It is a premise of many secondary statistical analyses of cross-sectional data that language choice acts as an adequate proxy to assess level of acculturation of Hispanic respondents. In this article, conclusions are analyzed that point to a tendency of Mexican Americans to make negative subjective health assessments. A sociolinguistic analysis is proposed, one that examines code switching as a communicative option that is available to the members of a bilingual speech community. From this perspective, cultural change provides an individual with additional linguistic and symbolic categories for expressing distress. It is discussed how a Mexican American's choice to speak Spanish at the time of the interview may not indicate that he orshe is prone to exaggerate somatic complaints or that he or she is less acculturated, but rather that the mother tongue is the language of choice to communicate psychic demoralization and somatic distress in the context of health-related interview schedules.
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