Doctoral Dissertation Research: The English of American-Born Chinese in New York City: Sociophonetic Variation and Social Meaning

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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.