Doctoral Dissertation Research: Place, Persona, and Linguistic Style among College Student Border Commuters

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

Among the daily commuters who regularly cross national borders are students to attend college. As they navigate international borders and higher education, bilingualism is a critical aspect of their everyday life. These border-crossing students are not a homogenous group; they come from a range of backgrounds and have varying perspectives. They may have different answers to questions such as, "Which location do you prefer?" or "Do you feel connected to your campus?" In turn, this diversity can map on to differences in language use across languages. Sociolinguistic research has studied how speakers use linguistic variation to construct styles that reflect socially meaningful categories within a local community. People can vary how they speak to emphasize a quality about themselves or an aspect of their identity. For example, they may use certain linguistic features to sound more "feminine," or "cool," or from a certain region. Since much of this work has focused on monolingual communities, an ongoing research question is how bilingual speakers draw on resources from multiple languages to construct styles that represent different social identities. Thus, the present study analyzes the varied bilingual styles that emerge among college students. By documenting the experiences of bilingual transborder students, this work not only advances research in sociolinguistics and bilingualism but also represents a valuable contribution to fields in related areas, such as education and border studies. This doctoral dissertation aims to study how college border commuters vary in their linguistic practices and how higher education and regional identity shape their language use. To address these questions, this dissertation employs sociolinguistic interviews and ethnographic fieldwork at multiple postsecondary institutions representing different types of college experiences. The study uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the data and compare results across institutions in order to advance the study of variation and social meaning in bilingual populations. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.