Copyright by
Erica Sharon Brozovsky 2020
The Dissertation Committee for Erica Sharon Brozovsky Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Dissertation:
Taiwanese Texans: A Sociolinguistic Study of Language and Cultural Identity
Committee:
Lars Hinrichs, Supervisor
Madeline Y. Hsu
Mary E. Blockley
Ian Hancock
Casey A. Boyle
Taiwanese Texans: A Sociolinguistic Study of Language and Cultural Identity
by
Erica Sharon Brozovsky
Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin August 2020 Dedication
獻給我的爸爸媽媽
To my parents
Acknowledgements
This dissertation would have been impossible without my participants, so it is to them that I owe the most gratitude. Thank you for your candor and for opening up your lives to me in so many ways. I feel honored to be the keeper of your stories. In the summer of 2013, my future advisor, Lars Hinrichs, said to me, “You should go to grad school; you’d be good at it.” As a directionless recent graduate, that was enough convincing for me. You taught me that most advising sessions should just be chill conversations over beers, but also pushed me when I needed it. Thank you for believing in me when I was an imposter-syndrome-ridden baby grad student and for your help in shaping me into the scholar I am today. To the rest of my committee members, without your guidance I would be lost. Ian Hancock, I am grateful that you shared with me your wisdom, your humor, and your library. Thank you for your encouragement and confirmation that I was progressing, even when it felt like quite the opposite. And much thanks for reminding me that I needed to stop reading and just start writing. Madeline Hsu, thank you for your patience with me as a new scholar in Taiwanese American studies and for not letting me coast. I want to do justice to my participants and our culture, and you have been instrumental in achieving that goal. Mary Blockley, thank you for making me laugh in every single one of our meetings, and reminding me not to take myself too seriously. You always have the best reading recommendations. Casey Boyle, thank you for stepping up in the last inning and reminding me to keep it chill. Oh, and the memes are great. Thank you to Patricia Schaub, Amy Douglas Stewart, and Cecilia Smith-Morris for always having an answer to my questions and for all your invaluable administrative help. v There are two months that stand out as the most impactful parts of my graduate career. First, July 2017, which I spent at the Linguistic Society of America’s Summer Language Institute in Lexington, Kentucky. That was possibly the first time I was surrounded by other people who are on fire about sociolinguistics, and it was validating and invigorating. A big shout out to my Lingstitute crew(s): Nicole Holliday, Ty Slobe, Jamaal Muwwakkil, Nandi Sims, Rachel Weissler, Joe Fruehwald, Bill Cotter, Anna Bax, Keisha Wiel, and Sal Callesano, and Mark Visonà, Sabrina Zhong, and Collin Smith.
And a huge thank you to my instructors, Elaine Chun, Nicole Holliday, Paul Reed, Joe Salmons, and Penny Eckert, for the sociolinguistic foundation I was able to build upon. Second, October 2018, which I spent as a visiting scholar at the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan at the University of Oslo. A huge thank you to my MultiLing sponsor, Unn Røyneland, for the opportunity. Our conversations helped me situate myself and my research interests within the wider body of scholarship on language variation. The time in Oslo would not have been as special without my office-mates: Quentin Williams, Anne Pitkänen-Huhta, and especially Olga Solovova. Thank you all for your input at the beginning stages of my project. We are standing desk warriors.
To my 2014 cohort, thank you for the camaraderie. Kayla Shearer, my number one, I cannot imagine graduate school without you. Thank you for all the emotional support and for making me drink more water. I am beyond lucky to have a friend and confidante like you! Jeremy Goheen, I don’t think I would have gotten through those first few semesters TA-ing and AI-ing without our grading parties and long walks with Ella. I’ll always remember to stand on your right side. Jamie Garner, dude, we did it, and I’ve so enjoyed being terrible with you. Nicholas Holterman, our physical time in proximity was short but the most wonderful, and I cherish you. Kayla, Sierra Senzaki, and Emily vi Harring, our biannual margarita night tradition was the best part of every stressful last- week-of-the-semester, and I’m going to miss our lime store shenanigans. To the two guys who went before me, Axel Bohmann and Patrick Shultz, thanks for being both inspirational and a whole lot of fun. And Sal Callesano, from rough classes to Lingstitute to being the only ones left in TELL, I’m so glad we got to commiserate together. I am so fortunate to have people outside of graduate school who were always there to support me. Thank you to the Tsueis, Kristen, Allen, Elliot, Allison, and Owen, for our priceless and precious Monday afternoons together; I hold the title of 朋友 dear to my heart. Thank you to the Tsins for all of your care and home cooked meals, and to Vina Ortiz for encouraging words over breakfasts. Thank you to Pai En Yu, who is always down for a food adventure, knows how to make me cry laughing, and enjoys with me both the highbrow and lowbrow. Our Boston dates are always a highlight of my returns back home.
I’m grateful to the Taiwanese American community I’ve become a part of, my cross-country TACL fam. Discovering my own Taiwanese identity was a cornerstone of this dissertation project. Big appreciation to the NYC crew for mind-expanding adventures and discussions. And to my TAP-ATX family, y’all are the best! Thank you to my presidents over the years: Erica Liu, Sharon Hsu, and Justin Chang. Erica, you started something amazing, and I’m so glad you convinced me to be your treasurer.
Sharon and Justin, nothing will compare to that Taiwan trip—and if anything, it made all of us a little bit more Taiwanese. Alison Chang, my documentarian, videographer, and friend, thank you for showing me that the work I do is part of a larger narrative, one that matters and is worth following me around the world to film.
vii To my roommates Ashley Oliphant, Rui Nakata, and Laura Santoso, thank you for keeping me grounded in the real world. You reminded me that there are things outside of graduate school and that what I’m doing is a big deal. Devon Diggs, thank you for being the best of friends and for being my future lawyer. Our semesterly hangouts kept me motivated to finish. Shout-out to my m8s, Sarah Meloche, Timothy and Elizabeth Raymond, Kate Baker and Gregg Grenier, Erin and Darcie Finn, Jake and Diane Wassenar, and Blake
Reeves, for including me even when I was 2000 miles away and for always being the same wonderful people every time we reunited. Kate and Sarah, each time one of the countless emailed letters and handwritten cards we exchanged hit my mailbox, my day was automatically made. Blake, our biweekly Skype dates kept me going, and our Pacific
Coast trip is a life highlight. Your support and encouragement have been invaluable, to say the least, and I can’t wait for even more adventuring! I’m so happy that our chats added another member when they turned weekly during lockdown: Nikhil Thorat, thank you for nerding out about language with me, reminding me that I’m doing cool stuff, and just being a genuinely fantastic friend. Shan Koay and Kenny Vo, thank you for encouraging me to celebrate all the small successes and for being the best lockdown family. Even struggle days are great days with y’all around. Plus you made me the luckiest aunt of all time, with Nori and Momo. Shan, you’ve been a supportive ear, a helping hand, an uplifting spirit, and the best Overcooked sous chef of all time. A big thank you to my extended family in Taiwan, and especially to my 阿姨 for taking care of me during the three months I lived there and for keeping me from being too yin.
viii The biggest gratitude goes to my parents, my tiger mom and laid-back dad.
Mama, you inspire me to be better, to do more, to make you proud. Thank you for encouraging me, for telling me to 加油! 加油! 加油! Dad, our weekly prayer time was instrumental in me finishing this dissertation. Thank you for always knowing how to assuage my insecurities and for being a pattern of faith. And to my baby E, there’s no one who understands me the way that you do. Thank you for making me a big sister and for pushing me, challenging me, and supporting me unconditionally. I love you!
ix Abstract
Taiwanese Texans: A Sociolinguistic Study of Language and Cultural Identity
Erica Sharon Brozovsky, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2020
Supervisor: Lars Hinrichs
This dissertation investigates the use of linguistic resources in the expression of sociocultural and ethnic identity in Taiwanese Americans from Texas (Taiwanese Texans) in order to achieve two outcomes: 1) to describe patterns of linguistic variation for a number of local and national variables and 2) to find connections and meaning between those patterns and the identities of the speakers. Exploring how Taiwanese Texans orient themselves within the cultural models available to them illustrates the link between language and identity, which in turn reveals the impact of assimilation and acculturation on this group. The study utilizes data from two sources: researcher-driven speech collected from sociolinguistic interviews of 30 Taiwanese Texans and reading passages from the Texas English Linguistics Lab archive of five older Anglo Texans.
A quantitative analysis shows that Taiwanese Texans do not retain the traditional
Texan dialect features of the Anglo Texan speaker baseline. Additionally, while social factors do not predict phonetic variation in a statistically significant manner, Taiwanese
Texans have almost categorically adopted four phonetic features—GOOSE fronting, Low
Back Merger, TRAP retraction, and Low Back Merger Shift—which together indicate that x Taiwanese Texans are orienting toward a chain-shift phonetic pattern, not yet observed in
Texan speech: the Third Dialect Shift. A qualitative analysis of the sociolinguistic interviews shows how the usage of socially salient features could indicate a speaker’s alignment toward indexed personae.
This reveals how Taiwanese Texans perform ethnicized identities of assimilation to whiteness through the invocation of locally available features that specifically index “white girlhood.” Taiwanese Texans put those resources into service to construct identity alignments during conversation, showing distance from Asianness and orientation toward white norms and white American culture in their negotiation of ethnic identity. This dissertation joins a growing body of sociolinguistic research on language variation that samples Asian Americans, the fastest growing ethnic group in the United
States today, contributing to our understanding of the connection between language and identity in a minority population.
xi Table of Contents
List of Tables ...... xv
List of Figures ...... xvi
List of Examples ...... xix
Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1
1.1 Sociolinguistics ...... 2
1.2 Taiwan ROC ...... 4
1.3 The Taiwanese American Population in the U.S. and Texas...... 8
1.4 Outline of Dissertation ...... 14
Chapter 2: Methodology ...... 15
2.1 Target Participants ...... 15
2.2 Recruitment ...... 18
2.3 The Interview ...... 19
2.4 Researcher Status ...... 22
2.5 Analysis ...... 26
2.5.1 Feature Based Analysis ...... 26
2.5.2 Discourse Based Analysis ...... 27
Chapter 3: The Phonetics of Taiwanese Texans ...... 28
3.1 The Vowel Space ...... 29
3.2 The Dataset ...... 31
3.2.1 Normalization ...... 31
3.2.1 Social Effect ...... 33
3.3 Index of Conservation ...... 35 xii 3.3.1 PIN/PEN Merger...... 37
3.3.2 Monophthongization of /aɪ/...... 41
3.3.3 Fronting of MOUTH Onset ...... 44
3.3.4 Tense/Lax Merger Preceding /l/...... 47
3.3.5 Discussion ...... 51
3.4 Index of Innovation ...... 52
3.4.1 The GOOSE Vowel ...... 52
3.4.2 Low Back Merger ...... 58
3.4.3 The TRAP Vowel...... 61
3.4.3a Nasal Split ...... 62
3.4.3b TRAP Retraction ...... 69
3.4.4 Low Back Merger Shift ...... 72
3.4.5 Third Dialect Shift ...... 76
3.5 Conclusions ...... 79
Chapter 4: Discourse on Identity ...... 81
4.1 Cultural Rejection ...... 83
4.1.1 I’m Asian and They’re White ...... 85
4.1.2 Lunchbox Moments ...... 87
4.1.3 Appearance ...... 89
4.1.4 Family ...... 91
4.1.5 Assimilation ...... 92
4.1.6 As Adults ...... 93
4.2 The Indices ...... 95
xiii 4.2.1 Angela ...... 100
4.2.2 Karen ...... 102
4.2.3 Henry ...... 102
4.2.4 Lisa...... 104
4.2.5 Peter ...... 106
4.3 Identity ...... 108
4.3.1 Asian Identities ...... 108
4.3.2 Identity Crises ...... 112
4.3.3 American Identities ...... 113
4.4 Sounds Like ...... 115
4.4.1 Sounding Asian ...... 116
4.4.2 Sounding White ...... 118
4.5 Other Themes ...... 119
4.6 Conclusions ...... 122
Chapter 5: Conclusion...... 123
5.1 Review of Findings ...... 124
5.2 Remaining Questions and Future Work...... 126
5.3 Concluding Remarks...... 128
Appendices ...... 130
Appendix A Sample Interview Questions ...... 130
Appendix B Excluded Speakers ...... 135
Works Cited ...... 136
xiv List of Tables
Table 2.1: Demographic information for Taiwanese Texan participants...... 17 Table 2.1, continued: Demographic information for Taiwanese Texan participants. ....18 Table A: Demographic information for Taiwanese Texans not included in current
analysis...... 135
xv List of Figures
Figure 3.1: Oral cavity vowel diagram showing place of articulation of FLEECE and
GOOSE vowels (adapted from Liberman, 2013)...... 29 Figure 3.2: Plots of non-normalized and Lobanov normalized vowel formant data
for two speakers, Alan and Andrea...... 33 Figure 3.3: Map of Texas with regions of interest highlighted...... 34 Figure 3.4: Zoomed in map of Dallas-Fort Worth region...... 35
Figure 3.5: Ellipses visualizing PIN and PEN vowels of Anglo and Taiwanese Americans in the vowel space by sex...... 39
Figure 3.6: Pillai scores for PIN/PEN merger in Anglo and Taiwanese Texans...... 40
Figure 3.7: Data ellipses of normalized PRICE on the vowel space for Taiwanese
Texans and Anglo Texans...... 42
Figure 3.8: Euclidean distance between nucleus and offglide of PRICE diphthong in Taiwanese Texans and Anglo Texans...... 43
Figure 3.9: MOUTH at 20% and 80% for Taiwanese Texan and Anglo Texan speakers...... 45
Figure 3.10: F2 delta of MOUTH at 20% and 80% in Taiwanese Texans and Anglo
Texans...... 46
Figure 3.11: FOOT and GOOSE preceding /l/ in Taiwanese Texan speakers...... 48
Figure 3.12: Data ellipses of overlap of KIT and FLEECE preceding /l/ in Taiwanese
Texans and Anglo Texans...... 49
Figure 3.13: Pillai score of tense/lax merger of PILL/PEEL in Taiwanese Texans and Anglo Texans...... 50 Figure 3.14: Index of Conservation for Taiwanese Texan and Anglo Texan speakers. ...51
xvi Figure 3.15: Utterance-final do, 19-year-old female Houston Anglo speaker (Koops,
2010, p. 115)...... 54 Figure 3.16: Utterance-final do, 45-year-old male Houston Anglo speaker (Koops, 2010, p. 116)...... 55
Figure 3.17: F2(20%) - F2(80%) GOOSE for each Taiwanese Texan speaker...... 56
Figure 3.18: Social effects on GOOSE fronting in Taiwanese Texans...... 57
Figure 3.19: Data ellipses of normalized LOT and THOUGHT plotted on the vowel
space for each Taiwanese Texan...... 60 Figure 3.20: Pillai scores for Low Back Merger for each Taiwanese Texan speaker...... 61
Figure 3.21: Average of normalized TRAP vowel in vowel space of each Taiwanese Texan divided by preceding nasal and preceding non-nasal conditions...... 63
Figure 3.22: Data ellipses of normalized TRAP vowel in vowel space for one speaker, Peter...... 64
Figure 3.23: Pillai scores showing overlap of pre-nasal TRAP and pre-non-nasal TRAP
in Taiwanese Texan speakers...... 65
Figure 3.24: Social effects on overlap between TRAP preceding nasal and preceding non-nasal in Taiwanese Texans...... 66
Figure 3.25: Euclidean distance between TRAP in nasal and non-nasal conditions for Taiwanese Texan speakers...... 67
Figure 3.26: Social effects on Euclidean distance between TRAP preceding nasal and
preceding non-nasal in Taiwanese Texans...... 68
Figure 3.27: Boberg’s Index of Phonetic Innovation (Normalized TRAP - GOOSE) for all Taiwanese Texan speakers...... 70
Figure 3.25: Social effects on TRAP - GOOSE in Taiwanese Texans...... 71
Figure 3.29: Formula for Low Back Merger Shift (from Boberg, 2019b, p. 63)...... 74 xvii Figure 3.30: Low Back Merger Shift Index for Taiwanese Texans...... 74
Figure 3.31: Social effects on Low Back Merger Shift Index in Taiwanese Texans...... 75 Figure 3.32: Changes occurring (or having occurred) in the vowel spaces of Taiwanese Texans...... 77
Figure 3.33: Index of Innovation for Taiwanese Texan speakers...... 78 Figure 4.1: Index of Conservation for Taiwanese Texan and Anglo Texan speakers. ...96 Figure 4.2: Index of Innovation for Taiwanese Texan speakers...... 97
Figure 4.3: Indices of Innovation and Conservation in Taiwanese Texan speakers by score...... 98 Figure 4.4: Indices of Innovation and Conservation for Taiwanese Texans by rank...... 99
xviii List of Examples
Example 4.1: Race barrier (interview with Lisa)...... 86 Example 4.2: More assimilated, more whitewashed (interview with Wendy)...... 89 Example 4.3: More attractive than Asian people (interview with Angela)...... 90
Example 4.4: I was, like, ashamed of my parents (interview with Melissa)...... 91 Example 4.5: I’m not gonna lose it (interview with Michelle)...... 94 Example 4.6: I was very conservative-ish (interview with Angela)...... 101
Example 4.7: Asian pop culture makes me cringe (interview with Lisa)...... 105 Example 4.8: I view myself as Taiwanese American (interview with Andrew)...... 111 Example 4.9: You raised me in America (interview with Ashley)...... 114 Example 4.10: Stupid Asian stuff (interview with Stephanie)...... 119
Example 4.10, continued: Stupid Asian stuff (interview with Stephanie)...... 120
xix Chapter 1: Introduction
Asian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States today (López, Ruiz & Patten, 2019), and Texas, as a locus of rapid ethnic and cultural diversification due to in-migration, is home to a projected over 1.5 million Asian Americans (Texas.gov, 2019), a population that has grown 42% since 2010 (Diaz & Cabrera, 2018). Despite the meteoric growth in population that Asian Americans have experienced, there are still few variationist sociolinguistic studies that examine Asian
Americans, particularly concerning phonetic variation and identity. This dissertation investigates the use of linguistic resources (both local and national) in the expression of sociocultural and ethnic identity in individuals from Texas with ties to the island of Taiwan (i.e. Taiwanese heritage).1 Texas is integral to the study of the population at hand as home to the third largest population of Taiwanese and Taiwanese Americans in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011), with a conservative estimate of more than 22,0002 (McCabe, 2012). By exploring how
Taiwanese Texans3 orient themselves within and toward the cultural models available to them, I show here the impacts of assimilation and acculturation on a people through the link between language and identity. The goal of the dissertation is thus two-fold:
1 A significant portion of which are immigrant, 2nd generation, and/or visit Taiwan frequently. 2 The major challenge of counting Taiwanese in the United States is that they must self-identify on the Census by marking “Other Asian” and filling in Taiwanese. On the 2010 Census, 230,382 persons wrote in Taiwanese as their race (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011), but given that at least 475,000 self-identified members of the Taiwanese diaspora, including 358,000 Taiwanese immigrants, lived in the United States in 2010 (McCabe, 2012), the Census count is clearly incomplete. The grassroots Census 2020 “Write-in- Taiwanese” campaign (Census 2020, 2020), the fourth census campaign TACL has helmed to educate Taiwanese Americans on why it matters to identify their race (Srikanth, 2020), encourages all those who identify as Taiwanese to check “Other Asian” on the Census and fill in Taiwanese in order to properly count the population and therefore better allocate governmental resources. 3 I will hereafter refer to the Taiwanese Americans in Texas (both immigrants and native-born Americans) as Taiwanese Texans. 1 1) to describe patterns of linguistic variation for a number of local and national
variables in native (and native-like) English speaking Taiwanese Texans, and 2) to find connections and meaning between those patterns and the sociocultural identities of the speakers.
In the remainder of the chapter, I will first provide an overview of sociolinguistic perspectives on language, race, and ethnolinguistic repertoire in Section 1.1. Section 1.2 gives a brief background of recent events in Taiwanese history relevant to the construction and formation of Taiwanese identity. Section 1.3 discusses the immigration of Taiwanese people to the United States and the subsequent lives those people led as Taiwanese Americans. Section 1.4 gives an organizational outlook over the rest of this dissertation.
1.1 SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Sociolinguistic research on race,4 ethnicity, and language has generally focused primarily on two major groups: African Americans and Latinx Americans, populations that have ethnolinguistic repertoires5 with distinct phonological and syntactic features. Ethnolinguistic repertoire, first coined in 2008 by Sarah Benor in her research on Jewish Americans, describes the “fluid set of linguistic resources that members of an ethnic group may use variably as they index their ethnic identities“ (Benor, 2010, p. 160). In other words, while there may be features associated with a certain group, not all members use those features the same way or with the same frequency. In recent years, the number
4 It goes without saying that we are all members of the human race, and the purpose here is never to be divisive, but instead to speak on the experience of one sub-group of humans. 5 For a discussion of the importance of using ethnolinguistic repertoire over ethnolect, see Benor (2010), Becker (2014), and Wong (2015). Among other things, there is a problem where the speech of non-white speakers is labeled an ethnolect whereas non-mainstream speech of Anglo Americans is labeled regional. 2 of sociolinguistic studies on the English spoken by other minority groups6 has increased, continuing to elucidate the connection between race or ethnicity and language. However,
Asian Americans remain chronically understudied7 often because of the lack of significant distinction from other vernacular varieties which flouts the “sociolinguistic distinctiveness model” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004) that disproportionately prioritizes examination of distinctive linguistic features in connection with ethnicity. Despite Asian American English(es) lacking the “structural robustness of other distinctive ethnolectal systems” (Charity Hudley et al., 2018, p. 9), over the years scholars of Asian American language have studied several groups of the pan-Asian diaspora, including Hmong Americans in Minnesota and North Carolina (Kaiser, 2011; Chung, 2014), Laotian Americans in California (Bucholtz, 2004), Korean Americans in
New Jersey (Lee, 2014), and Chinese Americans in California and New York (Hall-Lew, 2010; Wong, 2015; Wong & Hall-Lew, 2014), examining how Asian Americans use the linguistic features available to them to negotiate their identities.
Notably in the studies mentioned in the previous paragraph, the focus is on one subgroup of the Asian American population instead of on Asian Americans a whole. Pan- Asian identity assumes an Asian monolith, but Asian Americans are far too diverse to be discussed as a homogenous group. There are over 50 ethnic groups under the Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) umbrella according to the U.S. Census, which encompasses a wide range of not only linguistic diversity, but also other aspects of cultural background (Lee & Kumashiro, 2005). Even when limited to a single substrate language, Mandarin Chinese, speakers come not only from Taiwan and China, but also
6 See, for example, Benor (2010, 2011) on Jewish Americans, Holiday (2016) on Black/white biracial Americans, Hinrichs (2011) on Jamaican Canadians, etc. 7 This is particularly visible given the equal space (four pages each) dedicated to Asian American English and to the relatively infinitesimal populations of speakers of Jewish American English or Lumbee English in a recent text on American English dialects and variation (Wolfram & Schilling, 2015). 3 Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, etc. (Lai, 2004), and as such these members of the
Sinophone diaspora can choose their societal alignments not just according to national or ethnic identity, but also according to linguistic identity. in fact, Sinophone studies actively advocates for multilingual conceptions of Sinitic culture and identities (Shih,
2013). Thus the goal here is not to identify a set of features that are unique to Asian Americans or even Taiwanese Texans, but instead to understand the variation in production of linguistic features by Taiwanese Texans and how the usage of those linguistic features may indicate a particular sociocultural identity. That those linguistic features may not be unique to Asian Americans or Taiwanese Texans is unimportant because “ethnolectal distinctiveness is not a prerequisite for racialized language practices” (Charity Hudley et al., 2018, p. 9). In examining the yet unstudied Taiwanese Texan population, this dissertation adds to the growing body of sociolinguistic research on minority groups within the Asian American community at large and their production of regional dialect features. In order to understand the nuance of identity available to Taiwanese Texans, it is important to know the history of Taiwan and Taiwanese immigration to the United States as it relates to identity.
