Creating belonging in San Francisco Chinatown diasporic community introduces an original analysis concerning multiple dynamics of social belonging construction elicited through spontaneous speech among Chinese residents in San Francisco. The study brings into light important issues connected with representations and self-labelling processes, especially in relation with localized language practices, which provide a kaleidoscopic overview on a historical community that currently represents 20% of the total population of the city.
Drawing on a methodological framework based on ethnographic fieldwork, Staicov adopted a qualitative and quantitative approach to conduct her study. She first administered a sociolinguistic questionnaire to a group of seventy-three first- and second-generation Chinese residents, aiming at gathering information about their ‘repertoires of identity’ (9). Afterwards, she conducted semistructured interviews and topic discussions with a subgroup of twenty-eight addressees, with two purposes: (i) to elicit morphosyntactic signals of ‘ethnic’ belonging (focusing in particular on markers of personal and social identity, such as past tense marking, noun number marking, and article use); and (ii) to deepen her understanding about dynamics of self-labeling and co-construction of group identities through spontaneous speech.
In terms of methodologies, Staicov has carried out an accurate multifaceted analysis, showing familiarity with statistical surveys (proposing, in this case, a model aimed at ‘correlating linguistic variables with social variables’; p. 169) and ethnographic fieldwork. Moreover, focusing on data collection aimed at investigating ethnic and linguistic self-representations through morphosyntactic structures, rather than through phonetic-phonological traits (as was done in similar contexts by other researchers, cf. Wong 2010 inter alia), her study is original and innovative in this domain. From a linguistic point of view, however, I argue that these phenomena might not only be investigated drawing on the field of morphosyntax, whereas it would be more productive to involve also the dimension of pragmatics, since the observed phenomena emerge from contextualized language use.
Moreover, by eliciting data through spontaneous speech, Staicov was able to gather relevant information about various self- and other-representations among the investigated group, including dynamics of ‘othering’ related to language use, attitudes towards power relations between English, Mandarin Chinese, and Cantonese, interconnections between ‘knowing Chinese and being Chinese’ (138), and contrasting feelings between pride of being Chinese and disappointment to be perceived as ‘forever foreigners’ (133) by the mainstream society. Nevertheless, even if the author declares several times to be using a constructivist approach in her research, orientations towards cultural essentialisms are sometimes detected both in the questionnaire and in the interview (which might imply the potential risk to providing processes of a priori labeling).
Terminologies are rather accurate, although the author sometimes tends to reflect a monoglossic view of bi/multilingual competence, encouraging binary choices between languages among her addressees, rather than the possibility to negotiate third spaces for more fluid and dynamic language practices.
Drawing on the above-mentioned considerations, and despite the limitations of the research (highlighted also by Staicov in the conclusions), I think this volume represents an important contribution to understanding linguistic and social dynamics among Chinese residents in San Francisco.
