Abstract: In this talk I examine the linguistic behavior of Spanish speakers in Boston, MA. Using the tools of variationist sociolinguistics, I argue that the way Spanish is spoken in the city is undergoing change, but only in certain domains. A pattern of structural convergence with the grammatical norms of English is observed in four linguistic features: (1) subject pronoun presence vs. absence, (2) subject pronoun position, (3) syntactic constituent order, and (4) filled pauses. In contrast, a fifth feature, coda-/s/ deletion, reveals no evidence of change. I propose that the key to understanding this pattern – that is, the co-occurrence of linguistic innovation and stability in the Spanish of Boston – is to recognize the power of ideologies to shape the trajectory of language change.