1.2 TAIWAN ROC
The Taiwanese people have a complicated relationship with identity. Taiwanese identity is not only about having roots in Taiwan, but also about race, ethnicity, nationality, and nationalism, among other things. The rich diversity, social, linguistic, and beyond, stems from a complex history important to the understanding of the perceptions, productions, and experiences of the participants in this study.
4 Given the power China holds on the global stage, asserting Taiwanese identity can be seen as a political statement, though it is not necessarily registering at the conscious level for many Taiwanese people. In fact, China sees claiming Taiwaneseness as anti-Chinese sentiment, and for some Taiwanese, it is.
The complicated and controversial relationship between Taiwan and China is the subject of dozens of texts (see Roy, 2003, Brown, 2004, Copper, 2019) chronicling the Cross-Strait relations and intertwined history of two states fighting for power over a
14,000 square mile island. Put simply, China views Taiwan as a renegade province, and Taiwan would like to be recognized as an independent nation on the world stage. Following World War II, with Japan’s surrender, fifty years of colonial rule came to an end, and China regained control over Taiwan. During decolonization and reintegration, the Taiwanese people noticed serious problems with their new government’s reconstruction efforts. The unemployment rate skyrocketed, diseases like cholera and bubonic plague made a resurgence, and the economic instability situation the
Taiwanese faced became even more precarious with governmental policies enacted by a government marred by corruption (United States Department of State, 1947). These concerns came to a head in early 1947 with “concrete antistate action”
(Phillips, 2015, p. 293) in the form of overthrowing the provincial government and “demand[ing]...self-government” (Phillips, 2015). Subsequent political instability and economic unrest served as fuel to the general dissatisfaction and anger of the Taiwanese people. In late February of 1947, following the attempted arrest of a widow illegally selling contraband cigarettes, violence broke out when an officer shot into the crowd of bystanders. The next day, February 28, soldiers opened fire on demonstrators, and the uprising spread. That act of violence, which is now known as the 228 Incident (so named because it occurred on February 28), led to the subsequent disappearance and massacre of 5 thousands of Taiwanese by Chiang Kai-shek’s troops and the start of 38 years of martial law. It is also seen as a turning point after which the Taiwanese Independence Movement gained traction (Fleischauer, 2007), and the seeds of a Taiwanese identity separate from China were planted.
Following the 20+ yearlong Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang government (KMT) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Communist Party of China (CPC) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the KMT administration helmed by
Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan in 1949 when the CPC gained control of mainland China. In the years since, a political impasse has continued, with both governments claiming legitimacy as the single Chinese government over “One China.” Under Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship, expression of Taiwanese identity was repressed: martial law authorized the government to prohibit and deny the rights to assembly, free speech, and publication in Taiwanese languages. Language usage was highly politicized in Taiwan as a means to assert and control ethnic identities, much like during Japanese colonization, when Japanese-language education was imposed, suppressing Taiwanese languages. The KMT imposed their cultural ideals on Taiwan, forcing sinicization through the teaching of Mandarin Chinese and instillation of
Nationalist doctrine. As ethnic identity lines hardened, the Taiwanese people used the speaking of Taiwanese or Hakka as a form of protest against the KMT and as a public marker of Taiwanese identity. Even when speaking Mandarin, Taiwanese people would use Taiwanese accents to display their ethnic identities.
With democratization and the development of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the 1980s, identity construction and the move towards Taiwanization continued (Hu, 2005). Some call for complete independence from Taiwan, i.e. “one China, one
6 Taiwan” (Wang, 2000), but the current DPP administration supports maintaining the status quo of de facto independence to avoid war with the PRC (Loa, 2016).
Presently, most countries do not recognize Taiwan as an independent state8 due to the pressure China is placing on them to view Taiwan instead as a renegade province.
China’s coercive attempts have led DPP-party President Tsai Ing-wen to go as far as to accuse China of endeavoring to influence the Taiwanese presidential election by pressuring states to switch diplomatic relations, a strategy which, shown through her incumbent election win in January of 2020, was unsuccessful on China’s part. With China’s global influence and financial power, it is easy to understand the coercion and pressure, or as President Tsai calls it: “thuggish oppression” (O’Connor, 2019), that states are facing to switch diplomatic ties from the ROC to the PRC.
Taiwan’s relationship with China is only one part of the complex conditions surrounding Taiwanese identity. The social (and linguistic9) diversity of the island adds even more nuanced levels to Taiwanese identity. Simplified, there are three main groups: the marginalized aboriginals,10 the descendants of those who emigrated from mainland China prior to 1945: the Taiwanren—Taiwanese people—or benshengren—inside province people (Copper, 2019), and those who arrived from mainland China after the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945: waishengren—outside province people. While Mandarin is the official language of Taiwan, the island is home to more than two dozen indigenous languages, and language diversity is the norm (e.g. the high-speed rail
8 As of May 2020, Taiwan continues formal diplomatic relations with 15 states: 14 United Nation member states (eSwatini (formerly known as Swaziland), Belize, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, and Tuvalu) and the Holy See. 9 See Kuo (2005) for an overview of the linguistic diversity of Taiwan and discussion of Taiwanese Mandarin. 10 Taiwanese aboriginal identity falls outside the scope of the current investigation; see Brown (2004, Chapter 2), Rudolph (2004), and Cauquelin (2004) for more. 7 announcements are made in four languages: Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka, and English).
It is common to speak more than one language or dialect11 and align oneself with more than one group. Group membership can be “further complicated” due to differing social, political, and societal perspectives (Johnston, 2014), particularly given Taiwan’s strained relationship with China. The mainlander Taiwanese (waishengren) may especially find themselves in a complicated situation regarding identity: some may identify with China and being Chinese, whereas others may identify politically with Taiwan even if they don’t feel they can readily claim Taiwanese ethnicity (see Section 4.3.2 on identity crises). Given the shift toward globalization and Taiwan’s politically precarious position, the terms of identity are still being developed for Taiwanese people. Taiwanese in diaspora have felt this identity shift even more,12 as they are often forced to acculturate or even assimilate to the norms of their host country.
1.3 THE TAIWANESE AMERICAN POPULATION IN THE U.S. AND TEXAS
Waves of immigration to the United States created pockets of Taiwanese immigrant settlement where the culture of the homeland stayed evident (Li, 2012; Chin & Villazor, 2015). Ng (1998) divides the waves into three categories: post World War II to
1965, 1965-1979, and 1979 to present. Prior to 1965, small numbers of students, military spouses, and workers seeking opportunity immigrated to the United States. Following the passing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 196513 into federal law by President
11 For a thorough investigation into linguistic identity within Taiwan, see Dupré (2013). 12 Identity alignments become both more and less important in turning towards Taiwanese in diaspora. The assertion of a different identity from China becomes more prominent (we are Taiwanese!), but the difference between benshengren and waishengren becomes less significant (we are Taiwanese!). 13 See Chin and Villazor (2015) for more on the controversial, groundbreaking Act that greatly changed the ethnic composition of immigrants to the United States, helping to end Asian exclusion and prejudice against Eastern Europeans but also continuing to discriminate against members of the LGBT+ community 8 Lyndon B. Johnson, the quota for immigrants increased significantly, allowing immigrants from places like Taiwan to come to the United States in greater numbers. In the 60s and 70s, Taiwanese students and persons skilled in technology and the sciences left for the United States, in a so-called “brain drain” (Arrigo, 2006), remaining stateside when offered opportunities and employment that Taiwan could not match. In 1979, the Taiwan Relations Act (United States, 1979) created a separate quota for Taiwanese immigrants (distinguished from immigrants from the PRC) and the brain drain continued as the golden opportunities of the United States lured more students, investors, and members of the workforce. On the eastern and western coasts of the United States, urban ethnic communities, or ethnoburbs, of Taiwanese immigrants sprung up (Li, 2012). Business everywhere from pharmacies and bookstores to restaurants, food stores, and shopping malls could be conducted as if one had never left Taiwan. In the 1980s, Monterey Park, California was widely known by the moniker “Little Taipei” (Arrigo, 2006), and even today in areas such as Flushing in Queens, New York, and Arcadia, California (Li, 2012), it is possible to conduct one’s life exclusively in Mandarin Chinese. Daily and weekly Chinese language newspapers share local and mainstream news pieces; menus and storefronts boast specials and deals only to those who can read Chinese. But even in the ethnic enclaves, many feared a loss of Taiwanese culture, a “diluting of [the] cultural inheritance” (Ng, 1998, p. 116) that was more difficult to preserve and maintain after leaving the island. Immigrant parents felt an “urgent imperative in trying to instill a sense of Taiwanese identity in their children” (Ng, 1998, p. 116). In order to prevent the weakening of Taiwanese identity, parents formed
and refugee groups and causing a number of concerns still at the forefront of immigration politics to this day. 9 weekend Mandarin (and Taiwanese) language schools. Attending Taiwanese churches and temples also aided Taiwanese immigrants in dealing with the challenges of “becoming American” (Chen, 2008). Actively creating a Taiwan-centric community allowed for the preservation of cultural values and traditions and developed a strong network of connections both socially and professionally. Interest groups began to establish themselves,14 and their legacies continue to this day in both the Taiwanese immigrant and Taiwanese American communities, preserving Taiwanese culture as a “cause worth fighting for” (Our Impact, 2016), especially given Taiwan’s liminal status and uncertain future on the world stage. The children of Taiwanese immigrants have had to learn to navigate not only their Taiwanese heritage, but also the American landscape into which they were born, effectively “straddl[ing] boundaries of nation, culture, and language” (Chun, 2009). As “racial minorities and ethnic Americans” (Kibria, 2002), they are both Taiwanese and American, as well as Taiwanese American, and many feel strongly about the differences in each of those three disparate identities. In addition to the nation, culture, and language, the children of Taiwanese immigrants had to learn to navigate racial ideologies that “underscore[d] the social marginality of Asian Americans” (Wolfram & Schilling, 2015) such as “forever foreigner,” “honorary white,” and “model minority.” Briefly, “forever foreigner” suggests that Asian Americans, no matter their true native language, are primarily speakers of their heritage language which contrasts with “honorary white” where speakers are thought to assimilate to the sociolinguistic norms of white mainstream society (Lee, 2014). The “model minority” myth stems from the narrative of the
14 Organizations of note include the Taiwanese Association of America (https://www.taa-usa.org/) founded in the 1970s, the Taiwanese American Citizens League (TACL, https://tacl.org/) in the 1980s, and the Intercollegiate Taiwanese American Students Association (ITASA, https://itasa.org/) in the 1990s. 10 monolithic Asian experience as “unproblematic,” high-achieving citizens, ignoring the disparities between different Asian communities, essentially “eras[ing] the racism, historical discrimination against, and experiences of Asian Americans,” (Chung, 2020). This drives a wedge between Asian Americans and other Americans of color, particularly
Black Americans, comparing them as model versus problematic. Adrienne Lo summarizes quite fittingly: “...the model minority myth upholds the American ideologies of meritocracy and individualism, diverts attention away from racial inequality, sustains whites in the racial hierarchy, and pits minority groups against one another” (Lo, 2009, p. 44). While the children growing up in ethnoburbs are surrounded by predominantly Asian peers and experience life as part of a local majority group, many immigrants or children-of-immigrants in other inland regions of the country, such as in Texas, did not intrinsically form a community of practice, and as such did not have the luxury of an ethnic enclave.
Most Taiwanese immigrants to Texas settled in suburbs outside of the major cities (particularly Plano outside of Dallas and Sugarland outside of Houston), but the occasional family found themselves on the coast or the Southern border based on where they were able to find employment. Generally those with higher levels of education moved to the suburbs to raise their children and work in white-collar professions, whereas the coastal/border families tended more towards labor-intensive jobs at restaurants or shops.
Parental profession and socioeconomic class are just two small parts of the subtle nuances that contribute to the formation of Taiwanese Texan identity. For example, those born in Texas differ in identity from other American born Taiwanese and even more so from those who were born in Taiwan (second generation versus 1.5 generation). There is 11 a distinction between those whose parents are both either from Taiwan and/or of
Taiwanese descent and those who only have one Taiwanese parent (monoracial versus biracial/bicultural).15 Mandarin (or Taiwanese, or Hakka, etc.) speakers identify differently from monolingual English-speaking Taiwanese Texans (multilingual vs. monolingual), and there may be differences in Taiwanese Texan identity between benshengren and waishengren. Some Taiwanese Texans were raised in diverse communities that included many other Asian Americans and still others were raised as the only people of Asian descent in their entire community. In discussing Asian Americans in Texas (particularly East Asian Americans), it is important to consider the particularities of how they are socially situated within the racial ecology of Texas, which is markedly different from other areas of the United States.
Racial history in Texas is marked by conflicts and aggression against Black and Latinx (particularly Mexican) minorities, with clear discriminatory anti-Black and anti-Mexican rhetoric interwoven throughout the political and social makeup of the state (Behnken,
2011). Asian Americans do not share that history, reflecting a racial hierarchy of Texas with Asian American proximity to whiteness.16 This is in clear contrast to areas of the United States like California where there is a long history of anti-Asian legal discrimination and xenophobia (see, for example, Zesch, 2012, on the Chinese massacre of 1871 in Los Angeles; see Kanazawa, 2005, on legal discrimination against Asian Americans).
15 The present study only considers speakers whose “non-Taiwanese parent” is from China or Hong Kong. 16 This is not to say that there is no anti-Asian sentiment or active anti-Asian racism in Texas. In fact, an April 2020 report for the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council found that Texas was third in hate incidents against Asian Americans during the early stages of the COVID-19 (Kennedy, 2020). However, from a historical perspective, Black and Mexican Texan populations have been categorically disenfranchised and discriminated against. 12 Asian Americans in Texas are often not recognized in racial statistics; in fact, in the largest school district in Central Texas, identifying as Asian is not an option when indicating race or ethnicity.17 These Asian Americans are largely post-1965 immigrants, and so display the model minority attributes to a larger degree. The positioning towards honorary white status of Asian Americans in Texas has a number of consequences to identity construction that are further discussed in Chapter 4. Identity as an experience is not singular; it is complex and multi-faceted, encompassing the intersection of multiple identities. For that reason, it is important to be aware of the “salience of identity” because exploring only one aspect of identity may lead to “erroneous assumption[s] about the individual’s subjective experience” (Chen, 2005, p. 1). There is so much more to identity formation and development beyond ethnicity or race or association with place. I do not wish to claim here that the speakers of the data used in this dissertation affirm Texan-ness, or Taiwanese-ness, or Asian American-ness (or any other racial or local identity) as the most important part of their identities (and often times they did not18). As a racialized minority, Taiwanese Texans may be labeled by outsiders as simply Asian, but much like any other person in any other place, each Taiwanese Texan has a unique story and an idiosyncratic identity orientation, of which ethnicity is simply one part (Becker, 2014). Language as a symbolic resource has at several times been a critical object in Taiwanese history, used as a means to both assert and control ethnic identity, as forms of rebellion and repression, respectively. As such, investigating the symbolic side of linguistic form is historically warranted in a population such as Taiwanese Americans
17 The options are Hispanic, White, African-American, and Other. 18 For example, when asked about how he identified, one participant was strongest in his identity as a scientist above anything else. 13 who come from a background of ethnicized language use, particularly in the examination of the connection between form and meaning (i.e. what is said and how it is said). Because of the markedly different racial ecology of Texas compared to other regions of the United States, investigating Taiwanese Texans may reveal racialized language practices that present in a unique way. This dissertation seeks to examine how ethnicized language is used in the assertion of identity in a minority population in diaspora, particularly in the performative use of language features as a function of identity in interaction.
1.4 OUTLINE OF DISSERTATION
The remainder of the dissertation is organized as follows: Chapter 2 describes the speaker sample collected for this study and details the methodology used in data collection and analysis. Chapter 3 presents a quantitative analysis of variation in phonetic features of interest. Each feature is presented alongside the linguistic background necessary to understand the interpretation of the results that follow. Chapter 4 discusses the sociolinguistic interviews and provides micro-analyses of segments of the interviews, examining how the language of the speakers may contribute to or even index facets of their identities. Chapter 5 summarizes the findings of the study, followed by conclusions and suggestions of directions for further research.
14 Chapter 2: Methodology
This chapter provides an outline of the methodological processes used in the collection and preparation of sociolinguistic and sociocultural data from the participants in this study: Taiwanese Americans in Texas. Additionally, it serves to introduce the mixed methods frameworks of analysis, presenting background information to be further addressed in the subsequent chapters. Section 2.1 provides a description of the target participants as well some rationale for their choosing. In Section 2.2, I describe recruiting strategies and drawbacks. Section 2.3 discusses the data collection via interview and Section 2.4 addresses the influences that I, as the researcher, may or may not have on the elicited data based on my background and attributes. Finally, Section 2.5 sets out the sociophonetic, sociopragmatic, and discourse analysis methodologies used for the quantitative and qualitative analyses discussed in Chapters 3 and 4.
2.1 TARGET PARTICIPANTS
The study sampled adult Taiwanese Americans who spent their formative youth in Texas, i.e. were born in or moved to Texas before age 11. The maximum age of arrival in Texas was chosen based on language acquisition research hypothesizing a critical period for language learning and attainment (Lenneberg, 1967; see Abutalebi & Clahsen, 2018, for more recent examples), after which speakers can typically no longer acquire a native-like accent in a second language or dialect (Scovel, 1988; see Trudgill, 1986;
Chambers, 1992, for more on phonological process acquisition issues after age 12). Sociolinguistic research identifies approximately age 11 as a life-stage division (Eckert, 1997) marking the end of later childhood, moving toward adolescence. It is a psychologically salient benchmark (see Parker, Rubin, Erath, Wojslawowicz, & Buskirk,
15 2015) as well as a transitional point by which children’s socialization orientation is no longer parent-centered, but instead focused on peers (Kerswill & Williams, 2000). At such point, a child’s language development is primarily influenced by peers instead of caregivers, and in fact “peer influence usually trumps parental influence” (Stanford,
2008). Paquette-Smith, Buckler, White, Choi, and Johnson (2019) show that children have a social preference for linguistic in-group members, i.e. other children who speak like them, with a similar accent, which then recursively may encourage children to speak like their peers. Pérez-Milans and Martín Rojo (2007) provide evidence of classmates as linguistic gatekeepers, which in a way encourages peers to speak the standard variety. No age cap was placed on speakers, but those sampled here cover a range from emerging adult (Arnett, 2000) to firmly entrenched in adulthood, yet pre-middle age: late
30s. Although Wong (2015) notes the relevance of immigrant generation status both socioculturally and potentially regarding linguistic production effects, the study at hand did not limit based on this factor. All participants have at least one parent who immigrated to the United States from Taiwan, and five participants were in fact born in Taiwan themselves, i.e. were of the second or 1.5 generations. The second generation is widely understood to be the children of immigrants, and the 1.5 generation is defined as young people who arrived in the target country as children, a group who has “experienc[ed] part of their formative socialization in their country of origin and another part in their country of destination” (Tyrrell, Sime, Kelly, & McMellon, 2019). Wang and
Collins (2016) place the general age range at 6-14.
Participants were not precluded based on gender: speakers included those who identified as male, female, and gender-fluid.19 At the time of interview, all participants
19For the purposes of phonetic analysis, those that identified as gender-fluid permitted me to label them with the sex they were assigned at birth. 16 whose data appears in this study resided in central Texas. Demographic information can be seen in Table 2.1.
Table 2.1: Demographic information for Taiwanese Texan participants.
Name Birth Sex Region Generation
David 1980 M DFW 1.5
Alan 1983 M Central 2
Tina 1985 F Houston 1.5
Melissa 1988 F Central 2
Amy 1988 F Valley 2
Joseph 1989 M Houston 2
Sarah 1990 F Houston 2
Stephanie 1991 F Central 1.5
Janet 1991 F DFW 2
Kevin 1991 M DFW 2
Vivian 1991 F Central 1.5
Wendy 1991 F Central 2
Michelle 1991 F Central 2
Sam 1991 M Valley 2
Daniel 1991 M Houston 2
Karen 1992 F East 2
Henry 1992 M Central 1.5
Jay 1994 M Houston 1.5
Lily 1995 F Houston 2
Evelyn 1996 F Central 2
17 Name Birth Sex Region Generation
Andrew 1996 M DFW 2
Ashley 1996 F DFW 2
Andrea 1996 F East 2
Jenny 1997 F Central 2
Esther 1997 F East 2
Peter 1998 M Central 2
Alex 1998 F DFW 2
Angela 1999 F East 2
Lisa 1999 F DFW 2
James 1999 F DFW 2
Table 2.1, continued: Demographic information for Taiwanese Texan participants.
2.2 RECRUITMENT
The initial effort to recruit participants was made through membership or affiliation with both a student and a professional Taiwanese American interest group in central Texas. I made a post to solicit interviewees on the Facebook community pages for both organizations, and on my own page (one each over the course of data collection).
Additionally, as a member of the board of the professional Taiwanese American interest group, I was able to recruit a number of participants personally. The remaining participants were found via word-of-mouth or friend-of-a-friend recruiting.
Participants were recruited based on their response to the following questions: Are you of full or partial Taiwanese descent? Have you lived in Texas since at least age 11? Often times those who did not qualify for the study knew friends or family members who they referred to me for participation.
18 In total, I recorded 48 interviews with participants from all over Texas. Initial data collection included interviews of participants with any Taiwanese background (i.e. both mixed-race and monoracial), but for the purposes of the study at hand, the focus is on monoracial Asian Americans of Taiwanese descent.20 Data from 30 speakers is presented and analyzed here. The speakers not analyzed here are listed in Appendix B, along with their reason for exclusion. A disadvantage of the sociolinguistic interview, as opposed to online surveys, for example, is that they require in-person meetings which are difficult to schedule and arrange, particularly if they are at locations other than the participant’s home. For the students with a flexible college schedule, meeting on campus was convenient, but other interviewees, however, had to overcome additional time and location constraints.
Limiting factors reduced the participants, especially non-students, to those that were “highly motivated to help...or extremely interested in the research and therefore willing to be inconvenienced” (Holliday, 2016), particularly because no compensation was offered for their participation. Despite the constraints, participation skewed slightly toward young professionals at two thirds of the speakers (19), with students forming the remaining third (11).
