Abstract
Staicov begins this chapter with methodological considerations regarding the collection and analysis of spoken data. As Staicov employs an exploratory method in her description of ethnic identity, she outlines some of the steps that are necessary for quantifying qualitative data. Discussing her results, Staicov draws attention to the role of heritage language proficiency and self-labelling. Finally, Staicov presents the analysis of the correlation between morphosyntactic variation and ethnic identity, which does not seem as straightforward as described in other studies. While she observes some weak correlation between ethnic identity and morphosyntactic variation, Staicov finds more traditional sociolinguistic patterns to be at work, with gender and generation having a stronger effect on morphosyntactic variation than ethnic identification.
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- 1.
A sample questionnaire and the questions of the interview can be found in Appendices 2 and 3.
- 2.
- 3.
Originally, the present study was intended as part of a larger project that aimed to investigate language use and identity construction across the British Asian diaspora in London and the Chinese American diaspora in San Francisco. The pilot study was conducted together with Dr Lena Zipp from the University of Zurich who works with the British Asian community.
- 4.
Seven pairs of consultants (three with Hindi and four with Gujarati as their heritage language) were recruited with the help of a contact person at University College London, who used the university’s mailing list to promote the study. The participants were asked to complete five different tasks (described in more detail below) either with the other half of the pair or with one of the researchers. The main aim of the pilot study was to test the feasibility of the research design and to improve and enhance our interview skills. Furthermore, the pilot study yielded valuable information on timing issues and potential pitfalls such as possible sources of noise, e.g. watches and jewellery that might interfere with the quality of the recording.
- 5.
Originally, the research design was divided into two sessions that were intended to both last approximately 50 minutes. I followed this procedure with most of my participants, which meant that I met with the participants twice. In some instances, however, participants requested to conduct the entire experiment in one session; the order of the tasks remained the same. While the time span allocated for each task was adhered to for the questionnaire and the discussion, the interview sessions often lasted longer than 30 minutes, which means that some of the sessions lasted for a total of more than 3 hours.
- 6.
All data were recorded using either a Zoom H2 or Zoom H2n recording device placed on a table. This device is relatively inconspicuous and easy to use and proved to be the right choice for this research project. To be prepared for technical problems, I always carried a second, fully charged device with me.
- 7.
The interview turned out to be the most suitable tool for this study and yielded many interesting data, a fact that seems to substantiate Biewer’s (2015: 120) observation that “the value of interviews [is] generally underestimated”.
- 8.
All the statements were copied verbatim to capture minor nuances.
- 9.
While most Chinese ethnic was relatively easy to categorise, least Chinese ethnic refers to utterances that suggested distancing from the ethnic heritage background. As this does not necessarily mean association with the mainstream community, mainstream ethnic was avoided as a label.
- 10.
The tag stands for S=Speaker, Nr.=number of consultant based on sequence of participation, f=female, 2or1=generational status, o/y=older/younger, I=Interview.
- 11.
Following the rating by the three different annotators, annotator agreement was calculated using Krippendorf’s alpha, a measure suggested to be “indispensable when the category labels are not equally distinct from one another” (Artstein and Poesio 2008: 591), which is potentially the case with rating scales similar to the one used in this study.
- 12.
The values for the ratings were 0.8256155 for Jenny_S3f2y_I, 0.8946128 for Edith_S3f2y_I, 0.9624349 for Carrie_S2f2o_I, and 0.8763968 for Kirsten_S3f1_I.
- 13.
- 14.
The reason for missing values is that not all consultants answered all the questions. In some cases, this was due to time restrictions. In others, participants did not really answer a question but digressed and talked about other issues instead. Finally, it is possible that questions were overlooked.
- 15.
The diagnostic plot was somewhat inconclusive providing between four to eight components; different cluster solutions were tested which showed that for most cases the components clustered similarly into three different groups.
- 16.
- 17.
Once the data were annotated, a Perl script was used to extract relevant instances from the data. These instances were then imported into a FileMaker database where they were coded for both intra- as well as extralinguistic factors.
- 18.
While information on consultants’ educational background was collected, the majority of speakers reported having completed tertiary education. For this reason, education was not included as a predictor.
- 19.
In a first step, a model was fitted that excluded the cluster groups. A likelihood ratio test was applied to the results of the model to test if the predictors have a statistically significant effect. A second model was then fitted including the cluster groups and significance was again tested with a likelihood ratio test. Finally, the model tested for interaction effects between different predictor variables by employing an ANOVA test; the main independent variables tested were gender, generation, and ethnic identity.
- 20.
For example, the verb come is realised as come and not as came in past contexts, it can be concluded that grammatical processes were not applied (Bayley 1996: 108).
- 21.
Definiteness is related to a speaker’s and hearer’s shared knowledge of referents that can be assumed to be known as part of general knowledge or to referents retrievable from context (Quirk et al. 1985). Specificity indicates if a referent in the real world is unique or specific or non-specific and thus including any possible referent in the real world.
- 22.
The detailed results of all the models testing for interaction between predictor variables are shown in Appendix 7.
- 23.
A wave of Asian American empowerment seems to be observable in the Unites States, with Asian Americans, in general, and Chinese American, in particular, challenging their representation across different kinds of media. Video blogs discussing Asian American issues or Hollywood movies like Crazy rich Asians, featuring all-Asian casts, led support to this empowerment and may also foster a stronger identification with Asian American linguistic practices.
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Staicov, A. (2020). Ethnic Identity and Morphosyntactic Variation in San Francisco Chinatown. In: Creating Belonging in San Francisco Chinatown’s Diasporic Community. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24993-9_4
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