U.S. territory, Puerto Rico provides rich ground for the study of fluid identities. While transnationalist literature has typically focused on describing contexts of crossed "borders" or cultures in a geo-political sense (cf. KRAMSCH and WHITESIDE, 2008; LI AND ZHU, 2013), Puerto Ricans have often been excluded from transnationalist discourses of Latin American communities due to their unique status as U.S. citizens. Through this article I aim to provide an ideological account of the complex voices and identities that make up the language practices of the Puerto Rican transnational. I adopt Jorge Duany's (2003) argument for Puerto Rican transnationalism on the basis of a shared sense of "cultural nationalism" as evidenced in the cultural and linguistic practices of a Puerto Rican returnee migrant. This migrant's linguistic practices and identity constructions are observed in relation to Michael Silverstein's (2003) socioindexicality. Coupling this frame with an ethnographic methodology allows the dynamic ways in which a transnational identity is constructed to become apparent, in real-time and in illuminated detail