Doctoral Dissertation Research: Does language affect cultural identity among minority populations?

Globalization has contributed to both blurring and retrenchment of ethnic boundaries. On the one hand, acculturation can lead to one population absorbing another; on the other, populations may cleave to specific identity markers as ways of distinguishing themselves from others. How different markers operate to impact these processes remains poorly understood. This doctoral dissertation project investigates how minority populations sharing cultural, linguistic, and religious identities leverage different markers to claim a coherent group identity. The project trains a graduate student in scientific cultural anthropology and disseminates its findings broadly to academic and non-academic audiences. The project seeks to investigate how minority and majority populations interact and shape each other’s identities, cultural markers, and claims of political belonging. Using participant observation, surveys, interviews, and archival research, the investigators query the following: 1) how literary, religious, and ethnic associations understand and interpret linguistic and ethnic identities; and if and in what ways language and other ethnic markers are used by majority and minority populations to interpret political belonging. In doing so, the researchers help to resolve fundamental questions regarding interrelationships among populations and the markers they use to mediate those relationships. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.