Abstract
By inscribing and ascribing particular indexical signifiers to people while ignoring and/or dismissing actual individual performative enactments and self-identifications, neoliberal multicultural discourses, in claiming tolerance and acceptance, frame racialized people as “an essentialized and totalized unit that is perceived to have little or no internal variation” (Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 2000. Racialized discourses and ethnic epistemologies. In Norman K. Denzin & Yvonna S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of qualitative research, 2nd edn., 257–277. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage). In doing so, these discourses supposedly celebrating ‘diversity’ disregard the complexities, hybridities, and differences that constitute and are constitutive of any individual. Thus, in drawing on the ethos of tolerance and acceptance, ‘multicultural’ discourses paper over societal conflicts, internal divisions and oppressions, and homogenize racial, linguistic, and cultural identities ignoring the complex identifications people may perform and hold in any given interactional situational context. In this critical autoethnography, I illustrate how an indexical order of ‘Asianness’ in its ‘model minority’ variety has been shaped and subverted at times by my situated appropriations of various enregisterments (Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and social relations. Cambridge University Press) of a working-class heteronormative masculinity in interactional contexts. These enactments illuminate how an indexical order of an Asian American male has continually shifted and reacted to such positionings in a white supremacy society.
References
Adams, Tony E., Carolyn Ellis & Stacy H. Jones. 2017. Autoethnography. In Jorg Matthes, Christine S. Davis & Robert F. Potter (eds.), The international Encyclopedia of communication research methods, 1–11. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Search in Google Scholar
Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and social relations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary & Kira Hall. 2016. Embodied sociolinguistics. In Nikolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical debates, 173–197. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781107449787.009Search in Google Scholar
Chang, Gordon H. 2019. Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The epic story of the Chinese who built the Transcontinental Railroad. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Search in Google Scholar
Chang, Iris. 2003. The Chinese in America: A narrative history. New York: Penguin Books.Search in Google Scholar
Chou, Rosalind S. 2012. Asian American sexual politics: The construction of race, gender, and sexuality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Search in Google Scholar
Chun, Christian W. 2020. The return of the ‘Yellow Peril’: The fear of getting sick from the other. Journal of Language, Culture and Society 2(2). 252–259. https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.00029.chu.Search in Google Scholar
Chun, Christian W. 2022. A world without capitalism? Alternative discourses, spaces, and imaginaries. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781003241041Search in Google Scholar
Connell, R. W. & James W. Messerschmidt. 2005. Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender & Society 19(6). 829–859. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243205278639.Search in Google Scholar
Ellison, Ralph. 1952/1995. Invisible man. New York: Vintage Books.Search in Google Scholar
Eng, David L. 2001. Racial castration: Managing masculinity in Asian America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.10.2307/j.ctv1131bk8Search in Google Scholar
Flores, Nelson. 2016. A tale of two visions: Hegemonic Whiteness and bilingual education. Educational Policy 30(1). 13–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904815616482.Search in Google Scholar
Foner, Philip S. & Daniel Rosenberg. 1993. In Philip S. Foner & Daniel Rosenberg (eds.), Racism, dissent, and Asian Americans from 1850 to the present: A documentary history. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press.Search in Google Scholar
Gans, Herbert J. 1979. Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in America. Ethnic and Racial Studies 2(1). 1–20.10.1080/01419870.1979.9993248Search in Google Scholar
George, Henry. 1869/1993. The Chinese in California. In Philip S. Foner & Daniel Rosenberg (eds.), Racism, dissent, and Asian Americans from 1850 to the present: A documentary history, 84–87. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The meaning of style. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Heizer, Robert F. & Alan J. Almquist. 1971. The Other Californians: Prejudice and Discrimination under Spain, Mexico, and the United States to 1920. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar
Ho, Rob. 2015. Model minority convergences in North America: Asian parallels in Canada and the United States. In Nicholas D. Hartlep & Brad J. Porfilio (eds.), Killing the model minority stereotype: Asian American counterstories and complicity, 117–132. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc.Search in Google Scholar
Hong, Cathy Park. 2020. Minor feelings: An Asian American reckoning. New York: One World.Search in Google Scholar
