Doctoral Dissertation Research: Linguistic Variation as a Marker of Ethnic Identity in High School Setting

在过去的半个世纪里，太平洋岛国出现了一股大规模的移民潮，移民到像美国这样的主要讲英语的国家。这种人口转移，往往伴随着从传统语言到英语的转变，可能会导致新的民族身份和英语方言的发展。然而，人们对美国夏威夷土著和其他太平洋岛民（NHPI）青少年如何构建身份知之甚少。本研究将探讨如何NHPI青少年使用语言和其他行为资源来构建身份的背景下，美国公立高中。 由于强烈的民族认同感已被证明可以改善少数民族学生的总体福祉和学业成绩，因此研究结果将成为教育工作者和社区领导人的宝贵资源。 该研究还将增加对种族如何与社会网络和身份的其他方面相关的理解，为社会语言学和文化人类学领域做出贡献。具体的研究问题包括：（1）在何种程度上的NHPI学生在研究中确定特定的种族群体，与泛种族的太平洋岛民群体，并与当地人口作为一个整体？(2)NHPI人口的密度和多样性的总体水平如何影响身份的形成？(3)是什么样的语言和非语言实践构建和强化了这些身份？ 这项研究将在犹他州的一个大都市区进行，犹他州是美国邻近地区NHPI比例最高的州。它利用民族志和社会语言学方法对两所公立高中的NHPI和非NHPI学生进行研究，这些学生具有不同的民族志组成。 定量分析将集中在说话人意识水平以下的语音特征上，例如still和steel中元音的发音以及long和was中最后辅音的发音。 在民族志的工作中，将寻求变化的社会意义，借鉴扬声器的看法和意识形态。此外，该研究还检验了文化进化理论关于多样性和移民人口规模对使用种族标记的重要性的预测。

The last half century has seen a major wave of migration from Pacific Island nations to primarily English-speaking countries like the United States. This population shift, often accompanied by a shift from heritage languages to English, can lead to the development of new ethnic identities and dialects of English. Yet little is known about how Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHPI) teens in the U.S. construct identity. This study will investigate how NHPI teens use linguistic and other behavioral resources to construct identity in the context of U.S. public high schools. Because strong ethnic identity has been shown to improve general well-being and scholastic achievement for minority students, the results will be a valuable resource for educators and community leaders. The research will also add to the understanding of how ethnicity relates to social network and other aspects of identity, contributing to the fields of sociolinguistics and cultural anthropology. Specific research questions include: (1) To what extent do the NHPI students in the study identify with specific ethnic groups, with a panethnic Pacific Islander group, and with the local population as a whole? (2) How do the density of the NHPI population and the general level of diversity affect identity formation? (3) What linguistic and nonlinguistic practices construct and reinforce each of these identities? The study will be conducted in a metropolitan area of Utah, the state with the highest percentage of NHPIs in the contiguous U.S. It utilizes ethnographic and sociolinguistic methods in a study of NHPI and non-NHPI students in two public high schools with different ethnographic compositions. Quantitative analysis will focus on phonetic features below the level of speaker awareness, such as the pronunciation of vowels in still and steel and of final consonants in long and was. The social meaning of variation will be sought in the ethnographic work, drawing on speaker perceptions and ideologies. In addition, the study tests predictions from cultural evolutionary theory about the importance of diversity and migrant population size on the use of ethnic markers.