Rapid language shift has made English the dominant, if not the only, language spoken by many American-born Chinese in the U.S. How do these speakers draw on phonetic/phonological variation in American English to construct personae, negotiate sociocultural boundaries, and project emergent identities? Does their heritage language influence this process even if these speakers have limited competence in it? Under the direction of Dr. John Singler, Amy Wong's dissertation research will examine the linguistic practices of thirty second-generation Chinese Americans, born and raised in New York City, as they navigate the social landscape using a range of dialectal variation in English. Merging sociophonetic analysis with ethnographic methods, this study addresses three interrelated questions: First, do New York-born Chinese of Cantonese descent produce the vernacular features of New York City English? Second, does their English contain features that show phonological effects from their heritage language? Third, to what extent are these phonetic/phonological resources in English employed as indices of sociocultural identities and local interactional meanings?
Ms. Wong will utilize three kinds of data collected from speakers between the ages of 11 and 29, recruited from several community organizations and social networking groups: researcher-driven speech collected from sociolinguistic and ethnographic interviews, speaker-driven spontaneous conversations recorded in natural settings and in-depth ethnographic information obtained through participant observation. Well-documented dialect features and understudied substrate features are analyzed using instrumental sociophonetic techniques. Quantitative analysis of inter- and intra-speaker phonetic/phonological variation is informed by qualitative ethnographic examination of speakers' styles, sociodemographic backgrounds, social alignments and intersecting identities (e.g. "female", "fresh-off-the-boat", "cosmopolitan"). Results from this study will inform our knowledge on how ethnic minorities use and possibly shape the English spoken in a diverse metropolitan setting. They will also enhance our understanding not only of Chinese American identities but also of the dynamics involved in identity practices within the changing ethnolinguistic landscape of the U.S.
Supported by NSF’s Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, Amy Wing-mei Wong of New York University examined the linguistic practices of second generation Chinese Americans of Cantonese descent who were born and raised in New York City (NYC). Three main kinds of data were collected: (1) recordings of sociolinguistic and ethnographic interviews conducted with thirty-two speakers from a wide age range (born between 1940 and1998); (2) recordings of naturally occurring interactions among middle-school and high-school students in an afterschool program; and (3) demographic and ethnographic information about the thirty-two speakers obtained through participant-observation. Acoustic analysis of the speech data collected from interviews showed that second generation Chinese Americans in New York City, like many other New Yorkers of non-Chinese backgrounds, were participating in the region’s ongoing sound change involving the pronunciations of the vowel in words like thought and talk. Thus, while many older Chinese New Yorkers in the study produced the vowel in thought with the back of the tongue raised, the younger Chinese New Yorkers did not. Examination of the ethnographic data revealed that older speakers’ pronunciation of the vowel in thought with raising was intricately linked to these speakers’ having grown up as members of an ethnic minority at a time and in a space where New Yorkers of European (including Italian, Jewish and Irish) descent were the majority. The production of the vowel in thought with raising was a characteristic of New York City English and was often interpreted as a feature of a prototypical/authentic New Yorker of that time. The social meanings of raised thought thus formed a part of the stylistic resources that some older American-born Chinese employed to stake a claim to being bona fide Americans, thereby creating a contrast between them and foreign-born (i.e. first generation) Chinese Americans. While it is still a common desire for many younger American-born Chinese New Yorkers to dissociate themselves from the immigrant generations, the production of the vowel in thought with raising is becoming a less relevant stylistic resource for these speakers for several inter-related reasons. First of all, there is a general change towards lower thought production among younger New Yorkers more generally. The result is that raised thought has become much less a feature of contemporary New York City English. Additionally, younger American-born Chinese (particularly the ones born after 1990) have grown up in a New York where minority groups—including Chinese—comprise the majority of the city’s population such that an iconic New Yorker is less associated with European groups and is more ethnically versatile. The strong association of raised thought with the European groups, thus, renders this feature less compatible with the image of a modern New Yorker. Analysis of the recordings of naturally occurring interactions among American-born Chinese preadolescents showed the following: American-born Chinese youths continue to carve out differences between themselves and the immigrant generation, but now, rather than using thought raising the way the older generation had done, they establish the difference by monitoring the amount of Cantonese they use, by mocking Chinese-accented English, by borrowing Spanish lexical items, and by appropriating African American English grammatical features and speech acts. Intellectual Merit. By providing a quantitative profile of a local dialectal feature of English in New York City produced by second generation Chinese Americans in New York City, this study redresses an imbalance within the fields of variationist sociolinguistics and dialectology that has traditionally overlooked the roles of Chinese Americans in local sound changes. Combining quantitative analysis on linguistic variation with qualitative analysis of the changing ethnocultural positions of Chinese Americans in New York makes it possible to explore how linguistic features that are originally designated as ‘regional’ by sociolinguists may come to bear on ethnic identities. Broader Impact. This study foregrounds how American-born Chinese in New York City utilized a changing range of linguistic resources to forge some shared aspects of their identity while simultaneously permitting and even fostering intra-group differences. Through exploring the complexities of identity construction and intra-group variation, this study highlights American-born Chinese as complex individuals who in many ways do not conform to widely circulating ethnic stereotypes nor do they necessarily share a single identity orientation. Situating the identity practices of Chinese Americans within the changing sociocultural and ethnic landscape of New York, the findings of this study seek to enhance our understanding of the dynamics involved in identity practices not only among Chinese Americans but among other ethnic groups more generally.
