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Language, Ethnicity and Identity in a New Jersey

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LANGUAGE, ETHNICITY AND IDENTITY IN A NEW JERSEY KOREAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics By Jinsok Lee, M.S. Washington, D.C. July 30, 2014 Copyright 2015 by Jinsok Lee All Rights Reserved ii LANGUAGE, ETHNICITY AND IDENTITY IN A NEW JERSEY KOREAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY Jinsok Lee, M.S. Thesis Advisor: Natalie Schilling, Ph.D. ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates the variable patterning of two phonological features in the speech of 24 Korean Americans in the most densely populated Korean American community in the US, Bergen County, in the northeast corner of New Jersey, bordering Manhattan, New York City. The quantitative analysis, including detailed acoustic phonetic analysis, is augmented by ethnographic observation and analysis of variation in the speech of individual speakers, to gain further insight into the social meanings of linguistic variation in this community. The variable features investigated, /ɔ/ and /æ/ (which is commonly referred to as a short-a), are pivotal in delimiting US dialect areas, especially in the Northeastern US, since two major cities, New York City and Philadelphia, show patterns for the variables raising of /ɔ/ and raising/fronting of /æ/ that distinguish them from other US dialect areas and from ‘general American English’. The study also presents the first quantitative sociolinguistic study of Korean American English. The analyses yield two major findings. First, Bergen County Korean Americans show participation in the traditional New York City Metropolitan area English (NYCE) regional production pattern – raised /ɔ/ and a recently developed pattern of phonological conditioning for tense /æ/, the pre-nasal /æ/ tensing system. The findings thus help dispel iii the common assumption of non-White ethnic groups’ non-participation in regional variation and change (Labov 2001: 506). The second major finding investigates the effect of social factors on variation within the community. The examination of speaker gender, residency area, and religion strongly suggest that the variable patterning of each feature is associated with a different aspect of Bergen County Korean Americans’ local ethnic identity. Results suggest that the height of /ɔ/ is associated with Korean ethnic identity, while the degree of /æ/ tensing in pre-nasal environments is associated with local Bergen County identity of Korean Americans. The associations between various types and facets of identity and patterns of language variation are further revealed in the examination of intra-speaker variation across sociolinguistic interview topics, and it is found that participants use variants of /ɔ/ and /æ/ to shape their desired identity and refrain from undesired identities. Focusing on a major ethnic community and its members provides significant contributions to the study of language variation and change, language and ethnicity, and language and identity. This dissertation introduces Korean Americans and their English production patterns, and fills an existing gap in the field. Secondly, it helps dispel the widely held belief that ethnic minorities in the US do not participate in patterns of (White) regional variation and change. Finally, this dissertation indicates that there are important connections between the variable use of regional features and Korean Americans’ ethnic and local identity and those different features can be associated with different facets of identity. iv To my beloved wife, Eunyoung, my daughter, Claire, and my family v Acknowledgements The every single second I spent in Georgetown University and Bergen County, New Jersey, the research site of this dissertation, provided me with a precious time in identifying who I am, and it also had been a great inspiration to me. The seven years in Georgetown with a number of excellent professors and colleagues, I am more than sure that I have learned a lot from them and grown up a lot, not only as an academic, but also as a human being. I am very grateful to all the professors and fellow students in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University, and also to all the people I met in the research site, who have supported me and my research during my fieldwork in Bergen County. Thank you all for helping me out to make this dissertation possible. My advisor, Natalie Schilling, who I have been her advisee since 2007, made all the process of my dissertation work very smooth and enjoyable, and I cannot thank her more for her passionate, moral and intellectual support in every single part of this dissertation to be done in the right way. As I always write at the end of my e-mails to you, I thank you always for everything, Natalie. I truly believe that nothing would have been possible without your support and guidance. Also, I want to express my gratefulness to Lisa Zsiga and Pyong Gap Min, who have been kind enough to serve as the committee members of this dissertation. I have been Lisa’s teaching assistant for three semesters for her graduate level courses, Phonetics and Phonology 1 and 2, where not only I had great opportunities in giving instructions to students, but also learned a lot from Lisa’s tutelage. Thank you so much, Lisa, for letting me have you as one of my dissertation committees, and also for the moral and academic support you gave me. I also want to express my vi gratefulness to Dr. Min. I cannot forget the day I first met Dr. Min, because I just sent him an e-mail and visited his office at Queens College without even knowing whether he would accept my request for doing the committee for my dissertation. Your warm- hearted support and academic inspiration has been an extremely great help in developing my insights on the research site. Thank you so much, Dr. Min, for your support. All errors in this dissertation are mine. During the past seven years in Georgetown, I have been lucky enough to become friends with many people who have supported me as a friend and constantly filled me up with academic inspirations. Thank you, Pat Callier, Anastasia Nylund, Luke Amoroso, Amelia Tseng, Sinae Lee, Jermay Jamsu, Jaemyung Goo, Yoonsang Song, and many others. I would not have studied Linguistics without the professors at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies: Seongha Rhee, Marilyn Plumlee, Tae-Yeoub Jang, and Kyoung-Hee Suh. I want to express my gratefulness to the professors at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. The initiation of my interest in the field roots from your teachings, and I always thank you for your support. And last but not least, I thank my wife, Eunyoung, and my newborn daughter, Claire. I couldn't have done this without you. vii Contents Title Page ............................................................................................................................. i Copyright ............................................................................................................................ ii Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iii Dedication ........................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... vi Contents ........................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures .................................................................................................................. xii List of Tables ................................................................................................................... xix 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. The Research Site and I ..................................................................................................... 1 1.2. Project Overview ................................................................................................................ 5 1.3. The Place of Asian Americans in Sociolinguistics .......................................................... 9 1.4. Organization of Chapters ................................................................................................ 17 2. Earlier Studies ............................................................................................................. 19 2.1. Sociolinguistics of the Target Variables ......................................................................... 19 2.1.1. The Big Picture: Language Variation and Change in the United States ............ 20 2.1.2. Narrowing Down: Language Variation and Change in the New York Metropolitan Area .............................................................................................................. 24 2.2. Language and Ethnicity of Asian Americans in the United States .............................. 31 viii 2.3. Christianity and Korean American Immigrants ........................................................... 36 2.4. Summary of the Chapter .................................................................................................. 44 3. The Research Site ........................................................................................................ 45 3.1. The
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