Coding for Demographic Categories in the Creation of Legacy Corpora: Asian American Ethnic Identities
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: A set of shared coding conventions for speaker ethnicity is necessary for open‐source data sharing and cross‐study compatibility between linguistic corpora. However, ethnicity, like many other aspects of speaker identity, is continually negotiated and reproduced in discourse, and therefore a challenge to code representatively. This paper discusses some of the challenges facing researchers who want to use, create, or contribute to existing corpora that are annotated for the ethnic identity of a speaker. We specifically problematize the macro‐social label ‘Asian American’ and propose that researchers should consider different levels and types of specificity of ‘Asianness’ in order to ensure that the corpora best represent the reality of ethnic identity in the community sampled. This is particularly important given the limited incorporation of different Asian groups in most existing linguistic research). We argue that more rigorous coding for Asian American ethnicities in corpora will improve the utility of archived corpora and enhance sociolinguistic research on language variation and ethnic identity.
Source: Language and Linguistics Compass
DOI: 10.1111/lnc3.12117
Authors: Lauren Hall‐Lew, Amy Wing‐mei Wong
Institutions: University of Edinburgh, New York University
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2147842852