Corporations are people: Emblematic scales of brand personification among Asian American youth

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the use of corporate names as personal nicknames for Asian American youth. The analysis traces the meanings of these nicknaming practices through the concepts ofbrand personification(how figures of personhood are recruited as embodiments of corporate brands) andemblematic scales(how signs of personhood emerge across trajectories of use and scales of time). Within the crossracial institutional structure of an Asian American supplementary school, these nicknaming practices not only formulate speech, participants, relationships, and settings as informal, but also infuse the nicknamed with brand qualities linked to race, nation, class, and status. These practices also generate fleeting and stable frameworks of group distinction and adequation that operate simultaneously or cyclically and that maintain or transgress classroom roles and racial boundaries. This article demonstrates how an attention to temporal dimensions enables researchers to explore the ways in which small-scale activities accumulate across events and assemble into wider scale structural change. (Nickname, brand, emblem, timescale, trajectory, Asian American youth, race, classroom discourse)*

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