Premium
The English of adolescent and young adult Vietnamese refugees in the United States
Author(s) -
WOLFRAM WALT,
CHRISTIAN DONNA,
HATFIELD DEBORAH
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-971x.1986.tb00639.x
Subject(s) - vietnamese , variety (cybernetics) , refugee , somali , plural , immigration , linguistics , ethnic group , negation , psychology , sociology , gender studies , history , political science , computer science , anthropology , law , philosophy , artificial intelligence
Since the fall of Saigon in 1975, significant numbers of Vietnamese refugees have been arriving in the United States. The current situation gives rise to unique laboratory for observing the development of a variety of English, given the social circumstances that led to the abrupt influx of refugees. Based on sociolinguistic interviews with over 90 subjects in Northern Virginia, Christian et al. (1983) have described the ethnographic aspects of language usage and maintenance and the development of particular phonological amd grammatical features of English among four different age groups (10–12, 15–18, 20–25 and 35–55), and two different lengths of residency groups (1–3 and 4–7 years of residency) of Vietnamese immigrants. Language values and attitudes encourage both the use and maintenance of Vietnamese in some situations as well as the development of English proficiency. The specific investigation of English structures such as plural, third person singular absence, multiple negation, and unmarked tense indicates that the emerging variety is resisting diffusion from the nonstandard dialects of English while perpetuating some modification of English structures that may give rise to a unique ethnic variety of English.