Facebook: Semiotics and Identity among Generation 1.5 Chinese Immigrants
Yen-Lin Chou (PhD student, Department of Education)
Participant’s multimodal representation on his Facebook profile page
The current study aims to better understand how the use of Facebook is interrelated with collegiate-level generation 1.5 Chinese immigrant students’ language development and identity formation. Recent years have seen increased attention given to the ways computer-mediated communication (CMC) affects language learners’ trajectories of language practices in social contexts and cultural identity developments (Black, 2008; Lam, 2004). However, few empirical studies have explored the relationship between Facebook and immigrant students’ online literacies, social interactions, and cultural identity representations. It is believed that the digital composition of Facebook allows users to generate not only linguistic forms but also visual images (e.g. photos and video and audio clips), which increase their meaningful transmissions in on-line communications, especially across potential language and ethnic barriers. In order to address this gap, this study will examine four, collegiate-level generation 1.5 Chinese immigrant students’ literacy and social practices on Facebook. Qualitative research methods, such as semi-structured interviews, direct/unstructured observations, and collection of physical artifacts (e.g. field notes, Internet data, and interview translations and transcriptions) will be used. The purpose of this research study is to better understand how college-age generation 1.5 Chinese immigrant students use the multimodal (image, text, sound, space, movement) functions of Facebook to communicate, express themselves, and represent their identities.
Participant's groups
Thursday, February 5 1:54 pm
What are “college-age generation 1.5 Chinese immigrant students” ? What does 1.5 stand for and is it possible to be 1.5 and not be of college age? And what does “immigrant” mean in this context? Is this someone who has American citizenship?
What is the research question on the technology - is it (1) visual images are meaningful? (2)gen 1.5 Chinese have special skills/ new literacy with visual images compared to some other group (3)that cross generational/ethnic communication is better with visual rather than text (4) why lump together literacies, identities and interactions or if you do, who is this say any different than the 100s of other studies on the topic, like Niel’s Braroe’s Indian and White, now 40 years old - what “new” perspective does this study offer/propose? (5) why limit yourself to 4 people - with on0line access, can’t some methods be altered to compare and contrast more broadly some of the patterns of “interaction” that you are looking at, independent of interviewing people face-to-face? .
Sounds exciting and ambitious
Thursday, February 5 5:09 pm
Hey I just read an article that is not directly related but was sort of interesting
“‘Our Beer’: Ethnographic Brands in Postsocialist Georgia” (American Anthropologist 109[4]:626–641), Paul Manning and Ann Uplisashvili
So what does Georgia have to do with Chinese immigrants, well, OK, not much. But it does look at some common semoitic tools employed with dispora
Thursday, February 5 7:39 pm
There is a tiny little thought piece that you and Irina might be interested, that I think shifts some of the conversation about facebook in particular in
Focus on Facebook: Who Are We Anyway?
Anne McClard Ken Anderson
Anthropology News, Volume 49, Issue 3 (March 2008) Pages: 10-12
The main trust is that facebook is part of a new way to think about identity (and at this point I’m actually moving away from the Giddens et al “project” of modernist notions of identity) In part, there are no “representations” of the self so much as a doing of the self. This is a huge shift from things like homepages, friendster and myspace, examples from the tech world. It is actually larger than tech. I’m passively working on a paper in the space but it isn’t due until Nov so you can totally beat me to the punch
Saturday, March 14 3:41 pm
Thank you very much for your comments! These questions are very insightful.
What are “college-age generation 1.5 Chinese immigrant students” ?
–First introduced by Rumbaut and Ima (1988, as cited in Bloch, 2007), generation 1.5 immigrant students refers to those who immigrated to their new country during their teenage years. Generation 1.5 students may have received much of their education in their home countries before immigrating. Cultural, linguistic, family, and socioeconomic backgrounds may differentiate these students’ academic performances (Portes & Hao, 1998, as cited in Bloch, 2007). They carry the traditions and behaviors of their home countries as they immigrate to the United States. In this study, college-age generation 1.5 Chinese immigrant students refer to those students who immigrated to the United States from Taiwan or China during adolescence and have enrolled in or completed college. In comparison with second generation immigrant students, generation 1.5 immigrant students may have more difficulty assimilating to the mainstream society as they carry their old culture with them while immigrating.
What does 1.5 stand for and is it possible to be 1.5 and not be of college age?
–Yes, some of the participants have graduated from college and they are at work right now. The participants can also be a generation 1.5 student who isn’t yet of college age. We would like to concentrate on generation 1.5 immigrant students as they have the distinguishing characteristic that they aren’t first or second generation.
And what does “immigrant” mean in this context? Is this someone who has American citizenship?
–Yes. The definition of “immigrant” in this study stands for those who have American citizenship.
Basically, we would like to study the relationships among literacies, identities and interactions because we believe that an individual generates a sense of identity when understanding “who he/she is” (Erikson, 1993, as cited in Huffaker & Calvert, 2005). From the perspective of the social interactionists, the best way to explore an individual’s identity is to understand his/her language use (Harter, 1998, as cited in Huffaker & Calvert, 2005). On Facebook pages, people interact with each other through semiotic production, such as linguistic production and visual images. Therefore, it is a meaningful field to explore an individual’s identity. Moreover, people demonstrate and negotiate their languages, cultures, and identities in the virtual sphere (Black, 2008; Lam, 2004). Various researchers have probed how the linguistic forms, cultural norms, and social identifications are interrelated in the digital sphere (Black, 2005a, 2005b, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009; Lam, 2000, 2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2006).
Since the current study aims to provide an in-depth analysis instead of a wide-ranging view of collegiate Chinese immigrant students in the United States, the sampling is homogeneous and narrowed down to a limited size (Creswell, 2003, 2007). Moreover, because little is known about how bilingual/bicultural individuals use different semiotic resources to represent themselves, form social networks, and communicate their ideas in online contexts, this is an exploratory, qualitative study. We will try to recruit more participants in this study in order to increase the rigor of the study. And yes, we have conducted face-to-face interviews with the participants.
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