Two ways of articulating heterogeneity in Korean American narratives of ethnic identity (original) (raw)
Related papers
Constructing ethnic identity through discourse
Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), 2004
In this paper, I demonstrate how Korean American camp counselors locally construct ethnic identity through the practice of self-categorization in discourse. Self-categorization, or the identification of oneself in terms of ethnic identity, serves to position counselors in terms of Korean ethnicity and to associate that identity with one’s personal goals in participating in the Korean camp. Using videotaped data of counselors’ meetings, I show that while debating their views on what a Korean camp should be and their motivations for participating in the camp, counselors make relevant their ethnic identities by describing themselves as more ‘American’, more ‘Korean American’, or more ‘Korean’. In addition, the counselors discuss whether the teaching of Korean heritage or the mentorship of the campers should be the primary objective of the camp. This opposition between ‘heritage’ and ‘mentorship’ is cast as a source of tensions that map onto ideologies of identity, whereby ‘Korean Ameri...
Prior research suggests that Asian Americans fall between whites and African Americans in the American racial stratification system. However, scholars know relatively little about how this position shapes Asian Americans' understandings of racial discrimination. This article examines the discourses surrounding individual experiences of racism among Korean Americans and the association between discourses and Korean Americans' intermediate race position. Drawing upon 69 in-depth interviews with 1.5-and second-generation Korean Americans, I identify three discursive subgroups: honorary whites, racial intermediaries, and racial progressives. The tendency to deny, minimize, or acknowledge the significance of experienced racism characterizes the three groups. A critical discourse analysis reveals that the largest subgroup employs discourse minimizing racism, reflecting the respondents' ambivalent racial identification. These respondents do not consider themselves part of a minority, yet say they are not white. Findings suggest that the Korean Americans' racial ambivalence is closely associated with racial intermediacy.
Self-representation of identity: A Case of a Korean Family
This paper aims to research ethnic identiy of a Korean-American family using MCA (membership categorization analysi) of Sacks (192) in their discursive conversations. The participants signal their ethnic identities by categorizing addressee, themselves and third person referents. A positioning process is involved in the categorization with various discursive identities (Goffman, 1981), such as speaker, hearer and third person referent and also with a variety of social identities, such as a woman, mother, and Korean or American. Sacks (1972, 1979, 192) divided the MCA into two in that identies are established in part through MCD (membership categorization devices) that serve to characterize a participant as a member of a certain social group, and through CBA (category-bound activites), which categorize participants indirectly by indexing typical activites bound to categorizations. Participants utilize labeling that is the discursive practice of producing explicit membership categorizations that are locally occasioned in talks. A category occurred in an interaction assigns a person to a particular social group. In fact, speakers exhibit their attitudes toward ethnicity in question by categorizing and describing ethnic characteristics and stances, and allude category terms through indirectly indexing membership categories. As immigrants encountered with difficulties to maintain their ethnic identity, assimilation takes its toll on one hand. Resistance, however, to the cultural pressure of the resident country leads them to have a unique type of ethnic identity on the other hand. This article examines how a Korean family employs MCD and CBA as self-representation for identities-in-practices. I will illustrate how, in conjunction with other resources, the participants show their identities in talk as a device which represents membership categories.
This article explores the intersection between language practices and ethnic identity for 8 second-generation Korean American learners who were participating in a Korean-as-a-foreign-language (KFL) class at a U.S. university. This study aims to examine the fluid nature of ethnic identity by examining how Korean heritage learners negotiate, construct, and position themselves in the landscape of American-ness and Korean-ness, through language practices. The data are drawn from observations, semistructured interviews, and audio-recorded classroom interaction during one academic year in a college-level KFL class. Findings show that the heritage learners employ the two available codes for different communicative purposes: English is used as a primary communication tool, and Korean is associated with their childhood memories, food, and kinship. Furthermore, their use of linguistic devices, such as pronouns, indexes their ever-changing relational positioning of themselves in a third culture, where they have taken on aspects from both.
New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2019
This study examines how two Korean adolescents, born in transnational marriage families, construct their identities in the context of globalization. The data used comes from a yearlong ethnographic research project that includes field-notes, interview transcripts, and additional artifacts. The findings reveal that Tayo and Sungho navigate through linguistically, culturally, and discursively hybridized social spaces. Encountering the ideology of a monoethnic, monolin-gual, and monocultural Korea, they suffer from pervasive social stigmatization of their heterogeneity. Yet over time, the two focal adolescents become critical social agents who understand intersubjective dynamics and use linguistic and cultural resources to re-imagine themselves in more symbolically powerful ways. The findings of this study capture the dialectic interaction between the global and the local. They urge researchers to focus further on the complexity , multiplicity, and fluidity of one' s identity and to dig deeper into the lives of minority children.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2021
‘Twice-minority’ immigrants, immigrants who are ethnic minorities in both their home country and country of destination, may face ambiguity and multiple options in their ethnic self-identification in the host society. This paper investigates the dynamics in the identity construction among such groups. My data comes from in- depth interviews with 40 recent immigrants in the United States from two minority ethnic groups in China: Korean-Chinese and Uyghur. I find that these two groups’ perceived phenotypical and cultural difference from (or similarity to) the majority Han ethnic group in China, experiences of prejudice in China, and pre- existing transnational ethnic ties influence the identity dynamics in their interactions with different groups in the U.S. Both Korean- Chinese and Uyghur immigrants experience a mix of pulling and pushing forces towards identities associated with different proximal host groups in these interactions, but Uyghur immigrants’ identity options are constrained by their phenotypical distinctness from the Han Chinese. Both groups maintain their distinct ethnic identity in the host society, but they find different new bases for their twice-minority identity. The article shows how everyday interactions with multiple ethnic audiences shape possibilities of identity and ethnicisation and helps us better understand ethnic identity and transnational movement of ethnic schemas.