This presentation takes a critical linguistic approach to analyze the 1995 film Nueba Yol by director Ángel Muñiz. The film is about Balbuena, a Dominican man who travels to the United States in search of the American Dream. On the surface, it is a lighthearted comedy about the antics of a stereotypical Dominican man and his quest for a better life in the United States. While the comedic elements clearly define the film’s tone, the film also interestingly uses language codes, register changes, and dialectical intonation unique to the Dominican dialect to explore more serious social issues such as immigration and the lived experiences of marginalized classes. Indeed, the colorful cast of characters deploys different language forms based on the social circumstances they find themselves in, demonstrating not only a tactical ability to negotiate cultural differences but also reflecting how the ‘American experience’ changes them. Most notably, the protagonist Balbuena adapts to American culture in the big city by partaking in capitalist habits, climbing the social ladder, and shifting to an individualistic mindset, and these shifts in his identity are linguistically reflected in his pronunciation, morphosyntax, and vocabulary choice. An examination of linguistic differences will therefore not only shed critical light on the Caribbean migrant’s modern experience but also on the pivotal role that language plays in the formation of Hispano-American identities.