Language, Identity, and Stereotype Among

Language, Identity, and Stereotype Among Southeast Asian American Youth Angela Reyes

outline: 

  1. Theoretical, methodological framework; setting, methods, analysis

  2. Forever foreigner, problem minority stereotypes (construct FOB, Mock Asian)

  3. Identities in relation to African American: BAE for alliances or boundaries

  4. Panethnicity: conversations about stereotypes redraw boundaries as inclusive

  5. Asian American panethnicity challenged through stereotypes

  6. Broader implications

Other asian: “We’re not here to say we want to be a part of this. We’re here because we’re running away from what happened. We didn’t get run away, we got chased out, not even by our own people, by America itself. The whole bombing, Nixon and stuff, the bombing in Cambodia allowed Pol Pot to come in. Really though, I see it like we don’t even want to be here.” (1)

In chapter 1, broad issues illustrated with individual experience. 

Broad ethnic categories imposed by US to help with regulation, allocation of services (3) [see Scott, legibility]

stereotypes: perceptual categories. Necessary & shared. Mass media powerful in shaping stereotypes. 

circulation (Agha, 2003; Bauman & Briggs, 1990; Silverstein & Urban, 1996)     -> It should be possible to trace the circulation of stereotypes through US mass media & social media

forever foreigner, honorary white, model minority, problem minority

ogbu cultural ecological framework: voluntary, involuntary minorities

intersection of racial, socioeconomic factors: (15)     African-American White

     Other Asian            Honorary White

Used self-identified ethnic terms (26)

Others using discourse analysis:(Bailey, 2002; Buckholtz, 1997; Heath, 1983; Rampton, 1995; Rymes, 2001; Wortham, 1994)

See example in (40) on how to analyze a cultural artifact to show langauge processes     -> Ask Inkle for pieces of transcript. (Shows students discussing it)

Buckholtz & Hall tactics of intersubjectivity (67)

Place as implicit index of class and race (85)

Silverstein, denotational, interactional meanings of text (106, 131)

Seemingly broad and rigid categories are actually quite flexible and multidimensional in local social practice. (148) fractal recursivity

alternative educational settings aspire to succeed where schools fail “most of the young who come to these organizations, in fact, regard school as a place that has rejected and labeled them by what they are not rather than by what they are” (151, Heath, 1999)

Shared racial/ethnic identity was an achieved social product rather than a natural given category (152)  (Rymes, 1996)     —> Could this be a goal of student journalism? It would need to be more inclusive; status probably blocks it. 

What about it as a place for metapragmatics of language?

// Decolonization is not a metaphor: Is it about repatriation?

Emma: In comparison to Bucholtz, how does the researcher position her/himself?

Consider Melville’s rhetorical approach to ethnography against Buckoltz’s: [Whether or not we are willing to see Melville as an ethnographer], his project is to step into the shoes of others, through the stereotypes of his audience. Melville’s approach is persuasive/manipulative by inviting the reader to make a commitment to a comfortable, but problematic, point of view, before tearing it down. 

Marva’s observations on being a music teacher: what the students wanted to play is sexist, violent, musically simplistic. I found myself having to use power.