Vietglish: translanguaging in Vietnamese and English

Thesis

This dissertation investigates the translanguaging patterns of five Vietnamese-American individuals residing in the state of California, focusing on the attitudes, motivations, and insights of these participants on their use of Vietnamese as a heritage language. Since the beginning of large-scale immigration from Vietnam to the United States following the sociopolitical events of the 1970s, overseas Vietnamese communities have had extensive contact with the language and culture of the new host countries to which they had emigrated. This study specifically investigates the translanguaging practice of combining Vietnamese and English within conversations and utterances for daily, vernacular use, informally dubbed “Vietglish”.

In the first phase of the research project, natural-speech audio files were extracted by five participants through hands-off recordings of conversations in the home. These recordings were transcribed and analyzed for meaning and translanguaging occurrences. In the second phase of the research project, participants were remotely interviewed using discourse-based interview questions as well as stimulated recall measures. These interviews were also transcribed, and the transcripts were analyzed for instances of translanguaging and dynamic language use across Vietnamese and English based on content as well as form.

The findings suggest that these five inhabitants of Orange County, CA, U.S.A. are highly motivated to maintain the use of Vietnamese and English in their community and families. These participants also monitor and regulate their language use in order to convey respect and deference to both their immediate superiors or elders, as well as to express respect and emotional ties to abstract concepts and events. While participants varyingly reported negative emotions about the use of Vietglish, all interviewees indicated that they use Vietglish daily, nearly everyday, or otherwise regularly.

Authors: Nguyen, B-LL

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-2avq7zqjg
• Type of award: MSc taught course
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: qualitative research; transcription; discourse analysis; translanguaging; ALSLA; interviews; sociolinguistics; Vietnamese; Viet Kieu; ALSLA2021; Vietglish; conversation analysis; immigrant speech practices; code-switching; bilingualism; remote data collection; multilingualism; stimualted recall
• Subjects: Multilingualism; Qualitative research; Second language acquisition; Applied linguistics; Vietglish; Translanguaging (Linguistics); Sociolinguistics