Codeswitching, speech community membership, and the construction of ethnic identity

Abstract

The relationship between codeswitching, speech community membership and the discursive construction of ethnic identity is examined through a discourse analysis of a conversation between two Asian American men in Los Angeles. In unraveling the ethnicity of a non‐present third party, the speakers take moral stances towards the desirability of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean women. Through codeswitching, these stances are constructed as characteristic of a given ethnic category, simultaneously projecting category memberships for speakers and recipients through the assignment of participant roles. These ethnic identities are contingent, as codeswitching which is not reciprocated rejects proposed claims to membership in a speech community. Speakers' ideologies about appropriate outgroup talk and the histories they attribute to a particular derogatory term are also shown to influence the local construction of ethnic identity.

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