2.3 THE INTERVIEW
Once participation was confirmed, I scheduled a time to meet in person for the interviews, which were conducted one-on-one in a quiet room either on campus at a university in central Texas, at the participant’s home, or at my home. The locations were chosen based on convenience to participants, but were also arranged to take place in
20Six participants, while members of the Sinophone diaspora, are not exclusively of Taiwanese descent, having one parent from China or Hong Kong. This difference becomes relevant in speakers’ identity work, which will be addressed further in Chapter 4. 19 comfortable areas in order to alleviate any formality impressions implicit in the word
“interview” and to facilitate casual conversation.21 Interviews began in November 2017 and continued through July 2018. Each participant was interviewed once, and each interview lasted between 90 and 120 minutes. The interviews were recorded using a
Zoom H2N Handy Recorder which was positioned directly in front of the participant, within a distance of approximately 8-12 inches. As the interlocutor, I positioned myself either across from (face-to-face) or perpendicular to (diagonal from) the participant, depending on room setup. The diagonal “corner position” (Westside Toastmasters, n.d.) was preferred when possible to avoid a confrontational atmosphere, allowing for gesticulation and a comfortable level of eye-contact (Study Body Language, n.d.). The interview was designed to collect ethnographic and linguistic data about the participants including information about childhood, education, community, being Taiwanese American, etc. as well as metadata about speech and language ideologies. In each interview, in order to elicit natural and spontaneous speech data, I avoided the use of reading passages and word lists commonly used in sociolinguistic interviews (Labov, 1972b) in favor of solely a casual, conversation-like interview. Prior to being interviewed, the participants were not primed with any information about the content of the interview. Those who knew me personally were aware of my background as a linguist, but many knew nothing other than that I wanted to interview them, and had no expectations about what sorts of questions I would ask—in fact, many said as much. In the cases where participants wanted to initially know more, they were informed that it would address their background, and that they would be given a full debrief post- interview if interested. Given that one of the qualifications for inclusion was Taiwanese
21 The on-campus interviews at TXU took place either in a private graduate student lounge or in a department conference room library, both of which are decorated and situated to avoid a stark classroom feel. 20 heritage, they may have had some inkling that the interview was related to cultural identity. Each interview began with a series of demographic questions to develop a participant profile as well as to “set the tone...as a casual conversation about the interviewee’s life, experiences, and opinions” (Becker, 2017, pp. 104). Subsequent question ordering varied as a means to make the conversation flow naturally in order to mitigate what Labov (1972b) calls the “observer’s paradox,” where it is difficult to estimate the effects the characteristics of the researcher have on the interview (Cukor- Avila, 2000). The interview organization was flexible dependent on the participant’s responses, but all meta questions about language were not queried until the end of the interview (per Labov, 1972a), so as not to make interviewees feel “self-conscious about their speech” (Hall-Lew, 2010). All interviews were conducted in English, though some participants occasionally code-switched to Mandarin or, in one case, between English, Mandarin, and Taiwanese.
While many of the speakers come from multilingual backgrounds (whether through personal language capacity or through having grown up hearing Mandarin or Taiwanese), they are all speakers of fluent Mainstream American English, so this dissertation does not examine any possible substrate effects multilingualism may contribute to their Englishes, and codeswitching is not an object of the current analysis. A list of sample interview questions can be found in Appendix A.22
22 The appendix does not include questions that were specifically targeted toward mixed-race participants as their data will not be included in the study at hand. 21 2.4 RESEARCHER STATUS
In order to accurately analyze the data collected from the interviews, I cannot ignore my own participation not just as a researcher, but also as an interviewer and interlocutor. It is important for a full understanding of the data to consider how my positioning(s), including history, personal qualities, identities, etc. may have influenced (or been influenced by) the participants in the interviews (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). As an active participant in each interview, it is impossible for me to be a neutral party, and in fact my unique positioning allows me access that other researchers would not have
(Modan, 2007; De Tona, 2006). Born and raised in New England the daughter of a Taiwanese woman who immigrated to the United States in her 20s and an American-born man of mixed
European descent, I find myself a “halfie” researcher; my “cultural identity is mixed by virtue of migration [my mother’s to the US as well as my own to Texas] [and] parentage” (Abu-Lughod, 2008). My background as a person of mixed Taiwanese heritage from
Massachusetts positioned me as a partial insider/outsider to my interviewees. I look sufficiently “ethnically ambiguous” enough that visual cues would not mark me as Taiwanese or even more broadly Asian American, yet the participants positioned me within the Taiwanese American frame. In the context of the recruiting and interview processes, everyone seemed eager to help one of their own. In my experience, and as oft repeated in the interviews, Taiwanese people are “really warm and welcoming and generous” (Wendy, 26).23 Even if an interested party was not eligible to participate in
23 Pseudonyms were chosen from the Subtle Asian Traits Facebook page on the basis of my personal judgement on common names for Asian Americans. Popularity of names was confirmed through searching the group to determine if the name was shared by more than 200 members (the highest number a search would allow). 22 the current study, they were excited to and went out of their way to introduce me to other potential interviewees. In the interviews themselves, participants indexed me as Taiwanese by referred to things that only Taiwanese Americans or those familiar with Taiwanese culture would understand, namely foods (both in Mandarin and in Taiwanese; e.g. zòngzi (粽子) [tsʊ̂ ŋ.t̚sɨ] and bah-chàng (肉粽) [ba˧˩d͡ zaʔ˦ŋ̍ ]) and cultural practices. They referenced “our culture,” which functioned to label me as an insider within a shared cultural narrative.
Though I was not formally tested, by my best approximation my Mandarin language ability at the time of the interviews could be rated at 2 or 2+ on the ILR
Speaking Scale24 (Interagency Language Roundtable, n.d.); I could understand and respond appropriately to everyday conversation, but I did not have the vocabulary or grammar structures for complex or specialized topics. My Taiwanese language ability was limited to a handful of words and basic expressions (0, or 0+, No Proficiency or Memorized Proficiency, respectively).
While all interviews were conducted in English, 12 participants regularly code- switched from English to Mandarin without translation, correctly assuming my understanding. However, I did ask for explanations of idiomatic expressions (成語, chéngyǔ, typically four-character phrases) that I was unfamiliar with on two occasions. Many also used Mandarin pronunciation for place names (e.g. Taipei: [tʰǎibèi], Shanghai: [ʂâŋ.xài]) instead of succumbing to American phonological nativization (e.g. Taipei:
[ˈtaɪˌpeɪ], Shanghai: [ˈʃæŋˈhaɪ]), whereby a foreign word is “borrowed into and then becomes a regular part of another language” (Troy, 2013; see Boberg, 1999, for attitudes on nativization).
24 Limited Working Proficiency—see https://www.govtilr.org/Skills/ILRscale2.htm for descriptions of the scale. 23 On the other end of the insider/outsider spectrum (Hellawell, 2006), due to my background as a non-Texan, I was able to ask questions about Texan identity from an outsider position. Here the responses were split: many were immensely proud to be Texan and excited to share and show off their state (Peter, 19: “I'm proud when I see the
Texas flag; I'm proud when I see...our state on like, on some insurance cap or anything, like I'm just proud. I love it.”), yet others were self-conscious to be grouped together with people (Texans/southerners) they stereotyped as backward and ultra-conservative
(Evelyn, 21: “I'm a little embarrassed of my state sometimes”). Although self-assessment of accent is fallible, as a linguist I believe it a fair judgment to describe my speech as Mainstream American English without a regional accent (see Wolfram & Schilling, 2015, for a comprehensive discussion of American
Englishes). However, research in language change across the lifespan notes that geographical mobility may lead speakers to “assimilate to the speech of the ambient language of people different from themselves” perhaps due to “involvement in different communities of practice” (Sankoff, 2018). After a decade of living in Texas, it is possible that interlocutors may hear Texan influence in my speech (see Bell, 2001, on interpersonal linguistic behavior), although my age of arrival (18) affirms that the dialect contact will likely not lead to much speech accommodation on my part (Trudgill, 1986; see Giles & Ogay, 2007, for more on Communication Accommodation Theory). As such, I believe that it is unlikely my speech prompted any convergence or divergence effects
(Bell, 1984).
One drawback of the term “interview” is the perceived formality of the interaction which can lead to unnatural speech (Wolfson, 1976). Interviews are often formal occasions, but the goal of the sociolinguistic interview is to elicit casual, natural speech, and the mental disconnect may cause disconcertion on the part of the interviewees. On 24 more than one occasion, a participant used profanity before self-correcting and asking whether or not “that was allowed.” In one case, it may have been due to perception of me as a researcher in a position of asymmetrical power despite my best efforts to cede control to my interviewees (Schilling, 2013), but in others, it could be due to the context of an interview and their idea of what constituted research. Many others had no issue with casual (and colorful) speech. In the case of some participants, we were already acquainted, so I expected a level of openness in their responses; Cukor-Avila and Bailey (2001) conclude from Rickford and McNair-Knox’s (1994) study that “increasing familiarity reduces interviewer effects and leads to richer linguistic data.” Overall, I was impressed by (and thankful for) how forthcoming the participants were with intimate details of their lives. The assurance of anonymity of data may have been a factor, but their candor with someone who, in most cases, was a stranger, supports recent research in sociology on core discussion networks. Contrary to popular thought, private information isn’t shared solely with close social ties, but people routinely “confide highly personal matters to people they are not close to, and at times even barely know” (Small, 2017). Although studies on interviewer gender effects generally provide mixed results and focus on surveys of questions that are directly “gender-related” (Kane & Macauley, 1993) or on associated topics (i.e. relationships: Fuchs, 2009; or marriage: Liu & Stainbeck, 2013), it may be worth noting my position as a female interlocutor. Perhaps something about my personhood as well as my genuine curiosity about their lives contributed to making them feel comfortable revealing their intricacies—it is rare to have the chance to talk about oneself at length with a single audience member hanging on to each word. As an advantage, people typically enjoy talking about themselves, and when the right topic is broached, can talk excitedly for hours (Rickford, 2019). 25 2.5 ANALYSIS
The interview data from each participant followed the same analytical methodology. For initial transcription, each interview was uploaded to a private YouTube channel in order to take advantage of YouTube’s automatic closed captioning. Each closed caption transcription was then hand-edited to ensure orthographic accuracy and correct timestamp placement. On average, the length of each transcription segment was less than five seconds. The full transcriptions were downloaded as SubRip Subtitle files (.srt; plain-text files with information including start and end timestamps so that the audio/video and subtitles match up) and run through a script written in the Python programming language (https://www.python.org/) following a workflow partly developed by the Texas English Linguistics Lab (TELL) (Hinrichs, Szmrecsanyi, & Bohmann,
2015) in order to be converted to TextGrid, which is used for labeling audio files at certain points. From there, each transcription followed a mixed methods path which is further described in 2.5.1 and 2.5.2.
2.5.1 Feature Based Analysis
From a quantitative angle, the interviews were analyzed for selected linguistic features. To prepare the data, the TextGrid files were force aligned at the phonemic level with the originally recorded .wav audio files with FAVE-Extract (Rosenfelder et al, 2014) and Montreal Forced Aligner (McAuliffe, Socolof, Mihuc, Wagner, &
Sonderegger, 2017) using the DARLA web interface (Reddy & Stanford, 2015) and the Vowels R package (Kendall & Thomas, 2010). The resulting TextGrid files were exported into Praat where the vowel formants for all stressed vowels were estimated spectrographically (Boersma & Weenink, 2019). The Praat TextGrids were then labeled
26 with tiers for orthography, Texan features of note, code switching to Mandarin or
Taiwanese, and other features of interest. Vowel formant information was exported as a .csv for further analysis in R (R Core Team, 2019). Statistical tests, including hierarchical (mixed-effects) modeling using the functions provided by the lme4 package, were conducted in R. Further details can be found in the discussion of results in Chapter 3.
2.5.2 Discourse Based Analysis
From a qualitative angle, empirically significant passages from each participant, including but not limited to where identity is described, meta commentary about speech and language usage, generalizations about Taiwanese Americans, Asian Americans, Texans, etc., were selected from the TextGrid file and re-transcribed to not only capture the actual words spoken, but also the manner in which they were spoken, notating non- linguistic elements of speech such as word emphasis, dynamic (↑ , for rise in intonation and ↓ for drop in intonation, as well as CAPITALIZATION for yelled or otherwise loud speech acts), pauses, overlapping locutions, etc. These passages may include speech by both the interviewer and interviewee. Further details about specific notation can be found in the discussion of results in Chapter 4.
27 Chapter 3: The Phonetics of Taiwanese Texans
This chapter presents an analysis of selected phonetic features of sociolinguistic interest in the Taiwanese Texan population. Due to the intersectional status of the speakers both as American and as Texan25 (not to mention Taiwanese and, more broadly,
Asian), it is necessary to examine features that are markers of Texas English (TxE) and of ongoing sound change in mainstream American English (MAE).26 The chapter reveals where Taiwanese Texans fall within the scope of ongoing sound changes and how they position themselves relative to other groups. The primary focus here is the effect social identity has on variation in phonetic features, and subsequently, in Chapter 4, how that variation contributes to the performance of identity. Because phonetic features vary in their production, certain realizations of those features can be thought of as indexing social meanings. By virtue of such indexical dynamics, social identities are linguistically co- constructed.27 Following an introduction to the data structure and visualization, the chapter is divided into two main sections: locally conservative TxE features and innovative features. Each section presents relevant background context, a methodological overview, and discussion of the analysis results.
25 Texan identity, affiliation, and pride is often more pronounced than nationalism or patriotism for the United States. This starts from an early age with the pledge of allegiance to the Texas flag in elementary schools and even extends to the very end, such as in the last statement from a Texas-raised, Texas-executed death row prisoner: “Texas loud, Texas proud” (Fernandez, 2016). 26 As stated in Chapter 1, no clear ethnolinguistic repertoire has been identified for pan-Asian Americans, nor for Mandarin-substrate Asian Americans, so alleged features of any “Asian English” are not discussed here. 27 The identity of an individual is “the result of a constant negotiation between human possibilities and social and cultural opportunities” (Seidman, Fischer, & Meeks, 2016, p. 68), and language is just one facet of social behavior that contributes to identity construction. Mendoza-Denton (2014) has shown the significance of stylistic choices such as clothing, makeup, and musical taste in identity construction, and other work in anthropology, sociology, and psychology have established connections between performance of identity and other aspects of social behavior including alcohol usage (Ridout, Campbell, & Ellis, 2012) and social media profiles (Schwartz & Halegoua, 2015; Papacharissi, 2009). 28 3.1 THE VOWEL SPACE
This chapter focuses on the vowel systems of Taiwanese Texans. In order to visualize where a vowel is articulated, the discipline of linguistics uses schematic diagrams. Sociolinguists frequently present an oral cavity cross-section overlaid by a vowel space diagram, as seen in Figure 3.1. In American English, the vowel space is quadrilateral shaped.
Figure 3.1: Oral cavity vowel diagram showing place of articulation of FLEECE and GOOSE vowels (adapted from Liberman, 2013).
The X in the left image highlights the high front region of the oral cavity (near the teeth), where the FLEECE28 vowel is articulated. The X in the right image highlights the
28 The relevant vowel variables are referred to by their respective Wells’s keywords (Wells, 1982), indicated by the small capitals (i.e. the vowel sound in “fetch” is part of the DRESS vowel class and the vowel sound in “heat” is part of the FLEECE vowel class). To clarify pronunciations, the phonetic realizations are designated by square brackets (i.e. the vowel sound in “fetch” is [ɛ] and the vowel sound in “heat” is [i]). 29 low back region (near the throat), where the PALM vowel is articulated. However, vowels are not stagnant and can shift place of articulation, relative to other vowels. When a vowel moves, whether by infringing on the place of articulation of another vowel or otherwise, it causes a gap in the inventory of the sound system, which can set off a chain shift29 that changes the pronunciation of a whole series of vowels, i.e. the Great Vowel Shift of the 15th through 17th centuries (Giancarlo, 2001; Perkins, 1977), the Northern
Cities Vowel Shift30 of the 20th century (Labov, 2008; Labov, Ash, & Boberg, 2006), and the ongoing Third Dialect Shift (Durian, 2008; Boberg, 2005), which is further discussed in Section 3.4.2. The place of articulation in vowels that are fronted moves from the back of the oral cavity toward the front, and in vowels that are raised from the bottom of the oral cavity towards the top (and the respective reversal for backed and lowered vowels). The vowel positions are determined based on two sets of frequencies: first formant (F1) on the y-axis and second formant (F2) on the x-axis. Vowel height can be seen through measurements of F1, as a measure of tongue height and vowel tract openness, and frontness and backness (or degree of advancement) in the vowel space can be seen through measurements of F2 (Lee, Shaiman, & Weismer, 2016). Lower vowels have a higher F1 than higher vowels, and fronted vowels have a higher F2 than backed vowels.
29 It is important to note that because speakers are idiosyncratic, they do not participate in vowel shifts to the same degree, and the variance can often be “traced to characteristics both social (gender, age, ethnicity, social class) and attitudinal (e.g., feelings about place)” (Nycz, 2020). 30 Recent research on the Northern Cities Vowel Shift suggests that while the shift exists, it is reversing in some areas of the Rust Belt, or the Inland North (Dinkin, 2017; Wagner, Mason, Nesbitt, Pevan, & Savage, 2016; Driscoll & Lape, 2015). 30 3.2 THE DATASET
The data analyzed in this chapter comes from interviews with 30 Taiwanese Texans, totaling 74,339 vowel tokens. The vowel formants were estimated spectrographically using Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2019) and the raw data was exported into R for analysis (R Core Team, 2019).
3.2.1 Normalization
In order to allow direct statistical comparisons across speakers, the data was converted from absolute formant values to relative formant values in a process called normalization.31 Thomas and Kendall (2007) have established that the goals of normalization are:
a) to eliminate variation caused by physiological differences among speakers; b) to preserve sociolinguistic/dialectal/cross-linguistic differences in vowel quality;
c) to preserve phonological distinctions among vowels; d) to model the cognitive processes that allow human listeners to normalize vowels uttered by different speakers.
Most important to the purposes of this dissertation are the first three goals. I used the vowel-extrinsic, formant-intrinsic Lobanov normalization method (Lobanov, 1971) available in the vowels suite (Kendall & Thomas, 2010) in which the formants are placed on a scale of standard deviations. While there are many normalization methods to choose from, Lobanov normalization has consistently proven to be competitive with and often superior to other
31 Vowel normalization is so critical to sociophonetic research that it is not the normalization that one must justify, but instead the choice not to normalize (Fabricius, Kendall, & Watt, 2011). 31 methods in achieving the goals outlined above (Adank, Smits, & Van Hout, 2004;
Fabricius, Watt, & Johnson, 2009). Unlike the modified Watt and Fabricius method, for example, the Lobanov method takes into account the measurements of the entire vowel set instead of just the corner points. While the raw data was measured in hertz, the normalized data was not scaled to values similar to hertz because of the understanding that rescaling had the potential to “undo some of the work done by normalization in the first place” (Wong, 2015, p. 86).
Figure 3.2 demonstrates the outcome of Lobanov normalization. The figure plots the data ellipse and means of four vowel classes (FLEECE, GOOSE, TRAP, LOT)32 of two speakers, Alan and Andrea, under the normalized and non-normalized conditions.
32 These four vowel classes were chosen because of their position as the four points delimiting the vowel space. Wong (2015) includes THOUGHT in a similar visualization, but due to the merging of the LOT and THOUGHT vowels in the speakers at hand, including the fifth vowel was deemed unnecessary. 32
Figure 3.2: Plots of non-normalized and Lobanov normalized vowel formant data for two speakers, Alan and Andrea.
The vowel plots at the top show the non-normalized values for Alan and Andrea side-by-side. Visually, Alan’s vowel plot is far more compressed than Andrea’s. The figure reveals lower F2 and F1 frequencies for Alan than for Andrea, which illustrates markedly disparate vowel plots. The vowel plots at the bottom show the normalized values for Alan and Andrea which are now approaching comparable size, and the relative position of vowel classes is preserved.
3.2.1 Social Effect
This chapter examines the social effects on the speech production of Taiwanese
Texan speakers. Each sociophonetic feature will be discussed in terms of four social
33 factors: year of birth, generation,33 sex,34 and region of Texas (Central, Dallas-Fort Worth
(DFW), Houston, Valley, and East). Figure 3.3 shows a map of Texas with the speaker regions highlighted. Figure 3.4 shows a zoomed in view of the clustered pins in the DFW region.
Figure 3.3: Map of Texas with regions of interest highlighted.
33 Second generation participants were born in the United States while 1.5 generation participants were born in Taiwan and immigrated to the United States as children (Wang & Collins, 2016). 34 For the purposes of phonetic analysis, the speaker that identified as gender-fluid permitted me to label them with the sex they were assigned at birth. 34
Figure 3.4: Zoomed in map of Dallas-Fort Worth region.
The dropped pins show the hometowns of the speakers. Regions are based on historical record combined with regional linguistic groupings developed by the Texas English Linguistics Lab (TELL). The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and Houston areas are considered separately from their general geographic areas (North Texas and East/Gulf
Texas, respectively) because of known differences between the language of urban and rural communities (i.e. Huang, Guo, Kasakoff, & Grieve, 2016; Brunstad, Røyneland, & Opsahl, 2010).
3.3 INDEX OF CONSERVATION
The section on conservation (as opposed to innovation) is framed through a discussion of four phonological features of Texas English. I focus attention on features that Bailey, Wikle, and Sand (1991) consider “innovative” in Texas English, while
35 keeping in mind that those innovations were published before most participants were born.35 The discussion begins with the merger of the short front vowels KIT and DRESS before nasals in section 3.3.1 (i.e. the PIN/PEN merger), continuing with the shortening of the diphthong PRICE in section 3.3.2, the fronting of the onset of MOUTH in section 3.3.3, and the merger of tense and lax vowels before /l/ in section 3.3.4. Section 3.3.5 provides a discussion of the results of the previous sections and quantifies the innovativeness of the Taiwanese Texan speakers compared to five linguistically conservative Anglo Texan speakers. The five Anglo Texan speakers were selected from the Texas English Linguistics Lab database based on my perception of them having traditionally Texan accents. All the Anglo Texan data included came from a reading passage each speaker recorded in
1987.36 Rhonda (born in 1910), John (1944), Charles (1946), Barbara (1955), and Kathleen (1967) are all from Central Texas. In any figures, their names are appended with “TX” (i.e. RhondaTX, JohnTX) for ease of pointing out.
Texas, like many other areas of the country known for distinctive regional accents, is undergoing dialect leveling, where traditional vowel forms (whether socially or locally marked) are replaced, reduced, or even “eradicat[ed]...in conditions of social or geographical mobility and resultant dialect contact” (Milroy & Llamas, 2013). Urban centers are particularly at risk for dialect leveling, with the influx of non-Southerners, but they are not alone in their leveling.
