Doctoral Dissertation Research: Does language affect cultural identity among minority populations?

全球化造成了种族边界的模糊和缩小。一方面，文化适应可能导致一个族群吸收另一个族群；另一方面，族群可能会依附于特定的身份标志，以此作为区别于其他族群的方式。不同的标记如何影响这些过程仍然知之甚少。这个博士论文项目调查了拥有文化、语言和宗教身份的少数群体如何利用不同的标记来声称一致的群体身份。该项目对研究生进行科学文化人类学方面的培训，并向学术界和非学术界的受众广泛传播其研究结果。该项目旨在调查少数群体和多数群体如何互动并塑造彼此的身份、文化标志和政治归属感。通过参与者观察、调查、访谈和档案研究，调查人员质疑以下问题：1)文学、宗教和种族协会如何理解和解释语言和种族认同；多数和少数群体是否以及以何种方式使用语言和其他种族标记来解释政治归属。在这样做的过程中，研究人员帮助解决了关于种群之间相互关系以及他们用来调解这些关系的标记的根本问题。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Globalization has contributed to both blurring and retrenchment of ethnic boundaries. On the one hand, acculturation can lead to one population absorbing another; on the other, populations may cleave to specific identity markers as ways of distinguishing themselves from others. How different markers operate to impact these processes remains poorly understood. This doctoral dissertation project investigates how minority populations sharing cultural, linguistic, and religious identities leverage different markers to claim a coherent group identity. The project trains a graduate student in scientific cultural anthropology and disseminates its findings broadly to academic and non-academic audiences. The project seeks to investigate how minority and majority populations interact and shape each other’s identities, cultural markers, and claims of political belonging. Using participant observation, surveys, interviews, and archival research, the investigators query the following: 1) how literary, religious, and ethnic associations understand and interpret linguistic and ethnic identities; and if and in what ways language and other ethnic markers are used by majority and minority populations to interpret political belonging. In doing so, the researchers help to resolve fundamental questions regarding interrelationships among populations and the markers they use to mediate those relationships.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.