MONOLINGUAL LISTENING: Language and Story at the Super Bowl Halftime Show

by Charlotte Long, Associate Researcher at Future of Faith

MONOLINGUAL LISTENING:  Language and Story at the Super Bowl Halftime Show   

I cannot stop thinking about the Super Bowl Halftime show.   

For many reasons. If you don’t already know, the performer was Boricua¹ Bad Bunny, arguably the world’s biggest super star at the moment, who despite his crossover into English-speaking pop charts, continues to unapologetically sing exclusively in Spanish. This was a historic first for the Super Bowl: an (almost) exclusively Halftime performance in Spanish. I was late to the Bad Bunny phenomenon until his last album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, and I was overwhelmed by his live artistry. As a performer myself in a previous career, I was agog at the props, the storytelling, the camera work, the use of real people mixed with dancers and celebrities, and the literal moving landscape that was created on the field, bringing history, joy and culture to life. I laughed, I cried, I danced.  

But the real reason I can’t stop thinking about it is the language.   

When I was a Housing Specialist for an interfaith group working to house migrants and refugees in Chicago, language barriers were a constant struggle. For me – sure, I couldn’t speak the languages of the participants we served: Portuguese, French, dialects from Angola, Cameroon or Sierra Leone, Arabic, Pashto, Urdu, Farsi, Ukrainian. I have been taking Spanish classes since I was in first grade, and was even good at it in High School, but sadly I have been saying, “Estoy aprendiendo,” for far too long.² I love Spanish. I love its grammar and turns of phrases, even when I understand nothing.  

I used my limited Spanish as much as I could when helping client families find apartments, fill out applications, get bank accounts, or handle problems with landlords about caving-in roofs, leaking plumbing, bugs, rodents and mold. For more complex issues, I asked fluent translators to volunteer their time, but for quick WhatsApp messages, I had to use Google Translate to make sure we were clear with one another. Sometimes there were genuine misunderstandings, and things would almost go horribly wrong (immigration paperwork deadlines, for instance). Many faith communities that I worked alongside experienced the same language barriers.  

Obviously, these barriers were the most intense for the families we served. On long journeys traveling through multiple countries to reach the United States, all had been constantly surrounded by unfamiliar languages. Every little child told me or showed me that they watched movies and listened to music in English. That’s how they started learning. Submerged in the unknowing. They would sing along in the car with me without knowing what they were singing, stringing together syllables and consonants like knots along a chord, their brains learning so fast it was a blur.   

Cut to an Instagram video of Chrissy Marshall that the algorithm gave to me last week. Marshall is a film director who creates content about deaf representation and cultures on social media and is deaf herself. In the video post, she reviews the Super Bowl Halftime Show by commenting on complaints from non-Spanish speakers who said that they couldn’t follow along with Bad Bunny’s all-Spanish lyrics. There was no teleprompter, no subtitles. There were, however, both English (ASL) and Puerto-Rican Spanish (LSPR) sign language interpreters.   

Marshall explains why this year’s show was one of her favorites. “This year,” she signs, “not everyone understood the language being performed. Some didn’t understand the words; they just enjoyed the music. That’s what deaf people tend to do FYI.” Contrary to her usual experience, this year Marshall watched the signed Puerto Rican dialect performance and not only understood the words, but felt she gained an insight into the culture through the lens of the interpreter. Her access to the narrative was (for once) greater than the dominant culture’s access. “That never happens,” she signed, her face beaming.   

At the risk of centering myself briefly: I am monolingual because I have never needed to learn another language, because I already speak the language with the most communicative power in my country. I don’t say this as a political statement; I say it because I saw its day-to-day truth in social work circles that I have had the blessing to work alongside. I will never understand what it is like to grow up navigating another language in everything I do. From what my clients have told me, it is beyond exhausting.   

For me, watching Bad Bunny's halftime show was an exercise in the art of a particular kind of listening that is done every day by people all over the world: the kind of listening that has no direct translation, and thus, forces the listener to let go and receive without clarity.  

What did I receive when I really listened to and watched this performance? What did the symbols, colors, and emotions of the singers tell me as I tried to string together a story without words? When Bad Bunny looked straight at the camera at me, what did I understand him to be feeling? When he pointed up to the sky in awe? How did I know that the wedding staged midway through the performance must be between real people in love? (Spoiler: it was.) What did the ASL and LSPR translators convey in their faces and gestures that told me something untranslatable? Or rather, my mind did translate it, but into English words, which are invariably subtly different from the original Spanish meaning, and perhaps dilute the true essence of what is being communicated.

Here then is something beyond words, that can only be told as a whole, that has a beginning, middle, and end. We cannot always sum up what a story is about, we say instead, “You should just read it.” When asked in interviews how non-Spanish speakers were supposed to follow along with his songs, this is perhaps why Bad Bunny replied, "They don't even have to learn Spanish. It's better if they learn to dance.”³  

When I, the monologuist, listen to only the words you give me, I practice a receptive skill. But if I listen beyond the words, then I release my need to know and instead attend to the story you are telling with your chosen tools of communication.

Only then are we truly practicing ethical listening—the kind of listening through which God is already always speaking to us. 

¹ boricua, or boriquño - colloquial terms for a person from Puerto Rico, both derived from indigenous Taíno linguistic roots. 

² “I am learning.” 

³ youtube.com/watch?v=iKnRxcoq4FE&t=30, Reuters interview, February 5, 2026.