35 My personal dialectological impression of these features is that they are very conservative and old-timey Texan, i.e. the opposite of innovative. 36 It is important to note the different speaking contexts between the Taiwanese Texans (interview conversation) and the Anglo Texans (reading passage). Reading passage recordings are not as natural as spontaneous speech, so the Anglo Texan accents may be less prominent than they would be in regular conversation. However, for the purposes of this section, the reading passages are sufficient. 36 In their study on cross-generational vowel change, Jacewicz, Fox, and Salmons
(2011) found that leveling effects were spreading from urban centers to rural areas of western North Carolina, including the monophthongization of /aɪ/ which will be discussed in section 3.3.2. In Maryland, Bowie (2000) discovered spreading of pre-nasal
KIT and DRESS, increasing the differentiation between the realizations of the vowels which were previously merged (see section 3.3.1). In Kentucky, Irons (2007) documented the loss of the up-gliding of the THOUGHT vowel which was a major contributor to the
LOT/THOUGHT merger (see section 3.4.2). Younger generations are shifting away from the traditional Southern vowel forms of their progenitors. In Texan metropolitan areas, Thomas (1997) discovered that features such as lowering of the nucleus of /eɪ/ and glide weakening of /aɪ/ (see section 3.3.2) were “vanishing among the youngest generation of natives...even though they were still flourishing in other parts of the state” (Thomas, 2020). It is expected that, given the relatively narrow age-range of the Taiwanese Texan speakers, it is unlikely that their language retains conservative Texan features from yesteryear. The speakers are young and mostly from regions known for innovation (Bailey et al., 1991). The following subsections will serve to compare the Taiwanese
Texan speakers to older Texans, highlighting the innovative nature of the speech of the younger cohort.
3.3.1 PIN/PEN Merger
The merging of KIT and DRESS preceding nasal consonants ([m], [n], and [ŋ]) is a feature of Texan English (as well as Southern English in general; Labov et al., 2006) where the previously distinct vowels KIT, /ɪ/, and DRESS, /ɛ/, are no longer perceived as different and have collapsed into one vowel category. The convening, or merging, of the
37 two vowels in the front of the vowel space is often called the PIN/PEN merger (after the now homophonous minimal pair). Although at this point a long-time feature of Texan English, the merger is “increasingly losing ground in large metropolitan centers of the South” (Koops, Gentry, & Pantos, 2008, p. 91), in other words, unmerging, or becoming distinct once again. Koops et al. found a clear age effect on their work on the merger in Houston, Texas, with older Texans almost categorically merging while younger Texans categorically did not show the merger. Their data found that the unmerging was largely carried by young females.
It is expected that the Taiwanese Texans do retain the PIN/PEN merger, with female speakers perhaps leading the charge. Figure 3.5 shows data ellipses of KIT and
DRESS preceding nasals (which I will call PIN and PEN) for Taiwanese and Anglo Texans divided by sex.
38
Figure 3.5: Ellipses visualizing PIN and PEN vowels of Anglo and Taiwanese Americans in the vowel space by sex.
Visually, it is clear that the Anglo Texans overlap the PIN and PEN significantly. The Taiwanese Texans show some overlap, but nowhere near that of the Anglo Texans.
In order to quantify the merger and measure the amount of overlap between PIN and PEN,
Pillai scores were derived from MANOVAs fit to each speaker’s PIN and PEN tokens (Hall-Lew, 2010; Nycz & Hall-Lew, 2013). The Pillai score distribution is shown in Figure 3.6.
39
Figure 3.6: Pillai scores for PIN/PEN merger in Anglo and Taiwanese Texans.
Pillai scores can range from 0-1 (complete overlap to complete separation), with lower values closer to zero indicating more overlap, and higher values closer to one indicating more separation. The five Anglo speakers have the five lowest Pillai scores, meaning the most merged PIN and PEN. Judging by both Figures 3.5 and 3.6, the Anglo speakers categorically produce merged PIN/PEN. Alan, Sam, and Karen produce the most merged PIN/PEN of the Taiwanese Texans, but it is clear that they do not categorically produce the merger. The older (and Anglo) Texans produce the merger while the younger (and Taiwanese) Texans do not. Although Koops et al. (2008) found that younger female
40 Texans led the charge in unmerging, there was no statistical significance regarding sex in the Taiwanese Texans.
3.3.2 Monophthongization of /aɪ/
The monophthongization of /aɪ/ (PRICE) is a linguistic feature commonly associated with the Southern regions of the United States (Wells, 1982; Thomas, 2001;
Baranowski, 2008), and in fact, Labov et al. (2006) found that the PIN/PEN merger generally co-occurs in areas characterized by /aɪ/-monophthongization. In /aɪ/- monophthongization, the diphthong /aɪ/ (ah + ee) becomes monophthongized (ah) when the gliding second half of the vowel weakens or drops off entirely. While monophthongization of /aɪ/ has occurred in South since the 19th century (Bailey &
Tillery, 1996), innovations in vowel context continued throughout the 20th century. Bailey et al. (1991) found evidence of an innovative (at the time) form of glide-shortened
(i.e. monophthongal) PRICE before voiceless obstruents in their Texan speakers.
While /aɪ/-monophthongization continues to be a distinguishing feature of Southern American English (and the continued subject of modern texts, e.g. Fridland, 2003 on Memphis, TN; Reed, 2016 on Appalachian English), and even at one time considered “a pervasive and salient pronunciation feature in the Lone Star State”
(Underwood, 1988, p. 411), recent work on Texas English has suggested that younger Texans have shifted toward the diphthongal realization of /aɪ/ in a “typical pattern of a conservative dialect feature being displaced over a time span of about 60 years” (Jung,
2011, p. 77). It is expected that the Taiwanese Texans will pattern similarly to the young adults in Jung’s (2011) study. Figure 3.7 shows data ellipses of PRICE at 20% and 80% for
Taiwanese and Anglo Texans.
41
Figure 3.7: Data ellipses of normalized PRICE on the vowel space for Taiwanese Texans and Anglo Texans.
In order to compare the monophthongal and diphthongal instantiations of PRICE, the vowels were measured at the 20% and 80% points (the nucleus and offglide of the diphthong, respectively). To measure the offglide, the first and second formant measurements at the 80% point were subtracted from the formant measurements at the
20% point and the Euclidean distance37 between the two points was determined. Figure
37 Also referred to as Cartesian distance. The Euclidean distance calculates distance between two points on a plane using the Pythagorean theorem. In this case, it takes the coordinates of the non-nasal F2 as x1, non- nasal F1 as x2, nasal F2 as y1, and nasal F1 as y2. Plugged into the Pythagorean theorem, the formula is: √((x1-x2)2 +(y1-y2)2). 42 3.8 shows the Euclidean distance between the nucleus and offglide of PRICE for
Taiwanese and Anglo Texan speakers.
Figure 3.8: Euclidean distance between nucleus and offglide of PRICE diphthong in Taiwanese Texans and Anglo Texans.
The five Anglo Texan speakers have the smallest Euclidean distance between nucleus and offglide, meaning that their PRICE vowel changes very little from onset to offset, i.e. is a monophthong. Interestingly enough, Sam, who also had one of the most overlapped PIN/PEN mergers shows clear evidence of monophthongal /aɪ/. Sam, and at some level Joseph, aside, the older (and Anglo) Texans produce the monophthongal /aɪ/ while the younger (and Taiwanese) Texans do not. Although Koops et al. (2008) found that younger female Texans led the charge in unmerging, there was no 43 statistical significance regarding sex in the Taiwanese Texans. With the exception of age grouping (which in this case is racial as well), there are no significant social implications of diphthongal /aɪ/ within the speech of the Texans here.
3.3.3 Fronting of MOUTH Onset
There are many dimensions of research concerning the MOUTH vowel. Canadian Raising (Dailey-O’Cain, 1997), for example, examines the height of the vowel, or the measure of the second formant (F2) of the vowel, where the nucleus of the onset /a/ becomes closer to /ʌ/. This raising is often exaggeratedly stereotyped in the United States, attempting to imitate a Canadian accent by replacing about with aboot. There is even evidence of fronting, or the measure of the first formant (F1) of the vowel, of
MOUTH in conjunction with raising, where there is a shift from a low-back onset to a mid- back onset of the vowel (Hung, Davison, & Chambers, 1993). Throughout the South, the glide of the diphthong has been observed to undergo raising or lowering depending on context (Thomas, 2001). However, the feature indicative of Texas English, and indeed considered an “essential part[ ] of the vowel system” (Bailey & Tillery, 1996, p. 312) is the fronting of the onset of the diphthong /aʊ/, or MOUTH.
The MOUTH onset fronting appeared in Texas as early as the turn of the 19th century (Thomas & Bailey, 1993), and Bailey and Tillery (1996) found speakers born in 1976 (only four years senior the oldest Taiwanese Texan speaker) categorically participating in the onset fronting. Unlike the PIN/PEN merger and PRICE monophthongization, which both frankly sound old-timey to me, MOUTH onset fronting is perceptually more innovative. As such, it is expected that Taiwanese Texan speakers will continue to front their MOUTH onsets. Figure 3.9 shows the MOUTH vowel at 20% and
80% (onset and glide) for Taiwanese and Anglo Texans.
44
Figure 3.9: MOUTH at 20% and 80% for Taiwanese Texan and Anglo Texan speakers.
Examining Figure 3.9, it becomes clear that John is the only speaker who does not produce a fully fronted onset of MOUTH. In order to both quantify and more easily visualize the data, the distance between MOUTH at 20% and at 80% is seen in Figure 3.10.
45
Figure 3.10: F2 delta of MOUTH at 20% and 80% in Taiwanese Texans and Anglo Texans.
Again, John is the only speaker with a negative value, indicating that his production of MOUTH is further back at onset than at glide, whereas the rest of the speakers are more front at onset than at glide. It is important to note that more fronted does not necessarily indicate more innovative. Simply being fronted indicates innovation
(in 1991, at least). Based on the categorical fronting of MOUTH in both Taiwanese Texans and Anglo Texans (John, aside), it is likely that the feature is a fully completed change
(i.e. no longer innovative, but at the same time, not a conservative measure).
Additionally, the speakers are not invoking MOUTH onset fronting in any socially significant manner.
46 3.3.4 Tense/Lax Merger Preceding /l/
The last feature of conservative Texas English of interest is the merging of tense and lax vowels preceding /l/. Bailey et al. (1991) discussed three tense/lax vowel pairs: /ɪ/ and /i/, /e/ and /ɛ/, and /ʊ/ and /u/. In this section, I discuss the first (KIT/DRESS) and third
(FOOT/GOOSE) mergers. Labov et al. (2006) found that there are different distributions across the country for the mergers of KIT/DRESS and FOOT/GOOSE, with speakers possessing either both mergers or just the KIT/DRESS merger in Texas, but not just the
FOOT/GOOSE merger.
In the data, there are not many tokens of FOOT preceding /l/ (n = 35 in the Taiwanese Texan interviews, and n = 0 in the Anglo Texan reading passages). However, I know from non-interview conversations with Sam and Sarah, for example, that they do indeed pronounce pull (FOOT) and pool (GOOSE) homophonically, so some Taiwanese
Texans do produce that merger. As an exploratory view, Figure 3.11 shows FOOT and
GOOSE preceding /l/ in the Taiwanese Texans whose interviews contained tokens of FOOT.
47
Figure 3.11: FOOT and GOOSE preceding /l/ in Taiwanese Texan speakers.
From a purely visual standpoint,38 it appears that a few of the speakers do indeed merge FOOT and GOOSE. Alan, Andrew, Michelle, and Tina (the speakers with more than two tokens of FOOT) all show evidence of majority overlap in their pre-/l/ tokens of FOOT and GOOSE. If more tokens can be elicited, such as via a reading passage, examining this merger more concretely is a potential avenue for future research.
Turning next to the KIT/FLEECE merger, Figure 3.12 shows the data ellipses for
KIT and FLEECE preceding /l/ in both Taiwanese and Anglo Texan speakers.
38 There are not enough tokens to create data ellipses to measure the overlap via Pillai score. 48
Figure 3.12: Data ellipses of overlap of KIT and FLEECE preceding /l/ in Taiwanese Texans and Anglo Texans.
It becomes clear that there is a range of merging (or non-merging) in the speakers.
Some speakers do in fact merge KIT and FLEECE preceding /l/ categorically (such as
Kathleen), but others have a clear separation (such as Vivian). In order to quantify the merger and measure the amount of overlap between KIT and FLEECE, Pillai scores were derived from MANOVAs fit to each speaker’s KIT and FLEECE tokens preceding /l/ (Hall- Lew, 2010; Nycz & Hall-Lew, 2013). The Pillai score distribution is shown in Figure
3.13.
49
Figure 3.13: Pillai score of tense/lax merger of PILL/PEEL in Taiwanese Texans and Anglo Texans.
While Kathleen clearly merges the two vowel classes, there is a wide distribution of level of merger/non-merger in the remaining speakers. As far as statistical significance goes, the speakers are not invoking the tense/lax merger in any socially significant manner. Because the Anglo Texans produce the merger (or don’t producer it) at such varying levels both within their group and within the speech samples of the entire study as a whole (e.g. Kathleen is most merged and Charles is least merged), this may affect the strength of the Index of Conservation as a clear picture of who is most conservative in their speech. However, the Index still serves as a general comparative baseline between the Taiwanese Texans and the Anglo Texans.
50 3.3.5 Discussion
In order the quantify the conservativeness of my speakers relative to each other,39
I scaled the results of PIN/PEN merger, PRICE diphthong nucleus-glide, and KIT/FLEECE preceding /l/ merger40 each from 0-1 and added them together. The sums are shown in
Figure 3.14.
Figure 3.14: Index of Conservation for Taiwanese Texan and Anglo Texan speakers.
The figure serves a purpose of illuminating the relative lack of retention of Texan features from yesteryear. The Anglo Texans produce the most conservative vowels, as
39 The index is exclusively relative to the speakers included because the values are scaled on their vowel productions. 40 The fronting of MOUTH onset was not included because all speakers (minus John) participated in it such that scaling the results from 0 to 1 to add to the Index of Conservation would be misleading. 51 expected. As observed in the previous sections, there are still some hold-outs from previously “innovative” features of Texas English (e.g. Sam’s short PRICE glide), but they are few and far between in the relatively young group of Taiwanese Texans that make this data set. The speech content of Taiwanese Texan speakers will be examined further in Chapter 4 to determine how their speech production may contribute to or even index facets of their identities.
3.4 INDEX OF INNOVATION
The section on innovation is framed through a discussion of four vowel classes (or vowel class groupings) that contribute to the ongoing Third Dialect Shift. The discussion follows the vowel space clockwise from the high back down, forward, and up to the high front: section 3.4.1 covers GOOSE fronting, 3.4.2 covers the low back merger of LOT and THOUGHT, 3.4.3 covers TRAP in two veins, and 3.4.4 covers the backing of the short front vowels KIT and DRESS. Section 3.4.5 discusses and quantifies the Third Dialect
Shift in the Taiwanese Texan speakers.
3.4.1 The GOOSE Vowel
The GOOSE vowel is articulated from the high-back quadrant of the vowel space.
Although GOOSE is a back-upgliding vowel, recent work on phonetics has revealed GOOSE fronting in many varieties of North American English (Labov et al., 2006; Schneider, Burridge, Kortmann, Mesthrie, & Upton (Eds.), 2004; Fridland, 2008, on Nevada; Wong, 2015, on New York; Hall-Lew, 2011, on California; Baranowski, 2008, on South
Carolina).
Studies on the GOOSE vowel that have examined racial groups in their production of the vowel (e.g. Fridland & Bartlett, 2006; Nguyen & Anderson, 2006; Durian,
52 Dodsworth, & Schumacher, 2010) have generally shown that African American and
Latino speakers produce fronted GOOSE, but not to the extent that Anglo Americans do, and particularly not in contexts with phonological inhibitors (i.e. preceding a liquid as in school, or adjacent to a glide as in Houston). Asian Americans, however, tend to produce fronted GOOSE similarly to the Anglo Americans in their region (Hall-Lew, 2011; Kaiser, 2011).
Due to the pervasiveness of GOOSE fronting across region and race, some have argued that the shift is purely linguistically motivated or lacking in local social motivation (Haddican, Foulkes, Hughes, & Richards, 2013; Fridland, 2008). However, given the social indexicality of both GOOSE fronting in some Californian linguistic personae, though nearing completion (Podesva, 2011; Bucholtz, Bermudez, Edwards,
Fung, & Vargas, 2008), and of back vowel backing in varieties of Asian American speech (Bauman, 2016, on GOAT production; Chun, 2004, on mock Asian English), it is important to consider whether any social meaning can be indexed through GOOSE production in the previously unstudied Taiwanese Texan population. By examining how they produce the GOOSE vowel, judgment can be made about Taiwanese Texans’ level of linguistic assimilation toward mainstream norms.
Although GOOSE fronting is now considered supra-regional due to its widespread nature, variation has been observed within the fronting itself, and as such may still “function as a resource for some speakers to index locally emergent personae and identities” (Wong, 2015, p. 39). Following the paradigm set forth by Labov, Yaeger, and
Steiner (1972), most studies on GOOSE fronting in North American English (including the ones mentioned previously) have focused on F2 at a single point: the nucleus of the vowel. However, as early as 2001, Erik Thomas championed the importance of examining a vowel throughout its trajectory, i.e. looking at more than just the midpoint. 53 Recent research on Southern Englishes has shown that examining the vowel inherent spectral change both “provide[s] a more accurate depiction of the F1/F2 vowel space than single points can” (Thomas, 2020, p. 531; see also Fox & Jacewicz, 2017) and showcases nuance between different realizations of vowel features (e.g. Koops, 2010, on GOOSE in
Mainstream versus Southern American English; Farrington, Kendall, & Fridland, 2018, on trajectory length between Southerners and Westerners).
In the case of Texan speakers, GOOSE fronting is not “monolithic” (Koops, 2010).
Examining the trajectory of GOOSE can determine whether the GOOSE fronting of each speaker is a feature of Texas English (TxE) or of Mainstream American English (MAE). Figures 3.15 and 3.16, taken from Koops (2010), illustrates the difference in trajectory between non-Southern and Southern instances of GOOSE.
Figure 3.15: Utterance-final do, 19-year-old female Houston Anglo speaker (Koops, 2010, p. 115).
In TxE, the F2 at onset of the vowel and offset are roughly the same (Figure 3.15), whereas in MAE, the F2 peaks at the onset and backs significantly toward the offset (Figure 3.16).
54
Figure 3.16: Utterance-final do, 45-year-old male Houston Anglo speaker (Koops, 2010, p. 116).
In order to avoid effect by the fronting inhibition certain phonetic environments are known to cause (Thomas, 2011), all cases of vowel tokens with adjacent glides (/j/ as in infuse or Houston and /w/ as in womb), following liquids (/l/ as in school and /r/ as in poor), or following nasals (/n/ as in junior, /m/ as in room) were removed. (Examples taken from removed tokens.) This resulted in a dataset of 2021 tokens of GOOSE.
To measure the vowel trajectory, I took the difference between the duration41 of normalized F2 at 20% and 80%, or F2(20%) - F2(80%), which is visualized in Figure 3.17.
41 Recent research on Southern vowel duration variation (e.g. Clopper, Pisoni, & de Jong, 2005; Fox & Jacewicz, 2009, 2017) suggests vowel duration as a new avenue of sociolinguistic investigation. This may be of particular interest in future research when looking at vowel duration and the relationship it has with both spectral trajectory and change over time (Fridland, Kendall, & Farrington, 2014). 55
Figure 3.17: F2(20%) - F2(80%) GOOSE for each Taiwanese Texan speaker.
Near-zero F2 delta indicates a TxE GOOSE, whereas a greater F2 delta indicates the more innovative MAE GOOSE. As the figure illustrates, all the speakers are fronting at some level. The two rightmost speakers, Peter and Evelyn, produce more a conservative realization of the GOOSE vowel than the remaining 28 speakers who lean toward the innovative MAE GOOSE.
Previous research on GOOSE fronting has suggested phonological effects based on preceding segments, with GOOSE following coronals tending to have higher F2 than any other phonological environment (e.g. Wong, 2015; Jansen, 2010; Fridland & Bartlett, 2006). This is caused by a coarticulation effect based on tongue positioning during the consonant carrying over to and through the articulation of the vowel. The speakers here
56 pattern as expected, with GOOSE frontedness variation showing significant phonological effects from preceding segment effects (p < 2.2e-16), paralleling the findings on effect of place of articulation in the literature.
The focus of the study at hand, however, is on social effects on GOOSE fronting variation. Figure 3.18 illustrates the social effects of year of birth, generation, sex, and region of Texas.
Figure 3.18: Social effects on GOOSE fronting in Taiwanese Texans.
The top left graph shows F2(20%) - F2(80%) by year of birth. The solid line is the linear regression line, and the grey area is the 95% confidence level interval. The downward slope might suggest that younger speakers are more likely to produce TxE
57 GOOSE, however, given the compressed range of years of birth, the downward trajectory is not statistically significant. The top right graph shows F2(20%) - F2(80%) by generation. Those of the 1.5 generation statistically are no more likely to front in the MAE pattern than those of the second generation.
The bottom left graph shows F2(20%) - F2(80%) by sex. While sex is not a statistically significant predictor of fronting, there is a slight trend in females to produce a higher F2(20%) - F2(80%) (i.e. leaning toward MAE). This indicates that MAE GOOSE is a change in progress as it is led by the women as innovators of linguistic change (Labov, 1990; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1999, 2013). The bottom right graph shows F2(20%) - F2(80%) by region of Texas. While Central Texas appears to show a lower F2(20%) - F2(80%), that is likely due to the effect of both Peter and Evelyn pulling down the averages. As such, the region of Texas bears little statistical significance on GOOSE fronting. It becomes clear that while the speakers do vary in their production of GOOSE fronting, they are not invoking it a socially significant way.
GOOSE fronting often occurs in tandem with the fronting of another backed vowel:
GOAT. In the case of GOAT fronting, it is fair to assume parallel GOOSE fronting, but the reverse is not necessarily the case (Hall-Lew, 2005). Further assessment of the data set might consider the extent of GOAT fronting in conjunction with GOOSE fronting and the social meanings that the former may convey for Taiwanese Texans.
3.4.2 Low Back Merger
In many varieties of North American English, the previously distinct vowels LOT,
/ɒ/, and THOUGHT, /ɔ/, are no longer perceived as different and have collapsed into one vowel category. The convening, or merging, of the two vowels in the low back of the vowel space is eponymously called the Low Back Merger, or the cot/caught merger (after
58 the now defunct minimal pair). Labov et al. (2006) suggested that the merger has been completed in the Western states and Canada, while other regions continue with the variation change in progress (or retain the separate, distinctive vowel classes). However, in the years since, many dialectology studies have shown clear merging of LOT and
THOUGHT throughout North America (i.e. Gordon, 2006, on the Midlands; Dubois &
Horvath, 2004, on Cajun English; Lee, 2018, on Washington D.C.).42
As with the GOOSE vowel, most ethnolinguistic studies of the low back merger overlooked Asian Americans, instead focusing on other minority populations. However, in a 2010 dissertation on Asian Americans in San Francisco, Lauren Hall-Lew found no significant correlation between the merger and ethnicity, and that the production of the low back vowels suggested “a general community-wide shift towards merger in apparent time” (p. 157). Hall-Lew (2010) outlines several dimensions of ethnic differences in the low back merger: merger versus distinction, location in vowel space (F1 and F2 dimensions), roundedness, and glide length. Following Hall-Lew’s model, the present discussion will focus on the vowel space dimension. The only other prominent study of the low back vowels in Asian Americans was conducted in New York City, where the vowel classes are mostly distinct (Wong, 2012).
