Variation in Asian and Pacific Islander North American English

Abstract

Within sociolinguistic research on English variation, Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans (APINAs) are frequently described as an “understudied population” due to the relative lack of published studies that analyze these speakers or communities. This structured literature review systematically characterizes the state of the field from a variationist perspective. We find that while studies on APINAs have become more common in the last decade, different groups are represented unevenly in the existing literature; for example, East Asian groups are commonly represented in the literature in contrast to South Asian groups. Furthermore, the vast majority of variationist studies analyze phonetic and phonological variation, with a theoretical focus on identifying participation in race-based varieties (ethnolects/raciolects) or in sound changes of the “majority” population, rather than using the inherent diversity of APINA groups to bring attention to how race and ethnicity are being used in Sociolinguistics.