Language Identity and Stereotype Among Southeast Asian American Youth

<p>This book—an ethnographic and discourse analytic study of an after-school video-making project for 1.5- and second-generation Southeast Asian American teenagers—explores the relationships among stereotype identity and ethnicity that emerge in this informal educational setting.<br><br>Working from a unique theoretical foundation that combines linguistic anthropology Asian American studies and education and using rigorous linguistic anthropological tools to closely examine video- and audio- recorded interactions gathered during the video-making project (in which teen participants learned the skills for creating their own video and adult staff learned to respect and value the local knowledge of youth) the author builds a compelling link between micro-level uses of language and macro-level discourses of identity race ethnicity and culture. In this study of the ways in which teens draw on and play with circulating stereotypes of the <i>self</i> and the <i>other</i> Reyes uniquely illustrates how individuals can reappropriate stereotypes of their ethnic group as a resource to position themselves and others in interactionally meaningful ways to accomplish new social actions and to assign new meanings to stereotypes.<br><br>This is an important book for academics and students in sociolinguistics linguistic anthropology discourse analysis and applied linguistics with an interest in issues of youth race and ethnicity and/or educational settings and will also be of interest to readers in the fields of education Asian American studies social psychology and sociology.</p>