It is expected that the Taiwanese Texan speakers will produce merged LOT-
THOUGHT vowels to the same extent Anglo Americans did in Bernstein (1993) and Bailey et al.’s (1991) studies of phonological variation in Texas, that is categorically.43 Figure
3.19 shows the data ellipses of LOT and THOUGHT for each speaker in their respective vowel spaces.
42 For reference, the low back merger is complete in my own dialect to the point where I cannot reliably classify a token as either of the LOT or THOUGHT vowel class. Fortunately, the transcription methods, as outlined in Section 2.5, automatically categorize the tokens. 43 The merger of LOT and THOUGHT in Anglo Texans has been discussed in the literature as early as 1961 (Kurath & McDavid, 1961). 59
Figure 3.19: Data ellipses of normalized LOT and THOUGHT plotted on the vowel space for each Taiwanese Texan.
As anticipated, the figure illustrates the clear overlap and merging of the two vowels. In order to quantify the merger, Pillai scores were derived from MANOVAs fit to each speaker’s LOT and THOUGHT tokens (Hall-Lew, 2010; Nycz & Hall-Lew, 2013). The Pillai score distribution is shown in Figure 3.20. Pillai scores can range from 0-1 (complete overlap to complete separation), with lower values closer to zero indicating more overlap, and higher values closer to one indicating more separation.
60
Figure 3.20: Pillai scores for Low Back Merger for each Taiwanese Texan speaker.
Even Andrea’s comparably high Pillai score indicates significant overlap. In fact, the LOT and THOUGHT vowels overlap at such a high percentage for the speakers that scaling the results from 0 to 1 to add to the Index of Innovation would be misleading. All speakers pattern as expected and exhibit production of the Low Back Merger which is significant because of the relationship between the merger, TRAP retraction, and the Third Dialect Shift, discussed in Sections 3.4.3 and 3.4.4, respectively.
3.4.3 The TRAP Vowel
In diagrams of the vowel space, the TRAP vowel typically resides in the low front quadrant and is categorized as a low, front, short vowel (Labov et al., 2006). Along with the low back merger, the positioning and movement of TRAP is considered one of the 61 pivotal points that subsequent vowel shifts rely on. Bigham (2010) elucidates the connection:
In [Northern Cities Shift]-like and Southern Shift-like variation, TRAP raises and fronts from an open/open-mid position to a mid/close-mid position, developing an [ɛ]-like quality; in the Canadian Shift...TRAP lowers and backs to an [ɑ]-like quality while in the Northern California Vowel Shift (Eckert, 2004), TRAP raises before nasals but is otherwise retracted. In typical Midland dialects, TRAP raises allophonically before nasals but not elsewhere and is otherwise unshifted. Additionally, the TRAP vowel is known as a vowel showing a great deal of internal variation, with TRAP in many dialects exhibiting two phonologically conditioned variants, such as raising before nasals, voiceless fricatives, and sometimes before /d/ (Labov, 2001, Beddor, 1993). (p. 23)
In this section, I will examine TRAP through two lenses: first, with a view to the California Vowel Shift (Eckert, 2004), determining whether Taiwanese Texans raise
TRAP before nasals and otherwise retract, i.e. nasal splitting; and second, with a view to what Bigham (2010) calls the Canadian Shift (which I refer to as the Third Dialect Shift), determining whether the non-nasal-suffixed TRAP lowers and backs to an [ɑ]-like quality.
3.4.3a Nasal Split
Cardoso, Hall-Lew, Kementchedjhieva, and Purse (2016) found that Asian American speakers (in their case, Chinese American) have less of a nasal split than their Anglo American counterparts. Given that the speakers here are not being compared to
Anglo Americans, the question here is whether or not the Taiwanese Texans in fact show a split in the TRAP vowel in nasal and non-nasal contexts. If the Taiwanese Texans show clear fronting and raising of TRAP before nasals (i.e. in “band” or “lamb”) and retracting in other contexts (i.e. in “bat” or “gas”), then it can be established that they participate in the nasal split.
Figure 3.21 shows the vowel space for each speaker, illustrating TRAP in both pre- nasal conditions and pre-non-nasal conditions. 62
Figure 3.21: Average of normalized TRAP vowel in vowel space of each Taiwanese Texan divided by preceding nasal and preceding non-nasal conditions.
Each of the speakers both raise and front in a pre-nasal condition, relative to a non-nasal condition, except for Peter. A closer look at Peter’s vowel space is seen in Figure 3.22.
63
Figure 3.22: Data ellipses of normalized TRAP vowel in vowel space for one speaker, Peter.
Peter’s TRAP vowel preceding a nasal is raised higher than preceding a non-nasal, but unlike the other speakers, his TRAP preceding a nasal is not fronted. However, in measuring the nasal split, the feature concerns the height of the vowel, or the normalized F1. Peter is indeed participating in the nasal split. Next, I conducted two measures of the nasal split: by Pillai score (see 3.4.2 for more on determining Pillai score) and by Euclidean distance. The Pillai score measures the overlap in midpoint pre-nasal TRAP and pre-non-nasal Trap ellipses for each Taiwanese Texan speaker while the Euclidean distance measures the distance between the midpoint average pre-nasal TRAP and pre-oral TRAP for each Taiwanese Texan
64 speaker. In this case, the Pillai score functions as a preliminary measure to determine how distinct the two TRAP cases are. The Pillai scores are seen in Figure 3.23.
Figure 3.23: Pillai scores showing overlap of pre-nasal TRAP and pre-non-nasal TRAP in Taiwanese Texan speakers.
As discussed in section 3.4.2, Pillai scores can range from 0-1 (from complete overlap to complete separation), with the lower values closer to zero indicating more overlap, and the higher values closer to one indicating more separation. Here, Sam shows significant overlap in his pre-nasal TRAP and pre-non-nasal TRAP. The remaining speakers do show slight overlap, but there is a clear difference here between the two contexts of
TRAP, i.e. pre-nasal TRAP and pre-non-nasal TRAP are articulated in different spots.
65 To determine if there is any social effect on overlap between TRAP pre-nasal and
TRAP pre-oral, I graphed the distance by year of birth, generation, sex, and region, as seen in Figure 3.24.
Figure 3.24: Social effects on overlap between TRAP preceding nasal and preceding non- nasal in Taiwanese Texans.
Put simply, none of the demographic factors investigated here contributed to the overlap of pre-nasal TRAP and pre-non-nasal TRAP in a socially significant way. Moving on from overlap, I turned next to Euclidean distance, which is more mathematically appropriate to include in the Index Innovation. The Euclidean distances are illustrated in Figure 3.25.
66
Figure 3.25: Euclidean distance between TRAP in nasal and non-nasal conditions for Taiwanese Texan speakers.
The speakers to the right of the graph with larger Euclidean distances have more widely split TRAP vowels than those to the left. Eckert (2008) found that the speakers with the widest split44 between pre-nasal TRAP and pre-oral TRAP were girls with the most social capital. Here, the eleven widest splits belong to female speakers. Because the speakers do not form a community of practice, it is impossible to quantify their relative social capital, however, it becomes clear that sex may have a social effect in the case of the nasal split. To determine if there is any social effect on the Euclidean distance
44 Given Cardoso et al.’s (2016) findings, it is possible that those with wider splits are “less Asian” than those with narrow splits. However, it is outside the scope of this dissertation to quantify “Asian-ness.” 67 between TRAP pre-nasal and TRAP pre-oral, I graphed the distance by year of birth, generation, sex, and region as seen in Figure 3.26.
Figure 3.26: Social effects on Euclidean distance between TRAP preceding nasal and preceding non-nasal in Taiwanese Texans.
The top left graph shows Euclidean distance by year of birth. The solid line is the linear regression line, and the grey area is the 95% confidence level interval. As before given the compressed range of years of birth, the upward trajectory is not statistically significant, however, it does suggest that younger speakers are likely to have more split
TRAP than older speakers. The top right graph shows Euclidean distance by generation. Even with a low outlying point, those of the second generation are statistically likely to have a more widely split TRAP than 1.5 generation speakers (p = 0.0007). 68 The bottom left graph shows Euclidean distance by sex. Sex is a statistically significant predictor in this case, with a p-value of 0.0001. Female Taiwanese Texan speakers lead the trend in wider splits between pre-nasal and pre-non-nasal TRAP, suggesting that, like MAE GOOSE, the wide split is a change in progress as it is led by the women as innovators of linguistic change (Labov, 1990; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1999, 2013). The bottom right graph shows Euclidean distance by region of Texas, where there is no statistically significant difference between the levels. It appears that widely split TRAP is invoked in a socially significant way by female speakers and speakers of the second generation.
3.4.3b TRAP Retraction
Section 3.4.1 showed that all the Taiwanese Texan speakers produce fronted
GOOSE, though they showed variation in production between TxE GOOSE and MAE
GOOSE. At the same time that GOOSE has shifted forward toward the front of the vowel space, the low-front vowel TRAP has retracted toward the back of the mouth. The retraction is a function of taking over the recently vacated area that the low back merger created. Through the fronting of GOOSE and the retraction of TRAP, the vowel space, initially shown to be trapezoidal in shape in Figure 3.1, reflecting these innovative vowel changes becomes more triangular in shape. Boberg (2011) measured the change in vowel space shape with his Index of Phonetic Innovation (IPI). The IPI is difference between the mean TRAP and mean GOOSE of each speaker (i.e. TRAP - GOOSE). In this study, TRAP is measured at the nucleus per Boberg’s conventions and GOOSE is measured at the 20% point given that, per section 3.4.1, GOOSE at the nucleus is an unreliable measure of frontedness while GOOSE at 20% is reliably fronted in both TxE and MAE. Figure 3.27 shows the IPI for each Taiwanese Texan speaker.
69
Figure 3.27: Boberg’s Index of Phonetic Innovation (Normalized TRAP - GOOSE) for all Taiwanese Texan speakers.
Positive IPI values show that TRAP is still further front than GOOSE, indicating conservative trapezoidal vowel spaces. Negative IPI values show that GOOSE and TRAP have switched places, with GOOSE now further front than TRAP, indicating innovative triangular vowel spaces. According to Figure 3.27, Peter alone possesses the conservative trapezoidal vowel space.
Looking next to social effects, Figure 3.28 illustrates the effects of year of birth, generation, sex, and region of Texas on TRAP - GOOSE.
70
Figure 3.25: Social effects on TRAP - GOOSE in Taiwanese Texans.45
The top left graph shows TRAP - GOOSE by year of birth. The solid line is the linear regression line, and the grey area is the 95% confidence level interval. As with
GOOSE fronting, given the compressed range of years of birth, the very slight upward trajectory is not statistically significant. In fact, the slight upward slope appears to be pulled upward based on the outlying point, the only speaker with a positive TRAP - GOOSE value (Peter). The top right graph shows TRAP - GOOSE by generation. Those of the 1.5 generation are about equally as likely to have a triangular vowel space as those of the second generation.
45For each plot of social effects, the effects are sorted according to category on the x-axis by decreasing magnitude of y, so plot axis order may vary between vowel features (e.g. the GOOSE fronting sex plot showed F to the left and M to the right, while TRAP-GOOSE has the reverse). 71 The bottom left graph shows TRAP - GOOSE by sex. While sex is not a statistically significant predictor, there is a slight trend in males to produce a higher TRAP - GOOSE, which may be caused by Peter, the outlier. The bottom right graph shows TRAP - GOOSE by region of Texas, where again there is no statistically significant difference between the levels. While there is some level of variation between the speakers when it comes to Boberg’s Index of Phonetic Innovation, they are not invoking it in a socially significant way. As Figures 3.27 and 3.28 illustrate, all of the speakers, barring Peter, show evidence of the innovative triangular vowel space.
3.4.4 Low Back Merger Shift46
The Low Back Merger Shift (LBMS) has been called “one of the dominant sound changes in current North American English, affecting the speech of younger people across an increasingly large section of the continent” (Boberg, 2019b, p. 57) and is a non- categorical characteristic of the Third Dialect Shift. The LBMS concerns the three short front vowels in North American English, KIT, DRESS, and TRAP, and their backing and retracting movement from “[ɪ, ɛ, æ] to positions respectively closer to [ɛ, æ, a]” (Grama & Kennedy, 2019, p. 32). In other regions of the country, Asian Americans (specifically Chinese
Americans) have been observed to exhibit features of the LBMS. Cardoso et al. (2016) found that DRESS is lowering and retracting in apparent time in San Francisco Chinese Americans (though not in a statistically significant way by ethnicity between Chinese
Americans and Anglo Americans). In the Inland North, home to the Northern Cities Shift (NCS), there is evidence of the NCS retreating in favor of the LBMS in Chinese Americans (Zheng, 2018).
46 Sometimes called the Short Front Vowel Shift (Boberg 2019a). 72 In Texas, Thomas (2019) shows evidence of materialization of the LBMS in speakers born in the 1970s. Thomas (2019) suggests that the LBMS has “arisen independently among numerous people in multiple locations” (p. 184) and that due to that, social factors might not be the driving motivation for spread of phonetic changes.
The previous section established that the short front vowel TRAP is retracting in Taiwanese Texan speakers conceivably as a result of the vacancy in the vowel space left behind by the merging of LOT and THOUGHT. I say conceivably because Grama and
Kennedy (2019) found that the extent to which their speakers exhibited the Low Back Merger did not predict the extent to which speakers participated in aspects of the LBMS, i.e. one need not have fully merged LOT and THOUGHT vowels in order to participate in the LBMS, as it is instead the backing of LOT (toward THOUGHT) that motivates TRAP retraction (and in turn, the lowering and/or backing of KIT and DRESS). Thomas (2019) suggests that the LBMS might have occurred “just as readily” if THOUGHT had shifted away from LOT (p. 180).
As TRAP is retracting, two questions arise: are KIT and DRESS also lowering and/or backing in Taiwanese Texan speakers, showing participation in the LBMS?47 Is the
LBMS at all socially motivated?48
In order to quantitatively measure the shiftedness of the LBMS, I used Boberg’s (2019b) LBMS Index to create a measure to “register more general engagement in the
[LBMS]” (Boberg 2019a). The LBMS Index is the average of the Euclidean distances between FLEECE and KIT, DRESS, and TRAP per speaker. The variables included are: d for
47 As opposed to fronting and raising as seen in the Southern Vowel Shift (Fridland, 2012). 48 This question leads into a query for future research: is the backing of KIT and DRESS a parallel retraction alongside TRAP (e.g. Boberg, 2005), or is it a downward shift as a result of TRAP’s backing, i.e. a chain shift (e.g. Hall-Lew, 2004)? 73 Euclidean distance, v1 for FLEECE, and v2 for each of the short front vowels in turn. The formula for the LBMS Index can be seen in Figure 3.29, and a graph of the LBMS Index for Taiwanese Texans can be seen in Figure 3.30.
Figure 3.29: Formula for Low Back Merger Shift (from Boberg, 2019b, p. 63).
Figure 3.30: Low Back Merger Shift Index for Taiwanese Texans.
74 The greater the average distance is, the more advanced the speaker is in the
LBMS. Of the Taiwanese Texan speakers, Stephanie and Wendy are the most advanced in terms of the LBMS while Peter is the least advanced. Looking next to social effects, Figure 3.31 illustrates the effects of year of birth, generation, sex, and region of Texas on the LBMS Index.
Figure 3.31: Social effects on Low Back Merger Shift Index in Taiwanese Texans.
The top left graph shows the LBMS Index by year of birth. The solid line is the linear regression line, and the grey area is the 95% confidence level interval. As before, given the compressed range of years of birth, the downward trajectory is not statistically
75 significant. The top right graph shows the LBMS Index by generation, which is not statistically significant. The bottom left graph shows the LBMS Index by sex. Sex appears not to be a statistically significant predictor, though there is a slight trend in females to produce a higher the LBMS Index. The bottom right graph shows the LBMS Index by region of Texas, where again there is no statistically significant difference between the levels. While there is some level of variation between the speakers when it comes to the Low
Back Merger Shift, the Taiwanese Texans are not invoking it in a socially significant way.
3.4.5 Third Dialect Shift
The Third Dialect Shift, sometimes called the Canadian Vowel Shift or the Elsewhere Shift, is a chain vowel shift occurring throughout North America. This shift was first observed in Canadian English (Clarke, Elms, & Youssef, 1995), though acknowledged as not exclusive to Canada, and known to share the low back merger (see section 3.4.2) with the California Vowel Shift as an initiating condition. Together with features including back vowel fronting (see section 3.4.1) and the retraction of short front vowels (see sections 3.4.3 and 3.4.4), the Third Dialect Shift, the alleged “way of the future in North American varieties of English” (Thomas, 2019, p. 180), has slowly shifted the vowel spaces of speakers throughout North America in a counter-clockwise fashion.
Hoffman and Walker (2010) found that first generation Chinese-Canadians “showed no evidence of participation in any aspect of the [Canadian Vowel Shift]” (p.
53; namely the individual retraction of the short front vowels KIT, DRESS, and TRAP), but that younger generations are more inclined toward retraction in certain contexts,
76 patterning in a way “largely like their [Anglo]-Canadian cohorts in terms of linguistic conditioning” (p. 59). This suggests that if the Taiwanese Texan speakers, as 1.5- and second-generation Americans participate in the Third Dialect Shift, then Anglo Texans (which have yet to be examined) will likely follow the same linguistic patterning.
Having examined the vowel spaces of Taiwanese Texan speakers throughout this chapter, it has become clear that they in fact participate in the Third Dialect Shift.
Taiwanese Texans front GOOSE, merge LOT and THOUGHT, and retract KIT, DRESS, and
TRAP (which they also split categorically). The movement of the vowel space can be seen in Figure 3.32, with “+ns.” indicating TRAP/BATH in a pre-nasal context.
Figure 3.32: Changes occurring (or having occurred) in the vowel spaces of Taiwanese Texans.
77 In order to quantify the Third Dialect Shift in my speakers relative to each other,49
I scaled the results of F2(20%) - F2(80%) GOOSE, TRAP - GOOSE in reverse,50 and the Low
Back Merger Shift51 each from 0-1 and added them together. The sums are shown in Figure 3.33.
Figure 3.33: Index of Innovation for Taiwanese Texan speakers.
49 The index is exclusively relative to the speakers included because the values are scaled on their vowel productions. 50 The TRAP-GOOSE number was reversed (made negative) because higher values indicated more conservative realizations of features, whereas in the other two features, higher values indicated more innovative realizations of features. 51 The nasal split was not included as it is not a specific feature of the Third Dialect Shift. The Low Back Merger was not included, as explained earlier, because the LOT and THOUGHT vowels overlap at such a high percentage for the speakers that scaling the results from 0 to 1 to add to the Index of Innovation would be misleading. 78 The figure serves a purpose of illuminating who are most conservative and who are most innovative in their speech. Peter is the most conservative, receiving 0, 0, and -1 for his scores, resulting in a -1, unsurprising given his conservative vowel productions in each of the previous sections. Lisa is most innovative in her vowel production.
The Index of Innovation was examined for social effects, but year of birth, generation, and region of Texas had no social bearing. Female speakers were slightly more likely to have a higher index, i.e. be more innovative, but not to the point of statistical significance. Even with the outlying Peter removed, the Taiwanese Texans do not pattern innovatively in a socially significant way. The speech content of Taiwanese Texan speakers will be examined further in Chapter 4 to determine how their speech production may contribute to or even index facets of their identities.
3.5 CONCLUSIONS
This chapter provided an exploratory analysis of eight phonetic features that occur or have occurred in Texas English. The Index of Conservation shows that the Taiwanese Texan speakers, all relatively young, are not retaining the traditional Texan dialect features that the Anglo Texan speaker baseline had that Bailey et al. (1991) once described as innovative. Innovations that happen before your birth tend not to be perceived as particularly innovative to an age cohort. The Index of Innovation shows that, although most features are not indices of a particular social identity, speaker sex class did predict variation in Low Back Merger Shift production, with male speakers more shifted than female speakers. Outlying speakers, such as Peter, patterned uniquely, inviting discussion of idiolectal practices in discourse in Chapter 4. The most significant finding is that while Texas had previously yet been examined in terms of the Third Dialect Shift, it is now clear that most Taiwanese Texan speakers almost categorically adopted the
79 Third Dialect Shift. This encourages wider discourse on the Third Dialect Shift and its sub-features in Texas English for the understanding of sound change and chain shifts in the Southern United States both inside and outside of Asian American communities.
80 Chapter 4: Discourse on Identity
When I'm thinking back about [Taiwan], I think about big pots of noodles. Street markets, fluorescent lights everywhere...so many fluorescent lights. And I associate that really cold green blue light actually with family because we would all sit around and eat out of a hot pot or something with these ubiquitous tiny plastic stools with cartoon characters on them and ugly cotton shirts with bad printing on them. – Tina
This chapter provides a discourse analysis of the sociolinguistic interviews I conducted with Taiwanese Texan speakers. I present micro-analyses of selected passages of interest, examining how social identities are linguistically co-constructed through what the speakers say (as opposed to how they phonetically produce it, as in Chapter 3). This includes analysis of how speakers identify themselves as well as elements that may be below the level of conscious awareness. Essentially, what are the Taiwanese Texans saying, how are they saying it, and how does it show affiliation with a group or index identity?
Discourse is often broken down into two categories: ““little-d” discourse” and “Big ‘D’ Discourse” (Gee, 2015). Little-d discourse describes the language that people use amongst themselves, while Big ‘D’ Discourse covers a more sociological approach. Gee describes Big ‘D’ Discourse as capturing “the ways in which people enact and recognize socially and historically significant identities or ‘kinds of people’ through well- integrated combinations of language, actions, interactions, ...beliefs, and values” (Gee,
2015, p. 1). Here I focus on how the Taiwanese Texan speakers use language in their interactions with me to both align themselves with their embodied identities and distance themselves from other possible identities. The identities, then, emerge in the discourse (Bucholtz & Hall, 2010).
81 Here I consider Le Page and Tabouret-Keller’s Acts of Identity (1985) as a theoretical model through which to examine language production of the Taiwanese Texan speakers as related to identity, the central principle of which is that
the individual creates for himself the patterns of his linguistic behavior so as to resemble those of the groups with which from time to time he wishes to be identified or so as to be unlike those from whom he wishes to be distinguished (p. 181).
Though the Acts of Identity framework is not without weaknesses,52 the main focus on speaker identification is ideal for the Taiwanese Texans who have access to a variety of linguistic, ethnic, and national identities, much like the Caribbean populations on which the empirical work of the Acts of Identity was based. To extrapolate from Le Page and Tabouret-Keller’s theories in Acts of Identity
(1985), it is expected that a speaker will sound more Taiwanese when expressing a stance aligning with Taiwanese American identity, and more American when expressing an American (or Texan, specifically) identity. However, because, as established in previous chapters, there is not a list of strongly enregistered features belonging to Taiwanese American English, and because participants all have perfect command of the form of Mainstream US English spoken by the local majority, Acts of Identity might be linguistically coded not between Taiwanese and American styles, but instead between unmarked American English and a stylized version of American English where the stylistic practice (Eckert, 2012) reflects identity alignments through social meaning placed on variable features (e.g. Ochs, 1992; Podesva, 2007, Kiesling, 2009). In other words, the Taiwanese Texans may, in aligning with American identity, may produce features of another enregistered style.
