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- Volume 14, Issue 2-3, 2004
Pragmatics - Volume 14, Issue 2-3, 2004
Volume 14, Issue 2-3, 2004
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Styles and stereotypes
Author(s): Mary Bucholtzpp.: 127–147 (21)More LessThe article examines how two Laotian American teenage girls in a multiracial California high school take divergent pathways through two contrasting stereotypes of Southeast Asian Americans: The model–minority nerd and the dangerous gangster. The two girls, both first-generation immigrants, each draw on contrasting linguistic and youth-cultural practices to align themselves to some degree with one of these stereotypes while distancing themselves from the other. The absence of an ethnically marked variety of Asian American English does not prevent the construction of Asian American identities; instead, speakers make use of locally available linguistic resources in their everyday speech practices, including African American Vernacular English and youth slang, to produce linguistic and cultural styles that position them partly inside and partly outside of the school’s binary black/white racial ideology. The article argues that linguistic resources need not be distinctive either between or within ethnic groups in order to produce social identities.
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Forever FOB
Author(s): Steven Talmypp.: 149–172 (24)More LessEmploying a conceptual framework informed by theories of cultural production (Lave & Wenger 1991; Levinson & Holland 1996; O’Connor 2003; Willis 1977, 1981), and using notions of linguicism (e.g., Skutnabb-Kangas 2000) and identity “markedness” (Bucholtz & Hal 2004), I examine how an ESL subject position is locally produced by adolescents of Asian and Pacific Islander descent in one high school classroom. Arguing that “ESL” in this context signifies an exoticized cultural and linguistic Other – what some students refer to as “FOB” (“fresh off the boat”) – I analyse a series of classroom interactions in which long-term “generation 1.5” ESL students resist being positioned as FOB, first by challenging their teacher’s positioning, and second, by positioning a newcomer classmate as FOB, instead. While they thereby relationally distinguish themselves as “non-FOB,” these students’ actions reproduce the same linguicism they had ostensibly been resisting. I conclude by considering ways that the reproduction of linguicism might somehow be interrupted.
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Asian American stereotypes as circulating resource
Author(s): Angela Reyespp.: 173–192 (20)More LessDrawing on theories and methods in linguistic anthropology, this paper examines the ways in which circulating stereotypes of Asian Americans emerge as resources in conversations among Asian Americans. Specifically, this paper analyzes two video-recorded interactions at a videomaking project in Philadelphia’s Chinatown to trace how Asian American teen participants invoke Asian American stereotypes, orient to them in various ways, and reappropriate them to: 1) position the self and other relative to stereotypes; 2) construct stereotyping as an oppressive practice to resist or as an interactional resource to celebrate; and 3) bring about interactional effects from widely circulating stereotypes (e.g., Asian storeowner) that are different from those from locally circulating typifications (e.g., Asian minivan driver), what I call widespread typifications and local typifications, respectively. By interrogating the very notion of stereotype as a performative resource, this paper illustrates how Asian American stereotypes can be creatively reappropriated by Asian American teens to accomplish meaningful social actions.
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Identity construction in Chinese heritage language classes
Author(s): Agnes Weiyun Hepp.: 199–216 (18)More LessFrom an interactionally enriched linguistic anthropological perspective, this article promotes the view that identity is indexical with specific sets of acts and stances, which in turn are constructed by specific language forms. Based on detailed sequential and grammatical analyses of data from Chinese heritage language classes, it argues that identity is dynamic, constantly unfolding along with interaction, and thus has the potential to shift and mutate. It positions identity as emerging through co-participants’ responses and reactions and thus as an intersubjective and reciprocal entity. It further suggests that identity construction is intricately linked with heritage language learning.
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Constructing ethnic identity through discourse
Author(s): M. Agnes Kangpp.: 217–233 (17)More LessIn this paper, I demonstrate how Korean American camp counselors locally construct ethnic identity through the practice of self-categorization in discourse. Self-categorization, or the identification of oneself in terms of ethnic identity, serves to position counselors in terms of Korean ethnicity and to associate that identity with one’s personal goals in participating in the Korean camp. Using videotaped data of counselors’ meetings, I show that while debating their views on what a Korean camp should be and their motivations for participating in the camp, counselors make relevant their ethnic identities by describing themselves as more ‘American’, more ‘Korean American’, or more ‘Korean’. In addition, the counselors discuss whether the teaching of Korean heritage or the mentorship of the campers should be the primary objective of the camp. This opposition between ‘heritage’ and ‘mentorship’ is cast as a source of tensions that map onto ideologies of identity, whereby ‘Korean American’ identity acquires the local meaning of being linked to the importance of mentorship over Korean heritage. In this way, counselors construct their ethnic identities as a means of classifying themselves relationally within a field of oppositions, at the same time indexing a particular stance about what a Korean camp should be.
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Evidentiality and morality in a Korean heritage language school
Author(s): Adrienne Lopp.: 235–256 (22)More LessPrevious work on Korean grammar has claimed that one person can not have access to another person’s thoughts, feelings or sensations, as indicated by the use of evidential markers. By looking at cases in which a teacher at a Korean heritage language school claims to read her students’ minds with a high degree of certainty, I demonstrate how expressions of epistemic stance relate to moral evaluation. Speakers portray their access to the thoughts and sensations of individuals who they deem morally worthy as more distant and uncertain. When individuals are evaluated as morally suspect, however, speakers represent these persons’ emotions, thoughts and sensations as self-evident displays of affect. This paper thus argues that evidential marking in Korean interaction is a social act through which interlocutors morally evaluate others.
