In multiethnic contexts, youths constantly negotiate the use of various ethnolinguistic styles. Often, they engage in language stylization practices (Coupland 2001), or the highlighted performance of a linguistic style that diverges from the unmarked style of the speaker or context. For example, a Samoan-American who typically speaks a mainstream variety of American English might employ a mock Chinese accent. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Keith Walters and Ms. Elaine Chun will examine the use of language styles as a means of constructing specifically Asian-American and Pacific Islander American youth identities at a public high school in Texas where these groups make up a sizeable minority of an ethnically diverse student body. Of particular interest is how Asian/Pacific Americans incorporate stylization practices into their varied forms of participation in mainstream activities outside the classroom context. The youths in this study, many of whom come from multiracial and immigrant families, are particularly well-positioned to engage in creative stylization practices by drawing from both in-school and out-of-school linguistic resources. While acknowledging the variability within and across the study's various Asian/Pacific American groups, the investigators are also concerned with how members of these groups come to be constructed and construct themselves as an ethnic minority in the U.S. context. Through ethnographic methods of data collection, including three semesters of full-time, daily participant observation, fieldnotes, interviews, and audio- and video-recordings, this study will illuminate the ways in which micro-level language practices relate to students' identities and their local ideologies about language, social identity, and school participation. A discourse-centered analysis of the recorded and transcribed data will tease apart the complex ideologies of race, ethnicity, nation, gender, sexuality, and class that are linked to students' symbolic practices.
This dissertation project will be significant for research in sociolinguistics and Asian/Pacific American studies. It contributes to linguists' understanding of how and why individual speakers move between various styles, and sometimes symbolically across ethnic boundaries, as well as how adolescents learn language ideologies that link particular styles with particular kinds of people. Asian/Pacific Americans have rarely been the focus of linguistics research. This research project will bring attention to a marginalized and particularly complex Asian/Pacific American community in a Texas military town. The project's broader social impact derives from its challenge to popular discourses in the U.S. that perpetuate stereotypical images of Asians and Pacific Islanders. In addition, the in-depth investigation of students' language practices and beliefs in the context of mainstream school activities will benefit policymakers and educators who seek to understand the various ways in which students in immigrant communities accept, negotiate, and benefit from these activities.
