Language, identity and relationality in Asian Pacific America

Abstract

Invisibility of Asian Pacific Americans in language researchRelative to other racial and ethnic groups in the US, Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) have received comparatively little attention from scholars in linguistic anthropology.Whereas the language practices of African Americans have been of abiding interest to linguistic anthropologists, sociolinguists, and dialectologists since the 1970s (e.g., Baugh 1983;Kochman 1981;Labov 1972;Mitchell-Kernan 1972;Morgan 2002) and significant bodies of work on Latinos (e.g., Bailey 2002;Fought 2003; Penfield and Ornstein-Garcia 1985;Zentella 1997) and Native Americans (e.g., Basso 1979;Kroskrity 1993;Leap 1993;Philips 1983) form a longstanding tradition, linguistic anthropological work on Asian Pacific Americans outside of Hawai'i has yet to receive the same kind of sustained scholarly attention as other racial and ethnic groups in the 1 We use "Asian Pacific American" (APA) as a superordinate term that includes people in the US of Asian descent, such as East Asian (e.g., Korean, Chinese), Southeast Asian (e.g., Cambodian, Laotian) and South Asian (e.g., Indian) descent, as well as people in the US of Pacific Islander descent (e.g., Micronesian, native Hawaiian).We recognize that APA is a socially constructed term that can dangerously assume some a priori essence of a homogeneous, monolithic grouping with clearly distinguished boundaries, presenting a reified vision of unity and stability while papering over issues of diversity and murky borders (see Espiritu 1992 for a classic discussion of panethnicity).We are also aware of the controversy that the term "Asian Pacific American" generates, particularly in light of recent debates over the 2004 initiative to change the name of the Association of Asian American Studies to Association of Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies.(This resolution was eventually withdrawn from the ballot.)We respectfully use the term APA for this Special Issue because the papers by Talmy and Labrador deal not only with Asian Americans in Hawai'i, but also with native Hawaiians, people of "mixed" Asian and Pacific Islander heritage, and immigrants from the Marshall Islands, Chuuk and the Philippines (the Philippines being a not uncontentious member of the Pacific Islands).We hope that these two papers in particular contribute to the continuing discussion which surrounds the term "Asian Pacific American" through their critical examination of the linkages and tensions within and among the constructed boundaries of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.2 This issue developed from two sessions at the AAA conference in 2002 and 2003.We would like to thank the discussants and attendees at those sessions for their encouragement of this work, especially Barbara Johnstone and John Rickford.

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