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The discursive emergence of the cultural actor
Author(s): Bonnie Urciuolipp.: 257–261 (5)More LessThis commentary compares and discusses the ways that discourse analyses by He, Kang and Lo, this volume, demonstrate the indexical, contingent, complex and ongoing nature of cultural process, manifest at the micro-level of ordinary interaction.
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Ideologies of legitimate mockery
Author(s): Elaine W. Chunpp.: 263–289 (27)More LessThis article examines a Korean American comedian’s use of Mock Asian and the ideologies that legitimate this racializing style. These ideologies of legitimacy depend on assumptions about the relationship between communities, the authentication of a speaker’s community membership, and the nature of the interpretive frame that has been “keyed”. Specifically, her Mock Asian depends on and, to some extent, reproduces particular ideological links between race, nation, and language despite the apparent process of ideological subversion. Yet her use of stereotypical Asian speech is not a straightforward instance of racial crossing, given that she is ‘Asian’ according to most racial ideologies in the U.S. Consequently, while her use of Mock Asian may necessarily reproduce mainstream American racializing discourses about Asians, she is able to simultaneously decontextualize and deconstruct these very discourses. This article suggests that it is her successful authentication as an Asian American comedian, particularly one who is critical of Asian marginalization in the U.S., that legitimizes her use of Mock Asian and that yields an interpretation of her practices primarily as a critique of racist mainstream ideologies.
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“We can laugh at ourselves”
Author(s): Roderick N. Labradorpp.: 291–316 (26)More LessHawai’i’s multiculturalism and perceived harmonious race and ethnic relations are widely celebrated in popular and academic discourse. The image of Hawai’i as a “racial paradise,” a rainbow of peacefully coexisting groups, partially stems from the fact that among the various racial and ethnic groups there is no numerical majority and from the common belief in equality of opportunity and status. Hawai’i ethnic humor is part and parcel of the maintenance and continued reinforcement of the notion of Hawai’i as “racial paradise” with underlying racializing and stigmatizing discourses that disguise severe social inequalities and elide differential access to wealth and power. In this paper, I examine the intersection of language, humor, and representation by analyzing the linguistic practices in the comedy performances of Frank DeLima, a pioneer in Hawai’i ethnic humor, and excerpts from Buckaloose: Shmall Keed Time (Small Kid Time), a comedy CD by Da Braddahs, a relatively new but tremendously popular comedy duo in Hawai’i. Central to these comedy performances is the use of a language variety that I call Mock Filipino, a strategy often employed by Local comedians to differentiate the speakers of Philippine languages from speakers of Hawai’i Creole English (or Pidgin). A key component to understanding the use of Mock Filipino is the idea of “Local” as a cultural and linguistic identity category and its concomitant multiculturalist discourse. I argue that the Local comedians’ use of Mock Filipino relies on the myth of multiculturalism while constructing racializing discourses which position immigrant Filipinos as a cultural and linguistic Other, signifying their outsider status and their subordinate position in the social hierarchy and order. The linguistic practices in the comedy performances are thus identity acts that help to produce and disseminate ideas about language, culture, and identity while normalizing Local and reinforcing Hawai’i’s mainstream multiculturalist ideology.
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Reel to real
Author(s): Shalini Shankarpp.: 317–335 (19)More LessDiasporic media, though widely discussed theoretically and occasionally ethnographically, are seldom explored with explicit attention to language. “Bollywood” films - feature-length movies produced and distributed in Bombay (Mumbai), India - are an excellent media source through which to examine linguistic anthropological topics of indexicality, bivalency, and identity in diasporic communities. In this paper, I analyze the circulation and consumption of Bollywood films - created in Hindi and subtitled in English - among South Asian-American (desi) communities in both Silicon Valley, CA and Queens, NY. Bollywood films are watched in family and peer groups, and portions of the films’ songs and dialogue become incorporated into everyday speech practices. I present and analyze instances of Hindi film dialogue interwoven into conversational exchanges between desi teens in ways that impact negotiations of style and identity. For many teens, the films provide narrative frameworks, prescripted dialogue, and socially recognizable registers and varieties of affect through which they enact their own dynamics of humor, flirting, conflict, and other types of talk. Drawing on ethnographic and sociolinguistic data, I contrast how these processes vary between these two diasporic communities.
Volumes & issues
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Volume 35 (2025)
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Volume 34 (2024)
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Volume 33 (2023)
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Volume 32 (2022)
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Volume 31 (2021)
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Volume 30 (2020)
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Volume 29 (2019)
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Volume 28 (2018)
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Volume 27 (2017)
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Volume 26 (2016)
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Volume 25 (2015)
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Volume 24 (2014)
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Volume 23 (2013)
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Volume 22 (2012)
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Volume 21 (2011)
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Volume 20 (2010)
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Volume 19 (2009)
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Volume 18 (2008)
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Volume 17 (2007)
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Volume 16 (2006)
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Volume 15 (2005)
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Volume 14 (2004)
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Volume 13 (2003)
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Volume 12 (2002)
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Volume 11 (2001)
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Volume 10 (2000)
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Volume 9 (1999)
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Volume 8 (1998)
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Volume 7 (1997)
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Volume 6 (1996)
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Volume 5 (1995)
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Volume 4 (1994)
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Volume 3 (1993)
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Volume 2 (1992)
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Volume 1 (1991)
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