Language, Identity, and Stereotype Among Southeast Asian American Youth: The Other Asian - Hardcover

Reyes, Angela

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805855394 ISBN 13: 9780805855395

Publisher: Routledge, 2006

Synopsis

This book—an ethnographic and discourse analytic study of an after-school video-making project for 1.5- and second-generation Southeast Asian American teenagers—explores the relationships among stereotype, identity, and ethnicity that emerge in this informal educational setting.
 
Working from a unique theoretical foundation that combines linguistic anthropology, Asian American studies, and education, and using rigorous linguistic anthropological tools to closely examine video- and audio- recorded interactions gathered during the video-making project (in which teen participants learned the skills for creating their own video and adult staff learned to respect and value the local knowledge of youth), the author builds a compelling link between micro-level uses of language and macro-level discourses of identity, race, ethnicity, and culture. In this study of the ways in which teens draw on and play with circulating stereotypes of the self and the other, Reyes uniquely illustrates how individuals can reappropriate stereotypes of their ethnic group as a resource to position themselves and others in interactionally meaningful ways, to accomplish new social actions, and to assign new meanings to stereotypes.
 
This is an important book for academics and students in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, and applied linguistics with an interest in issues of youth, race, and ethnicity, and/or educational settings, and will also be of interest to readers in the fields of education, Asian American studies, social psychology, and sociology.

About this title

About the Author

Angela Reyes is an assistant professor of linguistics in the Department of English at Hunter College, City University of New York. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Her primary research areas are in linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, and Asian American studies. Examining the language practices of Asian Americans and other racial minorities, her current research is interested in the ways in which links between dialects and ethnic groups become established, appropriated, and disrupted in discursive interaction. Her work has won numerous awards and has appeared in several academic journals, including Journal of Sociolinguistics, Discourse Studies, and a Special Issue of Pragmatics on the discourse practices of Asian Pacific Americans, which she also co-edited.

Review

“...truly outstanding work....Its significance goes beyond its status as a pathbreaking study of a major (yet still understudied) U.S. ethnic category. Reyes is well versed in current issues in racial and ethnic theory, Asian American history and politics, sociocultural linguistic theory and method, and alternative education, and she draws these different strands into a compelling and readable account of how Southeast Asian American youth position themselves and others in discourse as they engage in the shared activity of creating videos about their lives and experiences.”

―Mary Bucholtz
University of California at Santa Barbara

“Reyes spans an impressive breadth and depth of literature to formulate a coherent portrait of the interstices between language, identity, and circulating racializing discourses of what constitutes ‘Asian-ness.’”

―Norma Gonzalez
University of Utah

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0805855394
• ISBN 13: 9780805855395
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 196