Thoroughly Mixed Yet Thoroughly Ethnic: Indexing Class with Ethnonyms

Abstract

This article considers the roles played by ethnic mentions, or ethnonyms, in the discursive reconstruction of a former neighborhood in Easton, Pennsylvania, "Syrian Town." We argue that these labels engage in the production of ethnic difference by depicting a social world composed of discrete types while presupposing a local class divide and a contrasting neighborhood imagined as elite and privileged. In this way, speakers narrating stories of bygone days are taking a particular stance toward the diversity of their former neighborhood and the segregated cityscape of contemporary times, thereby challenging a once-dominant chain of indexicality. We conclude by arguing that close attention to vernacular usage allows us to advance our understanding of the relative importance of racial, ethnic, and class-based distinctions in specific locales, and challenges hegemonic constructions of the evolution of a Black-White binary in twentieth-

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