52 See Rickford (2011) and Hinrichs (2006a, Chapter 5) for a robust discussion of the pros and cons of the Acts of Identity. 82 This chapter will combine a subjective/emic approach (from the perspective of the subject) and an objective/etic (from the perspective of the observer) approach (Hoffman & Walker, 2010) to understand the role of ethnicity and identity in linguistic variation. In other words, in this chapter I examine 1) the speakers’ production from an outside perspective as the interlocutor (i.e. I see what they say) as well as 2) what the speaker’s think about their own production (i.e. they say what they see about the way they say). The chapter begins with Section 4.1, which discusses cultural rejection and how anti-Asianness leads to hyper-whiteness. Section 4.2 investigates speakers of interest based on their scores on the Indices of Conservation and Innovation. Section 4.3 explores the speakers’ identities as Americans, Taiwanese Americans, and Texans based on content analysis of the interviews. Section 4.4 discusses meta-commentary about language and sounding white or Asian. Section 4.5 briefly identifies additional themes of interest that emerged from the sociolinguistic interviews, and Section 4.6 concludes the chapter.
4.1 CULTURAL REJECTION
In variationist studies (e.g. Guo, Zhou, & Chow, 2012; Zhang, 2005; Becker, 2014), we often talk about what people do to mark themselves as members of a community, the notion of an alignment between speaker and identity concept via language, as Acts of Identity postulates i.e. X feature indexes Y. But if someone is ashamed of an identity, or ashamed to be associated with a certain community, what features are they specifically avoiding? If a population is known to use a particular feature, do the speakers who are ashamed of their membership in a community hesitate to use those indexical markings in order to prevent association with the stigmatized group?
This is not linguistic insecurity, but instead linguistic avoidance. One issue arises: how
83 can one conduct a production study of something that isn’t there? In the case of
Taiwanese Texans where there have not been identified features that are enregistered as an ethnolinguistic repertoire, what do speakers do to distance themselves from the associations they want to avoid? In examining discourse, the speakers can simply tell their stories. Janet was the only person who, when speaking about shame, observed it in other peers instead of in herself. I include her meta-analysis of herself here (bolded for emphasis):
I think...my own, like, perspective on being Asian American is very unique… Lately I realized that a lot of my Asian American peers kind of had identity issues, and that they were discriminated against, and they eventually saw being Asian American as something shameful. And maybe for a while they, you know, wanted to assimilate, or they wanted to be more blend[ed] in and be more Caucasian so that they wouldn't be discriminated against or made fun of. But I've always [had] the complete opposite experience, that I've always been really proud to be Taiwanese American specifically and I think when I was in this [exclusively white] environment and I realized I couldn't really express that then, um, it made me want to be even less like the people around me. Made me want to, like, individualize myself even more because I didn't want to lose that part of myself if I integrated. The identity issues mentioned by Janet stem from the liminal place Asian Americans hold between their heritage country and the United States. They are
Americans, but at the same time, they’ve been conditioned to associate Americanness with whiteness, which self-excludes them from the American narrative. Assimilating to white cultural norms is the closest to whiteness that a racialized minority can attain. The concept and feeling of liminality can translate into language as well, particularly related to the “fluidity and renegotiation of identities” (Rampton, 2014, p. 18); Taiwanese Texans find themselves in a place of in-betweenness that allows for the development of a “dynamic construction of identity” (Piazza, 2019, p. 4), each of their language
84 interactions creating possibilities for “minor adventures into liminality and the reworkings of identity that liminality permits (Rampton, 2014, p. 18). Unlike Janet, who embraced her cultural heritage from a young age, many of the Taiwanese Texans did not feel a close kinship with their heritage growing up (and even into young adulthood), and instead felt shame. Many perceived themselves as not equal to their white peers, as lesser than the unattainable white majority they were surrounded by. They were marked as different from their peers, from the food they ate to the way they looked, which caused pain and emotional baggage that is still being dealt with as adults. In the following subsections, I unpack how cultural rejection led some Taiwanese Texans to embrace and assimilate toward white American culture.
4.1.1 I’m Asian and They’re White
In assimilating toward white American culture, the Taiwanese Texans not only adopt cultural practices, but also enregistered linguistic features. By exploring the social meaning of the adopted features, we stand to understand how language contributes to the construction of identity. In the subsequent examples, I use the following common transcription conventions: • ↑ to indicate rise in intonation • ~bold~ to indicate creaky voice (adopted from Mendoza-Denton, 2011;
Slobe, 2018) • ((double parentheses)) to provide transcriber comments on additional details
• (0.5) to indicate pauses by length in seconds
85 • lengthening of a lo:::ng sound is indicated by colons
In Example 4.1, Lisa, a second-generation Taiwanese Texan from the Dallas-Fort Worth region of Texas (henceforth DFW), describes her childhood experience with the “popular kids” at her church.
1 LISA: ho::nestly like I felt like 2 oh I’m Asian and they’re like white ((italicized stylistic whisper)) 3 and so I ca::n’t talk to them::: and like 4 I don’t know if it was just because of the race↑ barrier↑ ((intonation change from high to low before raising on race and barrier)) 5 but I just felt like I wasn’t 6 like good enough↑ to like talk to them↑
Example 4.1: Race barrier (interview with Lisa).
In this example, a number of features of interest stand out: regular usage of the discourse marker “like,” pitch dynamism (line 4 in particular), and uptalk. Individually, the three features are simply stylistic choices likely below the level of Lisa’s conscious awareness. However, these three features are enregistered features of white girl speech (Eckert, 2002), and together, specifically in the context of discussing whiteness and Asianness, they can be read as constructing whiteness.
The stereotypical white girl, often associated with the California Valley Girl persona of the 1980s and 1990s who was mistakenly blamed for the introduction of the discourse marker “like” into common usage (D’Arcy, 2007), is a common media trope. Her speech practices are at the confluence of stylistic variation and social perception. Her social capital comes from the way she navigates social media, the way she dresses, her social practices. There is no single variable or feature that indexes white girlhood, but it is instead formed of various “linguistic, embodied, and material resources” (Slobe, 2018) that together become socially meaningful. A series of features have become linked, or 86 enregistered (Agha, 2003), with an ideological scheme of white girlhood in the United
States. Linguistic features associated with the white girl stereotype include uptalk, creaky voice (Yuasa, 2010), backed TRAP vowel and fronted GOOSE vowel (both features of the California Vowel Shift discussed in Chapter 3), pitch dynamism, tag questions, regular usage of the discourse marker “like,” etc. (Slobe, 2018). These features are taken from a cultural repertoire of enregistered markers of white speech generally recognized as constructing whiteness in American culture. Lisa contrasts herself with the white kids, placing herself below them in terms of social capital: as an Asian kid, she was not “good enough” to talk to the white kids. Here white is overtly labeled of a higher quality. It appears that in striving to be “good enough,” to interact with white Americans, Lisa herself adopted linguistic features of the prestige variety of English that make her sound more like the people she strived to be, i.e. more white.
4.1.2 Lunchbox Moments
Food culture and culinary practices “arise out of the place of a people’s origin, whether they still live there or not” (Wahlqvist & Lee, 2007), serving as fundamental parts of a cultural heritage. The speakers often smiled as they described favorite foods from childhood or snacks and dishes only found back in Taiwan. However, in discussing food memories, a theme arose: the dishes that the speakers spoke so lovingly about as adults were sometimes a point of shame or embarrassment as a child in the school cafeteria. Many speakers recalled the dreaded “lunchbox moment,” an experience I remember vividly from my own childhood. The lunchbox moment is a common Asian
American experience of “cultural dissonance where food is involved as an object of
87 fascination or derision” (Dao, 2018), most often the latter. Not only different from their peers visually, these Taiwanese Texan children were ridiculed for their different eating habits. Andrea remembered being told to throw away her lunch because it smelled weird; she eventually ended up only bringing sandwiches to school. Angela recalled peers yelling “Oh, that’s gross, EW!” every time she opened her lunch box. Their insults eventually led to her buying cafeteria food to fit in (“because I didn’t want my mom, like, packing me something that my friends thought, like, looked weird or something”), food that she often wouldn’t eat because of how bad it was. By changing their eating habits in public, the Taiwanese Texan children were able to erase one of the barriers that prevented them from being seen as “normal kids.” In the 21st century, Asian and Asian-fusion food has experienced a huge boom in the United States; global sales at Asian fast food restaurants increased dramatically, nearly sextupling since 1999, and within the United States, sales increased 135% in the same time period, more than any other type of cuisine (Ferdman, 2015). The wormy noodles and smelly sauces that caused the Taiwanese Texans to be picked on were no longer foreign and gross, but instead exciting and later almost commonplace. Wendy discusses the shift from childhood to adulthood in Example 4.2.
88 1 WENDY: I think↑ that's ~shifted because it's like~ okay how do I become 2 (0.5) 3 more assimilated more white~washed~ 4 so I can ~fit in with the other kids:::~ 5 and and be coo::l 6 and then now it's like embracing ~my~ 7 (1.5) 8 Asian culture ~background~ and 9 (0.5) 10 being- being almost ~like a~ representative ~and sharing that with~ 11 them ~my community now~
Example 4.2: More assimilated, more whitewashed (interview with Wendy).
As a child, Wendy craved the “normalcy” that came with Lunchables or sandwiches. In line 3, she talks about assimilating into white culture in order to fit in with her peers and be accepted. In her assimilation into white culture, she also assimilated toward the norms of white girl speech, creating an indexical link between the features she used and the cultural construct of whiteness. Her shift into creaky voice comes at crucial points in her narrative: when discussing whiteness and craving acceptance as well as taking ownership over the background she created for herself (first in whiteness and now in Asianness). Although in her adulthood her pride for her background builds and she finds herself a representative of her community, the linguistic habits from her adolescence remain prominent.
4.1.3 Appearance
Most of the Taiwanese Texans grew up in predominantly white environments, and a few were the children of the only Taiwanese (and sometimes only Asian) family in the area. As a result of looking different from the rest of their peers, some of the Taiwanese Texans struggled with their appearances. Michelle, a second-generation Taiwanese Texan
89 from Central Texas, recalled children pulling their eyes and pressing down their noses to mock her features. The influence of environment and importance of representation for children can be seen in Michelle’s childhood wish to be white:
My best friend growing up, she was white. She had blonde hair and blue eyes, and so...when I was a kid I always used to cry…”I wish I had blonde hair and blue eyes.” I always would cry about that to my mom, which I'm sure is very hurtful as a parent. And then I remember my grandparents visiting and me throwing the same fit. I'd say, “I don't want to be Chinese, I want to be white, I want to have blue eyes.” And I think playing with Barbies doesn't help with that either, because I had a ton of Barbies, really pretty clothes, they're all white they all look the same. So that part of me was, like, just, I had this, like, longing, like, God, I wish I could change my eye color and all that stuff. Blonde hair and blue eyes, stereotypical white features, became an ideal that Michelle viewed as most beautiful, her own brown eyes and dark hair deemed lesser and unattractive. That ideal was further upheld in the dolls she played with, no Asian Barbie53 to be seen. Michelle was not the only one to overtly view whiteness as preferable. Angela, a second-generation Taiwanese Texan from East Texas, similarly found white people more attractive than Asian people, as seen in Example 4.3.
1 ANGELA: definitely↑ the way I loo::ked↑ 2 that was like a huge thing growing↑ up↑ ((slight emphasis)) 3 ~like~ I always thought ((variable intonation)) 4 like whi::te people 5 were a lot more ~attractive than Asian people~ 4 and like I kind of↑ struggled with that↑ ~like~ 5 I just put myself down a lot↑ because of that↑ ((pitch dynamism))
Example 4.3: More attractive than Asian people (interview with Angela).
53 Barbie lore alleges that Barbie had an Asian friend named Kira throughout the 1990s, but neither Michelle nor I were aware of this fact until 2020 or had ever seen one of the dolls. 90 As with Lisa and Wendy in Examples 4.1 and 4.2, Angela uses features of white girl talk to distance herself from her Asian heritage, including eight instances of rising intonation (uptalk) and creaky voice. By speaking like the white people she had pedestaled, she was attempting to associate herself with them, subconsciously trying to become more attractive in her own eyes, i.e. if I can’t look like them, I can at least talk like them. Given her statement in line 5, it was not surprising that she later shared with me her preference for dating a white partner. Her entire family, herself included, was surprised when she began to date a Chinese partner in college.
4.1.4 Family
Family was another source of shame to some Taiwanese Texan speakers. While the second-generation speakers often made efforts to assimilate toward white American norms (see Section 4.1.5), their immigrant parents were a constant reminder that the kids were different from their white peers. The way their parents acted wasn’t the way the white parents did, which was embarrassing and uncomfortable, from social mannerisms to lack of English fluency. Melissa (second-generation from Central Texas) talks about her feelings about her parents growing up in Example 4.4.
1 MELISSA: I would say in some ways I was like ~ashamed of my parents~ 2 ~that they were not fluent~ in English↑ 3 and that ~they didn't share like cultural things~ 4 that other people's↑ parents↑ did↑
Example 4.4: I was, like, ashamed of my parents (interview with Melissa).
Here Melissa moves into creaky voice when stating the shameful elements, showing a clear separation and creating distance between herself as an American and the embarrassment she felt about her foreign parents. In effect, she is shifting into creaky 91 voice in anti-Asian/hyper-white discourse. This is contrasted with the uptalk on the
American elements: English, other peoples’ parents. Melissa experienced this shame far into adulthood, which may be why the contrast is so clear. It wasn’t until later in life, when Melissa got married to a Chinese American man and saw the way he responded to her parents’ mannerisms with “empathy and understanding” that she was shown that, to her husband, the way her parents acted and her being a part of the family “[wasn’t] something negative or...weird.”
4.1.5 Assimilation
The Taiwanese Texans ashamed of their backgrounds worked hard to erase the differences between themselves and their white peers. To do so, they’ve assimilated to white culture, from the way they speak to the way they act and dress and associate. Lisa’s mother often calls her an ABC54 and she “definitely identifies” with the term banana because she is “very white on the inside.” Michelle similarly identifies with being a banana:
I feel like I'm white on the inside ((laughs)) ...My Vietnamese friend, she's like, “You're a banana, you're white on the inside, yellow on the outside.” And I was like, yeah I guess so, because, like, I guess I don't have an Asian accent, don't speak Chinese. It's just weird, like, I feel white on the inside because I tried so hard as a kid to be white and then had white friends. So then you just naturally start assimilating into that or liking those things, being bougie. You're like whatever, and so it's weird, like, when I'm with my [fiancé]’s parents, cuz I can do all of those things, and then I have to snap back when I'm with my family, and be like, you know, whatever they do, um, or adaptable, I guess is the, the word… I don't know why I feel that way, but I do feel white inside ((laughs)) a lot of the time. That's why I needed to embrace the Asian side, cuz I was like, you're not white, you've kind of, like, you've got to, um, prove that to yourself I guess.
54 Acronym for American Born Chinese. Some Taiwanese Americans might use ABT, but because of the catchy alphabetical association, most typically accept ABC even if they are staunchly Taiwanese and not Chinese. 92 Here Michelle contrasts her time with her white future in-laws and her Taiwanese family. She has become adaptable to situations and environments of whiteness and Asianness and feels more comfortable in the white situations (outside of her immediate family). Michelle’s embracing of white culture was an active choice as a child, and one she feels more comfortable in today, though she is making efforts to remedy years of shame in order to embrace her heritage.
4.1.6 As Adults
As they grew older, many of the Taiwanese Texans began reaching for their heritage and seeking to understand the cultural background from whence they came, and often began to develop pride for their Taiwanese heritage.55 For example, Daniel, who rejected his culture outright as a younger person, only recently discovered the personal importance of seeking out his Taiwanese cultural roots and is now quite active in the Taiwanese American community in Central Texas, a situation that he (nor any of his family) would ever have predicted. It took a long time for speakers like Daniel to come to these realizations and develop the desire to learn more about their Taiwanese heritage. Michelle acknowledges the shift in her priorities in example 4.5.
55 The speakers in this study are perhaps already more predisposed to pattern in this way given that they were willing to sit for interviews where the qualifying factor was having Taiwanese heritage. 93
1 MICHELLE:I didn't start embracing ~that until college~ ((referring to Taiwaneseness)) 2 when I started going↑ to Taiwan↑ and taking pic↑tures ((pitch dynamism)) 3 ~and was like hey this needs to be shared~ 4 ~this is actually a big part of me~ 5 so I think the Taiwanese side plus the creative ~side~ 6 ~um helps me~ express↑ who I am ((pitch dynamism)) 7 ~or like~ find a way ~to find out who I am~ 8 cause like I wouldn't have done that gallery 9 at the Asian American Center ((pitch dynamism)) 10 if if I like wasn't so:: like determined to:: 11 (0.5) 12 ~find out part of my heritage~ or like 13 find a way to be a part of my culture ((pitch dynamism)) 14 like when I found that Asian American Resource↑ Center↑ by my house↑ 15 I was like ~oh my God~ 16 I've got to go to all these events 17 I've got to 18 (1.0) 19 find a way to ~embrace it~ because 20 (0.5) 21 ~I'm not~ I’m not gonna lose it
Example 4.5: I’m not gonna lose it (interview with Michelle).
Michelle’s affiliation with whiteness and assimilation toward white norms is on display in Example 4.5 (uptalk, creaky voice, “like”, “oh my God”, pitch dynamism, etc.). Even in discussing her need to embrace her Taiwanese heritage, she uses forms enregistered as white girl stereotypes, linguistically embodying white femininity. Her application of white constructs to her speech is, at this point, not performative, but authentic and unchangeable, despite the mismatch race and performed identity. However, given Michelle’s identity as one who is white on the inside, there is an alignment of racial 94 identity and performance (Chun, 2007). Even in her shift toward embracing her heritage and cultural background and her identity alignments shift (see Section 4.3 for identity shifts), Michelle’s linguistic practices remain aligned with white girl norms.
4.2 THE INDICES
The Indices (of Conservation and Innovation) from Chapter 3 acts as a measure to highlight individual speakers of interest whose linguistic patternings deserve further investigation. The Index of Conservation (henceforth InCo), reproduced here as Figure
4.1, showed that while there are still some hold-outs from previously “innovative” features of Texas English (e.g. Sam’s short PRICE glide), the Taiwanese Texans, as young people, are not retaining the traditional Texan dialect features that the Anglo
Texan speaker baseline had that Bailey et al. (1991) once described as innovative.
95
Figure 4.1: Index of Conservation for Taiwanese Texan and Anglo56 Texan speakers.
As discussed in Chapter 3, given the speaker distribution of some features included in the IC, the robustness of the InCo comes into question. The PIN/PEN merger, for example, is not high in people’s consciousness as an indexical marker of Texanness, i.e. does not have much indexical load, and continues to be regularly observed in
Southern57 varieties of American English. Unlike the Anglo Texans, the Taiwanese Texan speakers as a whole do not produce traditional Texan (or Southern) forms. However, there remain some areas of interest when discussing some speakers on both ends of the InCo (Henry and Karen on
56Anglo speakers are designated by the suffix “TX.” 57 For example, this tweet by an American sociolinguist: “I’m playing codenames with a bunch of southerners and someone just gave the clue “pin” and we keep having to clarify the spelling. ” (Grieser, 2020). 96 the “traditionally Texan” side and Angela on the less “traditionally Texan” side), particularly in relation to the more robust Index of Innovation. The Index of Innovation (henceforth InIn), reproduced here as Figure 4.2, provides a clearer picture and more accurate representation of the innovativeness (versus conservativeness) of the Taiwanese Texan speakers.
Figure 4.2: Index of Innovation for Taiwanese Texan speakers.
Again, the speakers at both ends of the Index merit further investigation (Lisa as most innovative, and Peter as least innovative/most conservative), and are discussed individually in the following sections.
97 Figure 4.3 plots both Indices together to provide a better understanding of each speaker’s placement along both measures.
Figure 4.3: Indices of Innovation and Conservation in Taiwanese Texan speakers by score.
The InIn, as the more rigorous measure, is illustrated in growing innovation from least innovative (Peter) to most innovative (Lisa), and the InCo is filled in respectively, showing most Texan as the lowest bar (Karen) and least Texan as the highest bar (James).
Looking at Figure 4.3, it becomes clear that the Taiwanese Texan speakers all fall in a fairly narrow range for the InCo, but the Index of Innovation shows clear patterning toward both ends of the spectrum of innovation.
98 That Angela, for example, is very conservative per the Index of Innovation and not “traditionally Texan” per the InCo may be unclear at first viewing of Figure 4.3 where the longer bars indicate less Texan and more innovative, so Figure 4.4 shows the Indices by rank with more innovative and more Texan both shown with longer bars and less innovative and less Texan shown with shorter bars.
Figure 4.4: Indices of Innovation and Conservation for Taiwanese Texans by rank.
The following subsections provide insight on five speakers of interest, discussing the factors that may have contributed to their scores on the Indices.
99 4.2.1 Angela
On the Indices of Conservation and Innovation, Angela is one the least “traditionally Texan” speakers (Conservation) and also one of the least innovative speakers (Innovation). Angela was born and raised in a small city in East Texas 30 miles from the Gulf of Mexico where her family was one of the few Asian families in town (the Asian population made up 1.01% of her 60,000-person city, i.e. fewer than 150 families). She lived there until a few months before her interview when she moved to Central Texas to attend college. Growing up in a predominantly white environment, she felt the impacts of her status as a racialized minority, even down to standards of beauty (see Example 4.3). She now has “a lot of pride for Taiwan, like, even though [she’s] not, like, from there originally” and feels she has a “special connection...so [she] shouldn’t forget about where [her] ancestors came from.” Angela identifies as a Texan, and associates Texanness with southern hospitality, friendliness, and standing up for views and beliefs even if challenged. While Angela does not produce traditional Texan forms in her speech, she admits that she “might have a slight Southern accent” and that people from Dallas definitely say she has a Southern accent. Her response to the question of what she stands for is seen in Example 4.6.
100 1 ANGELA: like before I feel like ((pitch dynamism)) 2 from ~where~ I grew up like I was very conservative ish ((break before ish)) 3 cause like all ~the adults there they were~ but 4 (1.0) 5 like because of my sister58 6 ~my sister influences me a lot~ ((pitch dynamism)) 7 (0.5) 8 and then 9 yeah like being in Austin↑ also↑ 10 and some of my friends ~like~ 11 (0.75) 12 ~I have friends that have~ come out or something 13 like that just makes me 14 (0.5) 15 ~stand for equality~ 16 and like ~my parents being immigrants~ 17 like I ~support~ immigrants↑ a lot↑
Example 4.6: I was very conservative-ish (interview with Angela).
Angela’s conservative upbringing is visible here in her linguistic production.
While she patterns after white girls in her speech (i.e. with the ~creaky voice~ and uptalk↑), it is after conservative white girls like the ones she grew up around in East Texas, hence the lower score on the Index of Innovation. Angela contrasts her younger self with her current self (here conservative versus liberal), but her speech remains conservative, as opposed to innovative, given her recent move from conservative East Texas small town and conservative speech to the more liberal and linguistically innovative Central Texas large city.
