Sociolinguistic Artifacts

In this clip from the sitcom Will and Grace, Karen speaks to her Hispanic maid/nanny in pseudo- Spanish on the phone. She uses terms like “store-o” in order to seem like she is speaking with Spanish endings. Karen then goes on to ask her friend will how to pronounce something in Spanish, and then continues to just say the English words. She even goes so far as to use Spanish words for “thank you” and “goodbye” but in the wrong context. She uses Spanish not as an actual way to communicate with a native Spanish speaker, but rather to as a way to completely disregard the syntax and morphology of another language.