Variation in Asian and Pacific Islander North American English

Within sociolinguistic research on English variation, Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans (APINAs) are frequently described as an “understudied population” due to the relative lack of published studies that analyze these speakers or communities. This structured literature review systematically characterizes the state of the field from a variationist perspective. We find that while studies on APINAs have become more common in the last decade, different groups are represented unevenly in the existing literature; for example, East Asian groups are commonly represented in the literature in contrast to South Asian groups. Furthermore, the vast majority of variationist studies analyze phonetic and phonological variation, with a theoretical focus on identifying participation in race-based varieties (ethnolects/raciolects) or in sound changes of the “majority” population, rather than using the inherent diversity of APINA groups to bring attention to how race and ethnicity are being used in Sociolinguistics.

在有關英語變異的社會語言學研究中，亞太裔北美人（APINAs）經常被描述為 “研究不足的人群”，這是因為相對缺乏對這些語言使用者或社區進行分析的公開研究。本結構化文獻綜述從變異學視角系統地描述了該領域的現狀。我們發現，在過去的十年中，關於 APINA 的研究越來越普遍，但不同群體在現有文獻中的代表性並不均衡； 例如，東亞群體在文獻中的代表性普遍高於南亞群體。此外，絕大多數變異論研究分析的是語音和音素變異，其理論重點是識別參與基於種族的變體（ethnolects/raciolects）或“多數”人口的音變，而不是利用APINA群體固有的多樣性來引起人們對社會語言學中如何使用種族和民族這兩個概念的關注。