"Not a White Girl" and Speaking "English with Slang": Negotiating Hmong American Identities in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Autor/in	Ito, Rika
Titel	"Not a White Girl" and Speaking "English with Slang": Negotiating Hmong American Identities in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
Quelle	In: Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 40 (2021) 3, S.339-366 (28 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0167-8507
DOI	10.1515/multi-2019-0082
Schlagwörter	Hmong People; Asian Americans; Identification (Psychology); English (Second Language); Language Usage; Standard Spoken Usage; Vowels; Acculturation; Speech Communication; Pronunciation; Dialects; Whites; African Americans; Racial Identification; Ethnicity; Gender Differences; Social Class; Metalinguistics; Minnesota (Saint Paul); Minnesota (Minneapolis) + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Asian immigrant; United States; Asiatischer Einwanderer; USA; English as second language; English; Second Language; Englisch als Zweitsprache; Sprachgebrauch; Gesprochene Sprache; Umgangssprache; Akkulturation; Aussprache; Dialect; Dialekt; White; Weißer; Afroamerikaner; Ethnizität; Geschlechterkonflikt; Social classes; Soziale Klasse; Metalanguage; Metasprache
Abstract	This paper analyzes metalinguistic comments of two young Hmong Americans in the Minneapolis-St Paul area regarding their identity negotiation using tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz & Hall 2004a, 2004b, 2005), the notion of brought-along identity (Williams 2008) and Zhang's (2017) sociohistorical perspectives in analyzing linguistic variation. Two Hmong American individuals were selected from over 60 Hmong American interviewees because their vowel production is nearly identical to each other and that of the local white youth. Although their almost identical vowel production is viewed as their acculturation to the local white majority norm in the first- and second-wave variationist sociolinguistic perspective (Eckert 2012), their speech's characterization reveals a range of potential meanings (Eckert 2008) to index nuanced and unique positions in their local community. The young woman is ambivalent about her speech being characterized as "not having an accent" and claims that she is "not a white girl". The teenage boy discusses his speech as "Hmonglish" and "English with slang" but carefully distances himself from quintessential African American English. While their characterization of their speech is distinct from each other, their tactics are strikingly similar. Through highlighting and downplaying differences and similarities to a locally salient way of speaking that indexes whiteness or blackness, the two Hmong Americans carve out their own complex identities of race, ethnicity, gender, and class in a local setting. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01