Ignatiev, Noel. 1995. How the Irish became White. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Kwong, Peter. 1996. The new Chinatown, Rev. edn. New York: Hill and Wang.Search in Google Scholar
Kwong, Peter & Dusanka Miščević. 2005. Chinese America: The untold story of America’s oldest new community. New York: The New Press.Search in Google Scholar
Labov, William. 2006. The social stratification of English in New York City, 2nd edn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511618208Search in Google Scholar
Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 2000. Racialized discourses and ethnic epistemologies. In Norman K. Denzin & Yvonna S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of qualitative research, 2nd edn., 257–277. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Search in Google Scholar
Lee, Erika. 2019. America for Americans: A history of xenophobia in the United States. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
Liu, Eric. 1998. The accidental Asian: Notes of a native speaker. New York: Vintage Books.Search in Google Scholar
Lo, Adrienne & Angela Reyes. 2009. Introduction: On Yellow English and other perilous terms. In Angela Reyes & Andrienne Lo (eds.), Beyond Yellow English: Toward a linguistic anthropology of Asian Pacific America, 3–17. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Man, Simeon. 2020. Anti-Asian violence and US imperialism. Race & Class 62(2). 24–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306396820949779.Search in Google Scholar
Marchetti, Gina. 1993. Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, sex, and discursive strategies in Hollywood fiction. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520914629Search in Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S. & Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
McDermott, Monica. 2006. Working-class white: The making and unmaking of race relations. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520939691Search in Google Scholar
Miller, Amy L., Thai-Huy Nguyen & Marybeth Gasman. 2015. Hapas in college: Multiracial Asian identity and the model minority myth. In Nicholas D. Hartlep & Brad J. Porfilio (eds.), Killing the model minority stereotype: Asian American counterstories and complicity, 41–60. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc.Search in Google Scholar
Moore, Michael. 1988. Scapegoats again. Progressive 52. 25–28.Search in Google Scholar
Morrison, Toni. 1993. Nobel prize in literature 1993 lecture. Available at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/.Search in Google Scholar
Pan, Lynn. 1994. Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A history of the Chinese diaspora. New York: Kodansha International.Search in Google Scholar
Park, Gilbert C. 2015. Towards the model minority: Asian Americanization of Burmese immigrants as a model minority in a high school. In Nicholas D. Hartlep & Brad J. Porfilio (eds.), Killing the model minority stereotype: Asian American counterstories and complicity, 3–17. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc.Search in Google Scholar
Pfaelzer, Jean. 2007. Driven out: The forgotten war against Chinese Americans. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar
Reyes, Angela. 2009. Asian American stereotypes as circulating resource. In Angela Reyes & Adrienne Lo (eds.), Beyond Yellow English: Toward a linguistic anthropology of Asian Pacific America, 43–62. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327359.003.0003Search in Google Scholar
Steinberg, Stephen. 2001. The ethnic myth: Race, ethnicity, and class in America, 3rd edn. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Search in Google Scholar
Stop AAPI Hate. 2022. National report (through December 31, 2021). Available at: https://stopaapihate.org/national-report-through-december-31-2021/.Search in Google Scholar
Tchen, John Kuo Wei & Dylan Yeats (eds.). 2014. Yellow peril! An archive of anti-Asian fear. London: Verso.Search in Google Scholar
Tran, Phuc. 2020. Sigh, gone: A misfit’s memoir of great books, punk rock, and the fight to fit in. New York: Flatiron Books.Search in Google Scholar
Tuan, Mia. 1998. Forever foreigners or honorary Whites? The Asian ethnic experience today. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Wu, Frank H. 2002. Yellow: Race in America beyond Black and White. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: The Yellow Peril or the Model Minority? Racialized identities and discourses of Asian Americans and Asian Canadians; Guest Editor: Christian Chun
- Research Articles
- Paradoxes of the Canadian mosaic: “being, feeling and doing Canadian”
- The Asian American teaching method? An overview of language education, social justice issues, and challenging ‘Oppressed’ versus ‘Model’ minority binary discourse
- Life and work between home and “homeland”: a narrative inquiry of transnational Chinese adoptees’ identity negotiations across time and space
- I ain’t your f*cking Model Minority! Indexical orders of ‘Asianness’, class, and heteronormative masculinity
- Special Issue: Assessment and Creativity through a Translingual Lens; Guest Editors: Lavinia Hirsu, Marta Nitecka Barche and Dobrochna Futro
- Editorials
- Assessment and creativity through a translingual lens: introduction
- Assessment and creativity through a translingual lens: transdisciplinary insights
