Abstract: A cutified representation of the Mexican patron saint La Virgen de Guadalupe, “Virgencita Plis” has been hailed as Mexico’s Hello Kitty. This presentation will explore how stratified Mexican Spanish sociolects in combination with English borrowings are used in the construction of MexCool TM marketing for this and related conservative toys by the largest Mexican toy conglomerate.

Norma Mendoza-Denton is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Working at the intersection of language, gender, youth studies, race and politics, she has focused on topics that include gang members in California, gendered video games, anthrophonetics, Town Hall meetings in Arizona and the language of Donald Trump. She is author of Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs (Wiley Blackwell, 2008) and co- editor of Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies (with Janet McIntosh, Cambridge, 2020). She is also a past president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology.