East Asians Accepted: The Sociolinguistic Evolution of Language and Perceptions of East Asian Communities
Abstract
Through Asian expansion, East Asia has come to symbolise a new society of geopolitical significance and trade strength, both as an immigrant and emigrant region. The psychosocial dynamic of language assists East Asian communities to convey and also to internalise their heritage, food and religious practices, through discourse with non-East Asian people, as well as mainstream cultural symbols of East Asian identities. One potent factor that has regulated the movements of these demographics has been language and its imperialism, notably, English, Chinese, French, and Spanish, as globally dominant languages. The effect of ‘linguistic imperialism’ has forced East Asian people to develop a competence in English that is functional and acceptable to English speaking communities. This development has required East Asian communities to negotiate heritage to satisfy the requirements of integration into a globalized society. By speaking English, these communities can retain their heritage identities by retaining their heritage languages, whilst growing socially and professionally in diasporic contexts.
This paper provides a conceptual theoretical review of the contribution of sociolinguistics to East Asian people’s negotiation of identity, globally, that is, in their diasporic contexts. The paper provides a critical sociolinguistic discussion of the use of heritage languages in these East Asian communities in their diasporic contexts, owing to the growing global recognition of a diversity of Asian ethnicities, particularly in non-Asian societies.
Keywords: Diaspora; East Asian cultures; Language; Migration; Sociolinguistics, Linguistic Anthropology