Identity in the London Indian diaspora: Towards the quantification of qualitative data

Abstract

For second-generation members of a diaspora community, ethnic and cultural affiliation are less straightforward than for the first generation. We compare information on identity construction in London's Indian Diaspora with the participants' linguistic integration into the host community. Our study is novel and exploratory in that it combines quantitative, variationist methodology with a qualitative approach. We employ two standard sociolinguistic instruments to model subjects' ethnic identity: a questionnaire and sociolinguistic interviews with a focus on discursive identity construction. In a second step we investigate possible connections between morphosyntactic variation and ethnic identity in language use data from three different communicative contexts. The results show that, while interview data on ethnic identity are amenable to quantification, clear correlations between the resulting identity scores and vernacular morphosyntactic features are difficult to find. In particular, patterns of style-shifting between the different communicative contexts are not as expected.gories are decided on or the social theory underlying these categories.' It is the aim of this article to take a step in the direction of filling this research gap. In order to do so, we employ two standard sociolinguistic instruments, namely: (a) a questionnaire eliciting information on the subjects' background (including language proficiency and occupation) and their degree of integration in both ethnic and host/mainstream 1 communities; and (b) sociolinguistic interviews with a focus on discursive identity construction (Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl, & Liebhart, 1999) and 166

Attention, identity and linguistic capital: inverted style-shifting in Anglo-Cornish dialect lexis

“…Another attested pattern of intraspeaker variation, whereby non-standard forms increase as attention-to-speech is elevated, has been referred to as an ‘inverted’ style pattern (Stuart-Smith 2014: 254; Sandow 2020). Inverted style-shifting has been observed in diverse localities, including Appalachia (Reed 2016), Belfast (Milroy 1987), Glasgow (Stuart-Smith et al 2007; Stuart-Smith & Ota 2014) and Israel (Gafter 2016), as well as among British Indian adolescents in London (Hundt & Staicov 2018).…”

On models and modelling

“…2020See studies such as Zipp and Staicov (2016) or Hundt and Staicov (2018) for an attempt at quantifying ethnographically researched identity constructions and relating them to usage patterns.…”