Losing My Language: How the Subaltern Speaks

Abstract

The stories of immigrant communities throughout the world are fairly well-documented—most face some combination of assimilation, segregation, and unification. However, scholars and journalists alike have paid far less attention to those who fall somewhere in between these immigrant communities and in-state nationals. People often struggle to fit into the group they identify with when they are multiracial or their family immigrated one or more generations ago. Through previously conducted ethnographic case studies and autoethnography, this article seeks to examine the contested relationship between language, culture, and identity. Specifically, the article investigates how language ideology affects this language-identity-culture bind. The author’s experiences add a further dimension to the problem: minority individuals interested in another minority group’s history, language, or culture. Ultimately, the objective of this article is to stimulate greater conversation in the academic community about the relationship between language and culture.