- Creative translanguaging in formative assessment: Chinese teachers’ perceptions and practices in the primary EFL classroom
- Creativity, criticality and translanguaging in assessment design: perspectives from Bangladeshi higher education
- Integrating translanguaging into assessment: students’ responses and perceptions
- Research Articles
- Investigation of factors underlying foreign language classroom anxiety in Chinese university English majors
- Why can’t I teach English? A case study of the racialized experiences of a female Ugandan teacher of English in an EFL context
- Primary-concern solicitation in Chinese medical encounters
- The relationships between young FL learners’ classroom emotions (anxiety, boredom, & enjoyment), engagement, and FL proficiency
- Visualising the language practices of lower secondary students: outlines for practice-based models of multilingualism
- Observing a teacher’s interactional competence in an ESOL classroom: a translanguaging perspective
- Foreign language teacher grit: scale development and examining the relations with emotions and burnout using relative weight analysis
- Vocabulary learning in a foreign language: multimedia input, sentence-writing task, and their combination
- The predictive effects of reading speed and positive affect on first and second language incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading an authentic novel
- The effects of cultural and educational background on students’ use of language learning strategies in CFL learning
- Transl[iter]ating Dubai’s linguistic landscape: a bilingual translation perspective between English and Arabic against a backdrop of globalisation
- Exploring Tibetan residents’ everyday language practices in Danba county, Southwest China: a case study
- The mechanism for the positive effect of foreign language peace of mind in the Chinese EFL context: a moderated mediation model based on learners’ individual resources
- A latent profile analysis of L2 writing emotions and their relations to writing buoyancy, motivation and proficiency
- “Part of me is teaching English”: probing the language-related teaching practices of an English-medium instruction (EMI) teacher
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: The Yellow Peril or the Model Minority? Racialized identities and discourses of Asian Americans and Asian Canadians; Guest Editor: Christian Chun
- Research Articles
- Paradoxes of the Canadian mosaic: “being, feeling and doing Canadian”
- The Asian American teaching method? An overview of language education, social justice issues, and challenging ‘Oppressed’ versus ‘Model’ minority binary discourse
- Life and work between home and “homeland”: a narrative inquiry of transnational Chinese adoptees’ identity negotiations across time and space
- I ain’t your f*cking Model Minority! Indexical orders of ‘Asianness’, class, and heteronormative masculinity
- Special Issue: Assessment and Creativity through a Translingual Lens; Guest Editors: Lavinia Hirsu, Marta Nitecka Barche and Dobrochna Futro
- Editorials
- Assessment and creativity through a translingual lens: introduction
- Assessment and creativity through a translingual lens: transdisciplinary insights
- Creative translanguaging in formative assessment: Chinese teachers’ perceptions and practices in the primary EFL classroom
- Creativity, criticality and translanguaging in assessment design: perspectives from Bangladeshi higher education
- Integrating translanguaging into assessment: students’ responses and perceptions
- Research Articles
- Investigation of factors underlying foreign language classroom anxiety in Chinese university English majors
- Why can’t I teach English? A case study of the racialized experiences of a female Ugandan teacher of English in an EFL context
- Primary-concern solicitation in Chinese medical encounters
- The relationships between young FL learners’ classroom emotions (anxiety, boredom, & enjoyment), engagement, and FL proficiency
- Visualising the language practices of lower secondary students: outlines for practice-based models of multilingualism
- Observing a teacher’s interactional competence in an ESOL classroom: a translanguaging perspective
- Foreign language teacher grit: scale development and examining the relations with emotions and burnout using relative weight analysis
- Vocabulary learning in a foreign language: multimedia input, sentence-writing task, and their combination
- The predictive effects of reading speed and positive affect on first and second language incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading an authentic novel
- The effects of cultural and educational background on students’ use of language learning strategies in CFL learning
- Transl[iter]ating Dubai’s linguistic landscape: a bilingual translation perspective between English and Arabic against a backdrop of globalisation
- Exploring Tibetan residents’ everyday language practices in Danba county, Southwest China: a case study
- The mechanism for the positive effect of foreign language peace of mind in the Chinese EFL context: a moderated mediation model based on learners’ individual resources
- A latent profile analysis of L2 writing emotions and their relations to writing buoyancy, motivation and proficiency
- “Part of me is teaching English”: probing the language-related teaching practices of an English-medium instruction (EMI) teacher