58 Though Angela doesn’t specifically mention it in her interview, it may be relevant to know that her sister, Esther, who I also interviewed, is bisexual. 101 4.2.2 Karen
On the Indices of Conservation and Innovation, Karen is one of the most “traditionally Texan” speakers (Conservation) and also one of the more innovative speakers (Innovation). Like Angela, Karen grew up in a small white town in East Texas
(with an Asian population of 1.57% of the total ~13,000 population) where she says it was “very obvious, like, I’m Asian and I’m the minority.” She grew up speaking Mandarin as her first language because she spent most of her time with her Mandarin- speaking grandparents while her parents worked in their restaurant. It wasn’t until Karen was placed in ESL classes in school that her parents began speaking English at home. Karen viewed her move to Central Texas to attend college as an escape, and upon graduation, stayed in Central Texas because she “did not want to move back home to a small town where there was nothing.” While Karen retains phonetic features of Texan English at a higher level than any of the other speakers, likely a product of her actively learning the English of her surroundings in ESL classes as a child, she also, by my impressionistic assessment, sounds more innovative than Angela, for example, because she has spent many years in a big city and actively distances herself from the small town. Additionally, unlike Angela, Karen did not express shame at her heritage, so while she does produce features associated with white girls, such as “like”, creaky voice, uptalk, and pitch dynamism, her production is associated more with a mainstream American white girl than with a Texan white girl like Angela.
4.2.3 Henry
On the Indices of Conservation and Innovation, Henry was one of the most “traditionally Texan” speakers (Conservation) and falls in the middle of the innovative
102 speakers (Innovation). I met Henry several years before his interview took place and had always assumed that he had recently moved to Texas from Taiwan. Based on my impressions about his Mandarin-influenced English, I was surprised to hear that he had in fact moved from Taiwan to Central Texas at age 7, never having traveled anywhere (not even within Texas) until after college. He was the only Asian person in his entire school. He spent five years in English as a Second Language (ESL) class which he agrees likely caused his English to develop more slowly than if he had been transferred to standard
English language-based classes. He uses turns of phrase and expressions that are very American (e.g. many more idioms than the average person, by my account), but also forgets articles and mixes tenses similar to learners of English as a Second Language (particularly Mandarin-speaking). However, by his own admission, his Mandarin level is fairly juvenile (third grade level), though he code-switched often into Mandarin from our English-based interview. It is difficult to get a true impression of Henry’s idea of his own language practices because they’re jumbled. Immediately after saying “being grown up in the States,” he mentions people saying that he doesn’t have a “Chink accent or Chinese accent,” and instead saying to him, “‘Oh, your English is so perfect.’” In our conversation, it appeared that he agreed with them, and then later he judged himself to have a “very bad heavy accent.” His meta commentary seems to parallel his complicated identity trajectory first as Taiwanese (“just Taiwanese”) then “Taiwanese slash
American,” which later became Taiwanese American, and even later just American
(“because I know nothing about like the Taiwan...I don't remember anything about the Taiwanese culture, I don't, you know, partake in it anymore”), then not American (“There comes that race factor. People's like, well you're not American, you weren't born here...you know, you don't look like us, you don't eat like us, you don't do stuff that we 103 do, and then that start kind of clicking like, hey, like, you know, I'm not American”), reverting back to Taiwanese American before finally settling on Asian American. When asked outright, Henry admitted that his accent may still be tinged with Mandarin influence, at least when he is nervous or under stress, which a recorded interview might influence, though he seemed quite relaxed during the interview. Additionally, Henry and Karen (the second most conservative on the InCo, and one of the more innovative on the InIn) had been dating for several months at the time of their respective interviews, so it is quite likely that her speech patterns influenced Henry. Taking elements of both the traditional Texan and the innovative, Henry has constructed and developed his own idiolect.
4.2.4 Lisa
Lisa is the most innovative of the Taiwanese Texans. She is also the most distanced from her Asian heritage and most embracing of her Texanness, to the point where not only does she “love, love, love” Texas and feel proud to be a Texan, but she does not want to live anywhere else, ever. Lisa doesn’t think she acts Asian at all, and her friends say she is “the whitest Asian out of the friend group.” She believes she sounds white (see Section 4.4.2), she associates her personality and behavior with Americanness, and she identifies more with American culture than Asian culture. Lisa holds no affection or preference for her ethnic identity and in fact might actively be masking it. When asked if she would like to live in Taiwan she responded:
I would hate it. Like...even going back, like, my brother loves going back to Taiwan, and I really don't. I mean the first time it was cool, but, like, ten times or so after that...like...it's fine but I just don't really like the culture? Yeah, it's different cuz a lot of my cousins...love Taiwan, and they would want to live in Taiwan, and I'm like, no I can't.
104 Lisa contrasts Taiwan with her quiet hometown, claiming the quality of life is so much worse in Taiwan than in her suburb. Lisa has completely assimilated to American culture and feels very Americanized. Example 4.7 shows the extent to which she disassociates with all Asian culture.
1 LISA: Definitely↑ when someone asks me↑ if I feel like ((pitch dynamism)) 2 I:: am:: A::sian↑ ((said very tentatively)) 3 I feel like I'm no::t ((not is emphasized)) 4 like I feel mo::re 5 (1.25) 6 associated with like ~American culture~ 7 I'm like noth- 8 like I don't like Amer- or 9 I don't like Asian music 10 I don't like Asian TV 11 I don't like anything ~Asian~ 12 which is kind of bad but that's okay ((quickly as a cheery aside)) 13 ERICA: so you prefer all forms of American pop culture? 14 LISA: ye:::s I actually yeah 15 Asian↑ pop culture makes me cringe ((pitch dynamism, cringe ends low)) 16 like yeah even like 17 Korea K-pop like I just 18 ~I can't~
Example 4.7: Asian pop culture makes me cringe (interview with Lisa).
When Lisa says “I am Asian,” even in the hypothetical situation of someone asking if she feels like she is Asian, she was hesitant to say it, tentative in each word, drawing out the sounds. Lisa’s rejection of her Asian heritage is apparent not only in the words she says, but also in her adoption of the enregistered features associated with white girl speech from her phonetic production (see Chapter 3) to discourse marker “like,”
105 creaky voice, uptalk, and pitch dynamism. She is innovative in her speech and also uses many of the features associated white girlhood.
4.2.5 Peter
Peter is a second-generation Taiwanese Texan who identifies as from Central Texas who is “not quite Taiwanese, not quite Chinese, and not quite American.” He is the least innovative on the InIn by a significant margin. Peter was born in East Texas where he lived for 10 years (1.2% Asian of 270,000 population), then in middle school he moved to West Texas where he lived until age 16 (0.45% Asian of 5,700 population, i.e. seven (7) Asian households), then in high school he moved to Central Texas. Peter grew up surrounded by white peers and didn’t actually realize his Asianness until middle school when he moved to a small town where it “became very obvious to [him] that [he] was different,” and he was often called chino (bolded for emphasis):
I tell this as a joke to my friends, and I think this is pretty true...When I was growing up, like, in like, the private school, I legitimately thought, I think, I was like Caucasian. Like I went to a Chinese Church but, like, that was, like, my life on, like, weekends, you know? Like, my life in school and, like, like, socially, like, my best friend, my best friends were white growing up, you know? So I was like, yeah, I'm one of them, cuz you don't see your, there's just not a mirror in front of you constantly. So you're just like, on the left they're white, on the right they're white, what am I? Probably white, you know? And so I think in my little naive mindset...I thought I was very much like, not what I actually was. Here we see Peter invoking linguistic features that are enregistered as indices of whiteness with his usage of like and tag questions. However, the question of conservativeness comes to head. Peter sounds white, uses white features, but speaks conservatively. His upbringing is a likely cause. Peter’s formative years (10-16 in this case) were spent in a “blue collar town” where the folks spoke “very coarse[ly].” Peter
106 regularly found himself as the only Asian person in the room, and in those situations felt he had to act a certain way:
I feel like I have to censor what I say or what I do to not overstep my bounds as a minority. For one thing, like, you're not usually supposed to be in charge. Usually...you have to be careful how you voice an opinion not to sound too antagonistic or too authoritative...maybe have some deference in how you say things or do things...even the pressure not to act a certain way to fit into certain stereotypes. In order to fit in with his peers, Peter did everything he could to not stand out. He views white Americans as ideal, suggesting a lowering of status when for example, he walks into a restaurant with a group of Asians, compared to with a group of white people. When asked how he identifies himself, Peter responded:
What comes to mind for sure first is that I'm Asian and that I'm also an American. I was raised in the very, I mean we're in Texas, but I was raised in a very socially conservative environment, and definitely...because of that I, I consider myself very, like, you know, like, very, like, not nationalist but like, very like, patriotic, you know? ...Like if, if they had a draft, like, I'd go willingly, maybe even happily cuz like, that's like, my duty.
Peter explicitly associates Americanness with whiteness, and when thinking of minorities, does not associate himself with minority populations. This heavily aligns with the positioning of Asian Americans in Texas toward honorary white status, particularly in striving towards acceptance as white. Peter is often the “token Asian” in a group, and his Asian friends think he is too white. In fact, in everyday life, he identifies with “the dominant culture, more of a Caucasian European Western culture, but in [his] family life more as a Chinese person.” He has pride for his country to the point of suggesting happiness at being called to be drafted to war, a very conservative view. Conservatism runs through not only his phonetic patternings, but also through his word choice and thought processes.
107 4.3 IDENTITY
A lot of times when people say American people they mean white people...it's interesting to see how people conflate and correlate race with culture and nationality. - Tina Identity is a negotiation between all of the elements that make up a person, formed and shaped through “social experience, not cultural ideas or ancestry” (Brown, 2004, pg. xi). It is a fluid measure, constantly facing reassignment and change through and because of life experience. The Taiwanese Texans have access to a wide range of identity affiliations by function of being broadly Asian and more specifically Taiwanese, as well as broadly American and more specifically Texan (not to mention other social identities like gender identity, sexuality, profession, faith, etc.). The speakers all have Taiwanese background, so in their identity claim they are “positioning themselves relationally within a field of oppositions that they themselves structure and define” (Kang, 2004, p. 223), as opposed to stating the facts of their bloodline. Much like Kang
(2004),59 I demonstrate here how identity (ethnic and regional) is constructed through self-categorization, examining the ties the Taiwanese Texan speakers have to various identity groupings.
4.3.1 Asian Identities
In many cases the interviews were the first time a speaker had thought about their identity/ies in a concrete way. Throughout the interviews the Taiwanese Texans unpacked their identity alignments, sharing with me their thoughts as they discovered them.
59 Kang (2004) differentiates between “ethnic category” and “ethnic group,” the former assigned by outsiders and the latter established by insiders. This allows access to the subtle differences between Taiwanese, Taiwanese American, and American (as well as Taiwanese Texan and Texan). All of the speakers in the study at hand are part of the Taiwanese ethnic category, but may (and do) self-identify with more nuance. 108 There appears to be a trend of Taiwanese Texans who have been proud of their heritage from an early age focusing more on their Asian American identities than specifically Taiwanese American identities. Janet observed a change in how Asian Americans are being identified and identifying themselves:
There's been a growing movement of being Asian American as, like, a truly new and, um, separate identity, cuz before I thought Asian American meant being the children of immigrants, which is true. Like a big portion of what it means to be Asian American is that some of these people are children of first-generation immigrants. But now as time goes on, it's becoming more the children of these, uh, children. And so, I don’t know, if I have future children...what is their Asian American experience going to be like? Cuz I think mine is based a lot on being the child of an immigrant, and just kind of that tension of having my parents and my relative's cultures and then...being exposed to the individualism of, of what the US imposed upon [me]. But I think that's going to be less of a tension further down the line, so then I think being Asian American is gonna look less about finding the balance between those and just being uniquely Asian American.
The shifts in Asian American identity mirror the shift in Janet’s own identity alignments from strong Taiwanese American identity as a young person to now claiming that she “does better” at being Asian American than Taiwanese American. This appears to stem from her work in Asian American spaces and the priority she places on supporting community-building. Taiwanese Texans as a group do not form a community of practice, so by identifying as Asian American, Janet (and others who share a similar sentiment and prioritization of personal resources, like Amy) can be part of a larger community and contribute to developing and fortifying that community.
Narrowing focus from Asian American to Taiwanese American, the connection with going to Taiwan becomes a clear factor in identity. Melissa strongly identifies as a Taiwanese American and attributes that to her regular trips (more than 20) back to
109 Taiwan and the prioritization her parents placed on returning to their homeland and raising her speaking Taiwanese. David, a generation 1.5 Taiwanese Texan who moved to the DFW area at age 6, realized in our interview that he spent from age 6 up until age 25 learning to be
American, age 25-30 (when he lived in Taiwan again) learning to be Taiwanese, and the years since then learning to be Taiwanese American. In early 2020 he moved back to Taiwan, but still holds strongly to all of his identities.
Like David, Jay, a generation 1.5 Taiwanese Texan who moved to Houston at age 10, said he is not only Taiwanese and American, but also Taiwanese American. Taiwan is home to him, though he further explained: “Not like home home. Like you know, my home home is in [Central Texas], but my home home home is in Taiwan, like it's where
I'm from.” Jay continued, “Whoever I see in Taiwan, I'm just like, oh my God, you're my homie, like, you know? This is you, this is me, too!” In Example 4.8, Andrew speaks about how his Taiwanese family viewed him in contrast to how he views himself:
110 1 ANDREW: I definitely think 2 they view me definitely as American↑ 3 and not like 4 Taiwanese↑ 5 but they definitely view me as like 6 Taiwanese American 7 if if it's any consolation 8 like they know that I'm Taiwanese at heart 9 and that I can get through just fine 10 but they also know that I'm American 11 and like things are gonna be kind of weird um 12 which is 13 (1.0) 14 totally fine with me 15 I view myself as Taiwanese American 16 and I know I'm gonna have a rough time being over there 17 but I also know that like 18 there's a part of me that like really belongs there 19 and there's a part of me that like 20 (1.5) 21 really feels at peace over there 22 so if anything I don't want them to view me as American 23 and I don't want them to view me as Taiwanese 24 I just want them to view me as like 25 Taiwanese American 26 but most important just like 27 (1.0) 28 family
Example 4.8: I view myself as Taiwanese American (interview with Andrew).
In line 15, Andrew states that he identifies as Taiwanese American. However, it wasn’t until he spent a summer at an internship in Taiwan that he truly felt Taiwanese American. The connection with spending time in Taiwan contrasted with his life in America made it very clear to him that both cultures were important elements that
111 contributed to his identity. Lines 24 and 25 show the personal significance and desire to have others view you as you view yourself; Andrew wants his extended family to apply the same identity to him that he does to himself. However, even if the family assigned identity labels don’t align with self-identity, lines 26 and 28 are poignant: while identity is important and having people view you as you view yourself is affirming, connection is most important.
4.3.2 Identity Crises
While some Taiwanese Texans are clear in their identity alignments, others face crises of identity. Sarah contrasted the experience one might have growing up in Taiwan versus in the United States. In the United States, she realized her privileges and opportunities, no night classes or cram school, but at the same time the lack of sense of belonging. Sarah explained that her identity crisis stemmed mainly from prejudices within the Taiwanese American community. Sarah’s family is waishengren, and she has felt some level of alienation within the Taiwanese American community because of that. Her identity crisis comes from being ethnically Chinese but culturally Taiwanese and not having the sense of who she is without deep ties to the island that she hears about from those with generations of family born and raised in Taiwan.
Tina, a generation 1.5 Taiwanese Texan from Houston, claims a strong Taiwanese identity and Asian American identity, but vague Taiwanese American identity. She also talks about experiencing imposter syndrome as part of a waishengren family:
112 I also feel a certain amount of imposter syndrome because my family is ethnically Chinese. My grandparents were born in China; my parents were born in Taiwan. So I feel, like, awareness of being more woke has made me more quiet about being Taiwanese actually. Because at the end of the day, my parents are first- generation Taiwanese too. And they left when they were in their early 20s. So I love Taiwan as a country, and it's a place where I grew up, but I'm also somewhat hesitant to speak too too much on identity issues. I'll speak up for Taiwanese rights and democracy, but I don't talk too much about my own Taiwanese experience because it feels a little appropriate-y...I don’t want to culturally appropriate from, you know, I have a good number of friends who are ethnically Hakka or native Taiwanese. Identity can fall on a wide spectrum, and Sarah and Tina have to self-determine their own place on that spectrum of identity in order to relieve their crises of identity. Sarah mentioned that in the United States, she hasn’t found the difference between benshengren and waishengren to be a factor that excludes her from Taiwanese American communities, but does sometimes feel less Taiwanese due to not having a long multi- generational history with the island of Taiwan. Sarah found that when she joined a Taiwanese American interest organization, she felt more connected with her heritage. No longer did she identify with just Asian American, but after returning to Taiwan with the interest organization, she finally felt a sense of belonging, a shared identity of Taiwanese Americanness.
4.3.3 American Identities
While most Taiwanese Texans that spoke on American identity focused on Texas specifically, some contrasted their American identity with their Asian identity. Esther simply said, “I’m definitely an American since I was born here, raised here, all that, but being Taiwanese is like who my family is, like my heritage.” For Lily, being American is more than just growing up in the United States, but the development of American culture through values she holds, the clothes she wears, the things she does.
113 In Example 4.9, Ashley contrasts her Asian identities with the expectations that her mother has for an Asian daughter.
1 ASHLEY: I think I can't identify myself 2 as just like Chinese60 3 cuz there's like sometimes 4 my parents will compare me with like fo::bs↑ 5 from Taiwan↑ 6 and then she'll be like [Ashley] 7 like why can't you like ((laughs)) 8 do these kind of things that they do 9 or like she thinks that 10 they behave a certain way ((cer-tain, aspirated intervocalic /t/)) 11 and then I like to tell her like 12 oh because I'm American 13 like you raised me in America 14 so you can't have those expectations for me 15 you know?
Example 4.9: You raised me in America (interview with Ashley).
Ashley calling out the differences between the expectations for American children and Taiwanese children hearkens back to Janet’s statement in Section 4.3.1 about how Asian American identity will likely change between the second generation and subsequent generations. Here, Ashley and her immigrant mother clash over expectations, just as Janet and her hypothetical future child might. The boundaries of identity are constantly being pushed and expanded as the worldview of the current generations expand.
Most of the Taiwanese Texan speakers, when outside of the country will enthusiastically say they’re from Texas before saying they’re from the United States, a
60 Ashley seems to use Chinese and Taiwanese interchangeably. 114 common trend among all Texans. For the most part, the Taiwanese Texans claimed
Texanness, though at differing levels of pride. Peter and Lisa, the least innovative and most innovative on the Index of Innovation, respectively are incredibly proud of being Texan. Lisa even went as far to say she identifies more with being Texan than with being Asian. Melissa voiced her pride of Texas: “Oh why am I proud to be a Texan? Uh, it's amazing. I love everything about it. I there's nowhere else to be.”
On the other side, Evelyn is a little embarrassed of Texas sometimes, and Alex expressed regret at being a Texan, explaining, “Oh man, I mean, I've seen too many Confederate flags on trucks to be proud to be a Texan anymore.” A few Taiwanese Texans identified more with a city (i.e. being an Austinite) than with the state. When asked if she is a Texan, Esther replied, “I don't know how willing I am to admit it to people ((laughs)) depending on who they are. I'm not as big of a fanatic as some might be but it is where I grew up, so in that sense, yes, I'm a Texan ((laughs)). When asked if she was proud to be Texan, Esther replied, “I mean the fact that I'm hesitating ((laughs)) but I mean if someone was like, I don't know like bashing on Texas though, I'd be like no ((laughs)) you can't do that.” Unsurprisingly, the speakers who were more politically conservative tended to be more proud of being Texan than those who were more politically liberal.
4.4 SOUNDS LIKE
Many of the Taiwanese Texan speakers began to think meta-linguistically about their own speech production or the speech of other Asian Americans, sometimes even unprompted, comparing sounding Asian versus sounding white. This section is divided
115 into two parts: Sounding Asian and Sounding white, both uncovering potential future areas of research.
4.4.1 Sounding Asian
When asked if it was possible to tell if someone was Asian American simply by hearing their voice, the Taiwanese Texans were split in their answers. Some had never heard of such a thing and could not fathom it possible. Others were confident that there were clear differences, even if they couldn’t identify them, and still others confirmed they could distinguish race by ear. A few speakers thought they sounded Asian. For example, Ashley felt that her intonation sounded “Asian-y” (despite one “non-fob Asian American” claiming she sounded very white), and Janet has been asked many times if she was a fob61 based on the way she speaks. Two speakers, Alex (second generation from DFW) and Esther (second generation from East Texas) mentioned grammatical elements from Chinese that have crossed over into their speech. Instead of the more standard “turn on the light,” Esther finds herself saying “open the light,” influenced by the Chinese word 開 (kāi), which means to open, but is also used in contexts like turning on the light or starting the car. Alex gave the example of a confusing conversation with peers where she talked about sending a friend home. They were baffled that she had sent someone away, but Alex’s
61 Short for ‘fresh off the boat,’ fob refers to people of Asian descent who have yet to assimilate to American culture, i.e. are “too ethnic” (Pyke & Dang, 2003). The term is used by American born Asians to separate themselves from immigrant Asians. At the other end of the spectrum is whitewashed, i.e. completely assimilated to American culture. In their study on second generation Vietnamese and Korean Americans, Pyke and Dang found that although the speakers claimed fob was simply an innocuous descriptor, most used it to “ridicule the ethnically traditional, and in so doing mimicked the contempt expressed in the dominant culture toward ethnic immigrants” (Pyke & Dang, 2003, p. 158). Tina’s brother experienced this purposeful separation when bullied by Korean American peers in the school yard. Tina explained, “I think for them they were a little threatened. He looks like them but he doesn't talk like them, so it would be really easy for them to get lumped in with him. They had to make sure that everybody knew that they were the real Americans and he was the foreigner.” 116 meaning was that she had given the friend a ride home, send being a direct translation from the Chinese word that would be used in the same context: 送 (sòng).
Three speakers, Ashley (second-generation from DFW), Janet (second-generation from DFW) and Annie62 (second-generation from Central Texas) postulated that there might be tonal qualities or speech patterns that index Asian American speakers. Janet suggested that this “Asian American tone” was a fixed manner of speaking:
Some of it is the length, some of it is, like, the phrasing...I think there's...slight influences from African American culture so that's, like, more relaxed and it's not as proper as say, like, maybe people who are more Caucasian. But I also feel that it's also the tone and the vocal quality that's different in Asian Americans...As an Asian American, like, something about the tonal quality of your voice is just set. Annie noticed that the Asian Americans that grew up in the United States would sometimes have an Asian accent. When asked to elaborate on the nuance of an Asian accent, Annie was unable to describe it, but suggested there might be tonal significance, particularly in down tone:
I’ve noticed that if I’m, like, criticizing something or excited about something whenever, like, I use a down tone. And then, um, in terms of deferentials, it’s not built into the language the same way it is in Korean or Japanese. It’s built into the tone. And so with deferentials...higher authority, higher status, I do notice my tone changes, and I still talk about language except there is a deferential tone. And I noticed women talk to women differently than they talk to men or I noticed at church because the tone. It’s not built into the language but it’s built into the tone. The three speakers have constructed the basis of a form-meaning link with some yet-unidentified intonation practice indexing Asianness. However, intonational contours are beyond the scope of the current study, but may be an important next area of research if looking to determine what makes a person’s speech sound Asian.
