La articulación de "lo hispano" en "Cómo conocí a vuestra madre"

Abstract

Hispanics have a significant presence in the U.S., as they constitute the largest minority in the country with just over a tenth of its population. This fact has not gone unnoticed in mass culture and is traceable in the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" (Thomas y Bays, crs., 2005 -). This article focuses on the first six seasons of the aforementioned sitcom and: (1) it explores the role and value that acquire both the appearance of Spanish language in the dialogues and the presence of typical and topically Hispanic music (diegetic and non-diegetic); (2) it determines how such codes of sonorous nature interact with those others of iconic type and (3) it evaluates their use as an index of Hispanicness and interculturality. The results suggest that a will to represent "the Hispanic" exists, but the sitcom succumbs to the employment of cliché and stereotypes particularly polarized towards Spanish and Mexican cultures. Nevertheless, the fictional television show studied becomes a communication space between the Hispanic and the Anglo-American cultures.