“The other Asian”: Linguistic, ethnic and cultural stereotypes at an after -school Asian American teen videomaking project

This dissertation is a four-year ethnographic study that closely examines the relationship between language and identity among 1.5- and second-generation Southeast Asian American teenagers. These Cambodian, Vietnamese, Lao and ethnic-Chinese teens, dubbed “the other Asian” by one participant, are annually engaged in the cultural production of a 15-minute video at an after-school videomaking project in an Asian American community arts organization. Working from a theoretical foundation that combines linguistic anthropology, Asian American studies and education, I explore the ways in which teens draw on and play with circulating stereotypes of the self and other. Through reappropriating stereotypes, teens articulate a certain Asian Americanness that emerges from the complex and contested backdrop of linguistic diversity, racial communities, ethnic unrecognizability and cultural value. I use a methodologically rigorous approach to discourse analysis, employing a set of principled linguistic anthropological tools to closely examine video- and audio-recorded interactions at project sessions and screening discussions. This dissertation builds a compelling link between microlevel uses of language and macrolevel discourses of identity, race, ethnicity and culture by examining the ways in which this particular group of Asian American teens appropriates stereotypes