62 Annie’s interview is not examined in the sociophonetic chapter due to issues with sound quality and recording. 117 4.4.2 Sounding White
When asked what other people say they sound like, there was a clear trend in the answers of the speakers:
Lisa: They tell me that if they couldn't see my face they would think I was Caucasian. I've heard that a lot.
Michelle: They say I talk like a white girl ((laughs)), a white girl with a Texan accent.
Melissa: I sometimes speak kind of Southern or have certain words I say that [my husband] is like, “Oh your southern twang!”
Alex: Because I've grown up in the South my entire life, sometimes I have Southern tendencies. People are like, “It's so weird that you speak like that.” I'm like, well I've grown up in Texas my entire life, so I am gonna have Southern drawl a little bit sometimes.
The Taiwanese Texans never indicated exactly what “sounding white” meant, or what features of their speech were specifically white, but they were confident in their stake in whiteness, at least aurally. Alex expanded on her statement: “I mean if they grow up in America all their life, like, if you heard my voice you wouldn't be able to like tell that I was, like, Chinese, right?”63 Here, Mainstream American English (MAE), while generally associated with whiteness, is unmarked (all the speakers are speakers of MAE) and white girl English (explicitly mentioned by Michelle) is the marked white English.
Although white girl as a persona “transcends place” (Slobe, 2018, p. 3), white girlhood is often associated with the West Coast, and California specifically. The Taiwanese Texan speakers here introduce the idea of white southern girlhood. There arises a question of whether white southern girlhood is just the accent (“white girl with a Texan accent” - Michelle), or if there is a Southern white girl persona that needs unpacking.
63 Right. I would not have been able to tell. 118 4.5 OTHER THEMES
Here I have included a passage featuring Stephanie, a 1.5 generation Taiwanese Texan who was born in Central Texas and raised in Taiwan from 6 months old to age nine, before her immediate family moved back to Texas. Stephanie has been involved in
Taiwanese American groups in college and as a young professional. She discusses an instance of getting in trouble as a child in Example 4.10.
1 ERICA: Did you ever get in trouble when you were little? 2 STEPHANIE: Uh well I mean yes 3 ~but mostly for like stupid A::sian stuff~ like ((Asian emphasized)) 4 Oh you didn’t study ~hard enough~ ((pitch dynamism)) 5 right before a te::st ((down tilt in test, two syllables)) 4 And then I think… 5 I remember this clearly because 6 I was, like, watching TV before a ~test~ 7 And my mom was like 8 ~why aren’t you studying~ 9 I was like ~well~ 10 I’m pretty ~confident~ in the ~content~ ((content impressionistically sounds Asian to me)) 11 And she was like 12 so does that mean you’re gonna get a hun↑~dred~ 13 and then I was like ((loud)) 14 we::ll I don’t know about a hun↑~dred~ ((pitch dynamism)) 15 but I’m feeling pretty goo::d ((feeling high pitch)) 16 so she’s like ~ok like~ 17 if you don’t ~study~ 18 ~then for every point that~ you like 19 ~deter from the hundred~
Example 4.10: Stupid Asian stuff (interview with Stephanie).
119 20 then I’m gonna like 21 hit you ((hitchyou)) 22 and then I was like, eh:::, whatever, ok 23 And then turns out I got like a ~ninety-eight~ ((eighT)) 24 ~so then she hit me twice~ 25 and I was just like 26 this is RIDICULOUS ((laughs))
Example 4.10, continued: Stupid Asian stuff (interview with Stephanie).
This passage is of particular interest due to the many levels that can be identified here. First, Stephanie describes her childhood misbehaviors as only about “stupid Asian stuff.” An outsider might view her story as a fulfillment of a stereotype on traditional Asian values about strict parenting with a mentality that demands perfection, especially in academics. Stephanie realizes that her anecdote can be viewed as “so Asian” but at the same time, is describing her real human experience. She describes an actuality from her life without typecasting it as a stereotype because it is in fact a truth. Media has created a trope of a “tiger parent” that requires excellence in all things, where a letter grade of B is considered an “Asian fail” and jokes about being ‘not a “B-sian, but an A-sian”’ are met with laughter from mixed crowds (Leung, 2018). A number of common topics of interest arose within the interviews that warrant further examination in the future including but not limited to:
• racial biases64
• preferences in dating (both personal and parental,65 ranging from no
preference to a clearly delineated hierarchy66)
64 Sam: “You know, the thing with [ ] Asians, they're always a little racist too.” 65 Usually a preference for Asian and specifically Mandarin-speaking for the sake of communication (e.g. Janet: “My mom was like, as long as he loves Jesus, he can even be white ((laughs)) but he wouldn’t have much of a relationship with my parents [[if he couldn’t speak Mandarin]]), and a number of speakers mentioned active anti-Black sentiment on the part of their parents regarding future in-laws (e.g. Angela: “I asked my mom this before and she just said as long as it’s not like Black people”; Peter, unprompted: “This 120 • representation, both in jobs and in the media (and connections between
representation and attraction67)
• stereotypes of Asian parents68 • microaggressions
• mental health issues69
• love and affection70 • sense of place
• going to Taiwan71 and going back72 to Taiwan
• Southern accents73
• imitations of other people74
is just a random comment: I think they're more biased against African Americans. I don't know why but it's just there.”) 66 Lisa (immediate response when asked if she had any racial preferences in a partner): “Yes, so it goes white, half-Asian, half-white, Asian, then Hispanic, then African American.” 67 Ashley: “I was more into white guys when I was in elementary school...I didn’t find Asian guys that attractive. It changed in middle school when I started watching K drama and Chinese dramas. I was like, wow, they can be attractive...Asian guys are so great!” 68 Lisa: “My mom is actually not that Asian. Okay she's really Asian but like it could be so much worse, like I feel like, on the Asian scale she's like at a five. Like she still kind of has an accent, but like it's not that bad, and she understands, she's like fluent in English which is great.” 69 Alex on her parents’ response to mental health issues they were facing: “My mom was like, “That's a white person thing, you don't need to worry about it...as long as you have good grades and you have a stable house and you have everything that you could ask for, you don't need to be feeling like this.” 70 Many speakers had never hugged their parents or said “I love you” to their parents or heard it from them. A few speakers mentioned trying it once but never again. Love was expressed through acts of service, like providing food. Cut fruit was mentioned several times as an expression of affection (Wang, 2020), one I am familiar with from my own experiences. 71 The participants who have not been to Taiwan, on the other hand, often feel more generally Asian American, with little bond to their specific country of origin due to cutting of ties and roots with the mother country. 72 Joseph: “Every time I went back, I always learned something new about my family or Taiwanese culture in general.” 73 Daniel offhandedly mentioned that he does “stupid things” in a southern accent, a clear example of vari- directional double-voicing (Hinrichs, 2006b). 74 Michelle, who says she talks like a white girl, imitates white people saying “you’re so Asian” and “that’s so Asian, of course you would say that.” 121 These themes provide direction for future paths of investigation on the Taiwanese
Texan population. Examining the salience of these other aspects of importance to Taiwanese Texans will contribute to our understanding of the lived experience of a subset of the Asian American community.
4.6 CONCLUSIONS
This chapter provides a discourse-based approach to the language variation and language accommodation toward whiteness undergone in the speech of Taiwanese
Texans. Similar to how Laotian American teenagers without access to an ethnically distinct dialect created a distinct social space for themselves (Bucholtz, 2009), the Taiwanese Texans performed ethnicized identities of assimilation to whiteness without using an ethnolect. All of the speakers use the local majority language, Mainstream American English, but some also invoke locally available elements of white girlhood, particularly in cases of clear orientation toward whiteness in discourse. The Taiwanese
Texans put those linguistic resources into service to construct identity alignments in conversation, showing distance from Asianness and alignment with white norms and white American culture.
122 Chapter 5: Conclusion
Being Taiwanese is not solely about your place of birth, your culture of upbringing, or your parents’ heritage. Being Taiwanese is not tethered to your ability to speak the dialects of the land. Being Taiwanese is not determined by the census list of races and ethnicities, nor by the United Nations. Being Taiwanese means never denying someone’s right to identity as Taiwanese. Being Taiwanese is about freedom of choice. The freedom to call yourself Taiwanese, Chinese, Hokkien, Hakka, Atayal, Amis, or [any] mixture of these. The choice to understand the identity you have picked and be unapologetically so. Race and ethnicity are human constructs. My choice of identity is mine and mine alone. Eric Tsai (TaiwaneseAmerican.org, 2019)
Between 2020 and 2060, the population of Asian Americans is projected to double to 10% of the American population (Vespa, Armstrong, & Medina, 2018), and this study joins a growing body of sociolinguistic work on sound change in American
English on that expanding Asian American population (e.g. Wong, 2015; Kaiser, 2011; Hall-Lew, 2009). What past research conducted on Asian Americans collectively through a pan-Asian cultural lens and on other ethnic subgroups (e.g. Igoudin, 2013; Bauman,
2016; Reyes, 2017) has overlooked, however, is the exploration of the language and social orientation of the Taiwanese population, especially in Texas. Taiwanese Texan identity is a multifaceted concept with ties not only to ethnic and cultural heritage, but also to national, political, regional, and societal affiliations as well. By exploring how Taiwanese Texans orient themselves within the linguistic and cultural paradigms available to them, I have shed light on the impacts of assimilation and acculturation on a people.
This dissertation combines quantitative and qualitative methodologies in an exploratory analysis of variation in the ethno-/linguistic repertoires of Taiwanese Texans. Both studies served the same goal: to see where the speakers position themselves within the broader context of the sociolinguistic space of Texas. Each Taiwanese Texan 123 possesses a “collection of linguistic materials that s/he learns and accumulates as s/he inhabits multiple social roles and traverses different trajectories in life” (Wong, 2015, p. 302). Those linguistic resources may be used to index the various facets of their identities, including ethnic identity.
5.1 REVIEW OF FINDINGS
In Chapter 1, I reviewed recent Taiwanese history as related to identity and identity construction and introduced Texas as a productive and necessary site for the study of Taiwanese Americans in the context of language and ethnicity as home to the third largest population of Taiwanese Americans. In Chapter 2, I introduced the data sample of 30 Taiwanese Texan speakers from various regions of Texas and described the methodologies at work. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 examined the speech production of the Taiwanese Texans from two angles. Chapter 3 followed a feature-based quantitative approach, examining the
Taiwanese Texans both as compared to a baseline of older Anglo Texans and as compared to each other. The analysis of the Taiwanese Texan data in comparison to the older Anglo Texan data showed that Taiwanese Texans do not produce the traditional Texan forms that Bailey et al. (1991) had once considered innovative. The analysis of the
Taiwanese Texans as a group, however, showed that they are categorically participating in a chain vowel shift, the Third Dialect Shift. This is the first study of Texas English which investigates the Third Dialect Shift, and it opens doors to examinations of the
Third Dialect Shift in other Texan groups. This encourages wider discourse on the Third Dialect Shift and its sub-features in Texas English for the understanding of sound change and chain shifts in the Southern United States both inside and outside of Asian American communities.
124 In the context of sociolinguistics of diaspora, it is striking to observe the extent of the indisputable participation in the Third Dialect Shift sound change, which has to be viewed in the context of the positioning of the speakers in the racial hierarchy of Texas. As the children of mostly post-1965 middle class immigrants, the Taiwanese Texan speakers come from a place of privilege adjacent to whiteness. They have access to the space of whiteness, which is often not available to other diasporic groups. The experiences of Taiwanese Texans and their subsequent racialized language production and usage of linguistic resources is in clear contrast to diasporic groups such as Jamaican Canadians in Toronto, for example (Hinrichs, 2011). Whereas Taiwanese Texans are driving the Third Dialect Shift, Jamaican Torontonians, who live in an area where the Third Dialect Shift is pervasive, cannot contest nor participate in the privileged space of whiteness and do not participate in the Third Dialect Shift. Chapter 4 provided a discourse analysis of the sociolinguistic interviews, examining how the Taiwanese Texans co-constructed their identities through stylistic practice, revealing that their Acts of Identity are linguistically coded between unmarked American English and hyper-performed “white girl” English (Eckert, 2002), reflecting an alignment with prestige whiteness while simultaneously distancing from a stigmatized
Asian identity. In other words, those who grew up ashamed of their Asian identity used the enregistered white girl features to claim membership in white circles and assimilate toward whiteness (toward the normal, the successful, the privileged, Zhou, 2004), while those who grew up proud of their Asian identity were more likely to use unmarked
American English. The racialized use of enregistered features of white girl English further emphasizes the point made in Chapter 1, that the linguistic features the Taiwanese Texans used to indicate racial identity may not be unique to Asian Americans or Taiwanese 125 Texans because “ethnolectal distinctiveness is not a prerequisite for racialized language practices” (Charity Hudley et al., 2018, p. 9). This is further supported by Bucholtz (2004) who explicitly argues that linguistic resources being used “need not be distinctive either between or within ethnic groups in order to produce social identities” (p. 127).
Because there is no dialect of Asian American English in Texas besides what can be gleaned from first generation learners’ features, the Taiwanese Texans’ performances of whiteness are the way they construct a racial identity. This is not the first time Asian
Americans have been observed to use existing resources in a racialized manner; Chun (2001), Bucholtz (2004), and Reyes (2017) found that the Asian Americans they examined used various linguistic features to “construct their ethnic identity within an ethnic landscape where black and white are seen as central” (Benor, 2010, p. 164), making use of locally available resources to position themselves favorably within the racial ecology of their environments. Chapters 4 and 5 investigate similar questions of identity expression through linguistic performance, showing the extent to which and the ways in which speakers contest the privileged association of whiteness in the sociolinguistic space of Texas. This occurs both at the level of form, in adopting the ongoing sound changes of the Third
Dialect Shift, and the level of content, in performing whiteness using enregistered features particularly when discussing grief about their non-white physicality.
5.2 REMAINING QUESTIONS AND FUTURE WORK
The goals of this dissertation were to describe the linguistic variation among Taiwanese Texan speakers and to find meaning between that variation and the sociocultural identities of the speakers. Here I have presented a sociolinguistic study of a subset of the American population that can be extrapolated from to understand how
126 background, heritage, environment, and other such factors contribute to, affect, and index identity. Over the course of the research conducted for this dissertation, a number of questions arose, highlighting several areas for future search. The Taiwanese Texans here were examined by four sociocultural factors: region of Texas, sex, year of birth, and generation. However, there are a number of other factors that may contribute to sociophonetic variation as well as identity association. Such salient factors include: heritage language proficiency, social network (both as a child and as an adult), socioeconomic class, connection with family,75 ties to Taiwan, orientation toward ethnicity, association with Taiwanese American interest organizations, and regularity of returning to Taiwan. Additionally, how does the transition from cultural rejection and shame to cultural embrace and pride affect identity alignment and subsequent linguistic production? The Taiwanese Texans in this study were primarily raised in areas where they were one of few Asian people and did not form a community of practice, instead developing their identities and linguistic repertoires individually. How differently then, do these Taiwanese Texans index local and regional identity than Taiwanese Americans who form a community of practice in, for example, the Taiwanese ethnoburbs of California? An immediate avenue of interest for further investigation is intonation, as mentioned by speakers in Section 4.4.1. Many of the speakers produced variable intonation in key identity moments, which, while beyond the scope of the current study,
75 I refer here to both immediate and extended family. However, within the data collected, there are sibling pairs: Sam and Amy, Angela and Esther, and Victor and Charles (who were not included in the current study, but can be found in Appendix B). Examining the pairs may provide insight into variation within a family unit, i.e. investigating nature versus nurture (Ladd, Dediu, & Kinsell, 2008). 127 would benefit from further investigation. Examining intonational features such as type of pitch accent may shed light on in-group variation. In other continued work on intonation, one of the speakers, Annie, suggested finding environments where there were multiple generations of Taiwanese Americans to observe how the younger and older people interacted linguistically, perhaps producing deferential tonal shifts and other ethnically- linked intonational features. Intonation is a rich (and understudied) topic for exploration of variation in identity performance.76
5.3 CONCLUDING REMARKS
While cultural orientation may be of interest to a wide variety of people, this project is also deeply personal. My own exploration of identity continued through interviews with participants, and I discovered similarities between my speakers and myself that may only be explained due to our shared cultural heritage. At the same time, insights that arose from my understanding of our shared culture allowed me to “make explicit the systems of understanding that are implicit” (Saville-Troike, 2008, p. 89). Beyond personal growth and discovery, this project has wider implications both individually and collectively on 1) the effects of assimilation, 2) layers of identities and the intersectional and sometimes hierarchical (Wong, 2015) relationships of said identities, and 3) people in diaspora. Collectively, we stand to begin to understand the effects of assimilation on people in diaspora and how that contributes to the linguistic construction and indexing of their intersectional identities.
Throughout the course of this dissertation research, six countries severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), in favor of China, officially the People’s Republic of China (PRC): São Tomé and Príncipe (2016), Panama
76 See Holliday (2016) and Reed (2016) for more on intonation and identity. 128 (2017), Dominican Republic (2018), El Salvador (2018), Kiribati (2019), and Solomon
Islands (2019). As of this writing, only fifteen states recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation: Belize, Eswatini, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Nicaragua, Palau, Paraguay, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines, Tuvalu, and the Holy See (O’Connor, 2019). As Taiwan’s economic pull weakens, it is altogether important that the ties remain strong between Taiwanese in diaspora and their culture. The ties are particularly significant in relation to the uncertainty of Taiwan’s future and the liminal status the country appears to hold. In the introduction to Leona Chen’s 2017 book of poetry “Book of Cord,” Shawna Yang Ryan writes:
Taiwanese identity is being erased every day: by China’s insistence that Taiwan is a “renegade province,” by the unwillingness of the Kuomintang party to admit to the crimes committed during their decades of rule over the island, and by the loss of Indigenous land, language, and culture... To declare “I am Taiwanese American” is to write into that erased space. However, from my own research, I’ve found that despite Taiwan’s exclusion from much of the international system of nations, Taiwanese people are not so readily erased. Much like the people of Hong Kong who found means for retention of their identities and culture despite greater vulnerability to Chinese controls and suppression, Taiwanese people, both on-island and in diaspora, will continue to preserve and assert their identities. Thirty speakers told me their Taiwanese American story and many declared “I am
Taiwanese American.” Now it is my turn: I am Taiwanese American, and I write this dissertation into that erased space.
129 Appendices
APPENDIX A SAMPLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
While each interview was unique and was organized around the speaker’s individual statements and responses, a list of questions was prepared to guide the interviews. Below is a list of sample questions, grouped by topic.
Background:
• Where are you from? • Where have you lived from birth until now? • Where are your parents from?
• When did they come to the U.S.? • When did they come to Texas? • What is the highest level of education your parents completed?
Family life: • Do you have siblings? • Did you get along when you were younger?
• Did anyone help raise you besides your parents? • How close would you say you are with your family? • How often do you communicate?
• What language did you speak at home? • Where does your extended family live? How close would you say you are to them? • What does your extended family think of you?
130 • Asian families often express affection differently than Western families. How
does your family express affection? • What are Asian parents like? • Were your parents strict? Who was stricter, you mother or your father?
Education: • What educational goals did your parents have for you?
• What did they want you to be? • Did you participate in any extracurricular activities growing up? • Did you attend a weekly language school? • Where did you go to school?
• What groups were you part of in college?
Taiwan:
• Have you ever been to Taiwan? • What was a highlight of your last trip to Taiwan? • How often do you go to Taiwan?
• Would you ever live in Taiwan?
Culture:
• What was your favorite food growing up? Least favorite food?
• What holidays did your family celebrate? • Did you watch Chinese/Taiwanese dramas? • Did you go to church or temple with your family?
• How important would you say religion or faith to you? 131 • Did your parents emphasize learning about their culture(s)?
• If you choose to have children, will you prioritize passing along your culture? • How much do you know about Taiwanese culture? How important is it to you personally?
• Are you or were you a member of a Taiwanese-interest organization? If so, why did you join? • Do you notice any cultural differences between you and your extended family?
Between you and your parents?
Relationships: • Can you tell me a little about your most recent relationship?
• Do your parents want you to end up with someone of the same ethnicity as you? • Do you care about that?
Miscellaneous: • What is something one should know about you to really understand you? • What are some misconceptions about you?
• What questions did you wish I would ask? • If you could plan the next five years of your life, how would it go? • Who has the biggest influence on you personally? In what sense?
• Did you have Asian and/or Asian American role models growing up?
Ethnicity and Diversity: • Growing up, how diverse was your community?
• What about your friend group? 132 • Can you tell me about your friend group now?
• What does the term “Asian American” mean to you? • What does the term “Taiwanese American” mean to you? • How important is your ethnicity to you?
• Have you ever been treated differently because of race or ethnicity? • Have you ever been treated badly because of race or ethnicity?
Identity: • In this multicultural society, people often identify themselves in terms of ethnicity, such as Taiwanese American. They also identify themselves in terms of gender, social class, religion, occupation, and etc. Thus, people possess multiple
social identities at the same time, but differ individually on how important these identities are to them. Tell me how you identify yourself. What identities are
important to you?77
• Which identity is most important to you? • Have you experienced significant change in your identity at any point in your life?
• What caused the change in identity?
Texas:
• For those that attended Texas University: Why did you come to TXU?
• Do you consider yourself a Texan? Why or why not? • Are you proud to be Texan? Why or why not?
77 Adapted from Soon (2010). 133 • What do other Asian Americans say when they hear you’re from Texas?
• When you’re traveling outside of the U.S., where do you say you’re from?
Language:
• Has anyone commented on the way you speak English? • What about the way you speak Mandarin/Taiwanese? • Can you tell where someone is from based on the way that they speak?
• Can you tell someone’s ethnicity by the way they speak? • If so, how? • Do you think you sound like a Texan?
134 APPENDIX B EXCLUDED SPEAKERS
Birth Speaker Sex Year Ethnicity/Race Reason Excluded Tom M 1999 Taiwanese/Filipino Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Matthew M 1999 Taiwanese/French Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Jacob M 1998 Taiwanese Moved to Texas after age 11 Ryan M 1996 Taiwanese Moved to Texas after age 11 John M 1995 Taiwanese/White Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Victor M 1995 Chinese/Polish Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Steven M 1994 Taiwanese/White Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Diane F 1993 Taiwanese/White Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Lynn F 1993 Chinese/Mexican Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Priscilla F 1993 Taiwanese/White Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Franklin M 1990 Taiwanese/Japanese Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Christine F 1989 Taiwanese Moved to Texas after age 11 Jeff M 1988 Taiwanese File became corrupted Cindy F 1987 Taiwanese/White Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Annie F 1986 Taiwanese/White Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Charles M 1986 Eurasian (Polish) Mixed race/ethnicity speakers excluded at this time Background noise in interview made impossible to Laura F 1984 Taiwanese phonetically analyze Only Texan participant either married or with Jia F 1976 Taiwanese children Mei F 1963 Taiwanese Moved to Texas after age 11
Table A: Demographic information for Taiwanese Texans not included in current analysis.
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