Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Linguistic and Cultural Dimensions of First-Generation Language Shift

语言转移现象，即一个社区不再使用他们的传统语言，而使用另一种（通常在社会和经济上更有声望）语言，长期以来一直受到语言学家和人类学家的关注。对于移民到美国和其他国家的人来说，语言转变通常发生在第三代（即，原移民的后代）。该项目培养学生在文化和语言人类学中严格的，以语言为基础的数据收集和分析方法，询问哪些因素可能有助于影响前几代人群中的语言转变。此外，研究人员还探讨了第一代语言转换中是否存在语法、语音或其他模式，以及说话者如何在新的文化背景下驾驭重叠的身份。除了为培训一名语言学和人类学研究生提供资金外，该项目还将通过广泛传播其研究结果，提高公众对印第安人、语言转变和使用多种语言的认识，从而提高科学认识。该项目还扩大了历史上在科学领域代表性不足的群体的参与，并有助于代表性不足的群体的教育。在加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的玛丽·布霍尔茨博士的监督下，安娜·巴克斯将与一群在加州文图拉县长大的米斯特克女性一起工作，了解她们如何使用西班牙语、英语和米斯特克语来构建身份。在文图拉县，大多数土著移民社区都是米斯特克人，讲米斯特克语，这是墨西哥南部的土著语言，与西班牙语截然不同。这个语言学和人类学项目探讨了这个流散社区的年轻女性如何面对性别期望以保持其传统语言和文化的问题，导航第一代语言转变的加速过程。它试图解决以下研究问题：（1）如何米斯特克身份的语言构建，即使许多社区成员正在失去的能力，说米斯特克完全？在这种损失之后，西班牙语和英语的语言资源如何成为米斯特克人身份的象征？(2)个体参与者使用什么策略来引导社区语言的转变，他们如何平衡他们作为土著墨西哥人和美国社会新成员的重叠身份？研究人员将采取个案研究的方法，使用语言人类学和社会语音学的方法来探讨这些年轻女性如何保持与其土著身份的密切联系，即使其中一些人已经失去了讲传统语言的能力。将对这一重点青年群体及其社交网络的主要成员进行观察和人种学访谈。为了收集关于参与者不同语言库的丰富、详细的数据，他们还将录音记录他们在不同社会环境中自然互动的言语实践，以记录他们使用重点语言变量的变化和他们对土著身份的表现。研究人员将对一个西班牙语和一个英语语言变量进行定量的社会语音分析，重点是这些变量与土著身份的联系，以及这些变量的使用如何在社会背景中有所不同。参与者的语音也将与当地奇卡纳人的语音语料库进行比较，以了解语言差异和/或相似性的社会结构。定性话语分析方法将被用来理解这些变量的社会意义，以及参与者的Mixtec语码转换实践的意义。这项研究的结果将有利于投资于维护土著语言的当地社区中心，并将用于向当地公共和教育决策提供有关语言多样性的信息。此外，该项目直接受益于年轻的土著参与者，其中大多数是在校大学生，主要是让他们参与STEM研究。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The phenomenon of language shift, in which a community ceases to speak their heritage language in favor of another (typically more socially and economically prestigious) language, has long been of interest to linguists and anthropologists. For immigrants to the United States and other countries, it is an often-repeated "rule" that language shift typically occurs by the third generation (i.e., the grandchildren of the original immigrants). This project, which trains a student in rigorous, empirically-grounded methods of data collection and analysis in cultural and linguistic anthropology, asks what factors might contribute to influence language shift among an earlier generational cohort. Additionally, the researcher explores whether there are grammatical, phonological or other patterns that can be identified in first-generation language shift, and how speakers navigate overlapping identities in the new cultural context. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in linguistics and anthropology, the project would improve scientific understanding by broadly disseminating its findings to improve public understanding of indigeneity, language shift, and multilingualism. The project also broadens the participation of groups historically underrepresented in science, and contributes to the education of underrepresented groups. Under the supervision of Dr. Mary Bucholtz at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Anna Bax will work with a selected cohort of Mixtec women who grew up in Ventura County, California to understand how they variably use Spanish, English, and Mixtec for identity construction purposes. In Ventura County, the majority of the indigenous immigrant community is of Mixtec heritage and speak Mixtec languages, which are native to southern Mexico and differ radically from Spanish. This linguistic and anthropological project explores the question of how young women in this diasporic community, who may face gendered expectations to maintain their heritage language and culture, navigate the accelerated process of first-generation language shift. It seeks to address the following research questions: (1) How is Mixtec identity linguistically constructed, even as many community members are losing the ability to speak Mixtec entirely? How can Spanish and English linguistic resources come to symbolize Mixtec identity in the wake of this loss? (2) What strategies do individual participants use to navigate community language shift, and how do they balance their overlapping identities as indigenous Mexicans and as new members of American society? The researcher will take a case-study approach, using linguistic-anthropological and sociophonetic methods to explore how these young women maintain strong links to their indigenous identity, even as some of them have lost the ability to speak their heritage language. Participant-observation and ethnographic interviews will be conducted with this focal set of youth, as well as with key members of their social networks. In order to collect rich, detailed data about the participants' varying linguistic repertoires, they will also audio-record their own speech practices in naturalistic interaction in different social settings, so as to document shifts in their use of the focal linguistic variables and their performances of indigenous identity. The researcher will conduct a quantitative sociophonetic analysis of one Spanish and one English linguistic variable, with a focus on the connections of these variables to indigenous identity and how the use of the variables differs across social contexts. The participants' speech will also be compared to a corpus of local Chicanas' speech to understand the social construction of linguistic difference and/or similarity. Qualitative discourse-analytic methods will be used to understand the social meanings attached to these variables, as well as the meaning of participants' Mixtec code-switching practices. The results of this research will benefit local community centers who are invested in the maintenance of indigenous languages, and will be used to inform local public and educational policymaking about linguistic diversity. In addition, the project directly benefits the young indigenous participants, most of whom are current college students, by centrally involving them in STEM research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.