Academic

speaking in asian america: the hidden accent

by Justine Choi

A walk down any street, anywhere in the United States will yield an assorted use of the habitual be. Exclaimed by white, Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous people alike, the habitual be been spreading across racial groups throughout the US from its origins in African American English (AAE). The mass exportation of American hip-hop and rap culture across the globe in the past few decades combined with the rise of social media sites such as Instagram and Tik Tok has catapulted the dialect of AAE into mainstream prominence (Laguda 2023). This has resulted in a more formal recognition of AAE academically not only as an official dialect, but also as a legitimate way of speaking amongst a certain portion of the American population. Interest around AAE has also aroused interest in the possibility of other analogous ethnolects, particularly for Asian Americans; however, the perceived proximity to whiteness Asian Americans possess has resulted in only minimal research done on the likelihood of an “Asian American Accent,” for it has just been assumed that Asian Americans speak the same regional variant of English as their European American counterparts. Pervasive claims that Americans of Asian descent are “linguistically white” (Newman and Wu 2011) and that the diversity of the community prevents such formation of a dialect have thwarted attempts of categorizing Asian American speech patterns, yet both empirical evidence and the average anecdote have proven that ”Asian American ethnolinguistic distinctiveness must exist” (Newman and Wu 2011).

Even in the face of widespread dialect leveling caused by the greater interconnectedness of the past century (Cheng and Cho 2021), due to lasting legacies of racism and redlining, ethnolects, or the varieties of language spoken by a specific ethnoracial group and others who associate closely with them, continue to live on. Some, like AAVE, have achieved worldwide influence through its importance in hip hop, rap, R&B, jazz, and other musical genres (Laguda 2023); others, such as Cajun, have remained understudied (Newman and Wu 2011). The English spoken by Asian American also continues to be underrepresented in academic literature, with studies tending to focus more on “interactional rather than variationist questions,” (Newman and Wu 2011). This, in part, is because of “the truth that Asian American speakers are very diverse, and their speech styles and other linguistic behaviors were drawn from a variety of sources, not one hegemonic Asian American identity,” (Cheng and Cho 2021). Despite this, there has been previous evidence of dialects forming between groups that are jointly racialized, such as between the Jews and Italian Americans of New York City, as demonstrated by William Labov (2006). By extension, this can be seen in even Standard American English (SAE); because of its roots as a colonial dialect, SAE eventually absorbed influences from the varying European groups that immigrated to North America to form a version of English distinct from that in Great Britain. 

However, the denotation of “ethnolect” is not without controversy, as “there is no obvious way to distinguish between a dialect with ethnic features and an ethnolect,” (Eckert 2008). Additionally, while some speakers of an ethnolect may use all defining features, others may use none at all; some speakers have substantive interaction with non-speakers, but others may have little. Because of the definition limits of a term like “ethnolect,” Sarah Bunin Benor has argued for the use of the term “ethnolinguistic repertoire,” as “the notion of repertoire…better captures how sometimes one feature and sometimes another is deployed by speakers as an ethnic index,” (2010). The untangling of an Asian American accent from one specific ethnicity or another is imperative for the defining of a pan-minority language variety that exists congruent with many other forms of speaking. 

David B. Hanna’s 1997 study concerning a listener's ability to detect race based solely on phonological qualities was one of the first attempts to prove that voices could be identified as Asian American at a rate higher than chance. During the study, Hanna compiled “speech samples of 12 second- generation Asian American (6 male, 6 female) and 8 Caucasian American (4 male, 4 female) native English speakers,” with the Asian American subjects in particular composed of individuals of Chinese, Korean, Filipino, and Taiwanese descent. After the stabilization of variables such as city of origin and age, the samples were played back to a panel of listeners under the hypothesis that “judges would be able to distinguish between the Asian American speakers and their white American counterparts,” (Hanna 1997) and judges were given a forced-choice of either white or Asian as a race. Results proved that there is indeed a level of difference between the speech of white and Asian Americans (Hanna 1997). Subsequent studies have all more or less followed the similar format of Hanna’s: speakers are recorded, then played back to a set of listeners; however, slight variations by other researchers have yielded valuable insights. 

In a 2021 study by Andrew Cheng and Steve Cho, the speech samples of 39 Korean Americans were played back to 105 racially-diverse listeners who rated the speaker as either more or less likely to be White, Black, Asian, or Hispanic on a scale of one to five, with one being the least and five being the most likely; however, listeners were not informed that all the speakers were Korean American. If the listener rated the speaker as either likely or very likely to be Asian (four or five), they were then prompted with a further choice of what ethnicity the speaker was (Chinese/Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, or other). What this study revealed, as did Hanna’s, was that listeners who were Asian American themselves correctly identified the voices as Asian American at a higher rate than their non-Asian counterparts, with one Korean American listener even going to state: “honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if every person in the sound samples were all Korean people from California,” (Cheng and Cho 2021). And she was correct, demonstrating that the existence of an Asian American accent is also contingent on its detection by other in-group members. 

What this study also revealed was that the “positive association between being American-born (versus foreign-born) and being White was even stronger than the negative association between being American-born and being Asian,” (Cheng and Cho 2021). This demonstrates that the default setting of the average American remains white, entrenching the “perpetual foreigner” stereotype that continues to follow Asian Americans, regardless of how long they have lived in the US for. A notable example of this is the case of Judge Lance Ito who presided over the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995 and was labeled as having an “Asian accent,” despite having been born and raised in the US to second-generation Japanese American parents (Cheng and Cho 2021). Here is where Asian Americans’ supposed status as “honorary whites'' comes to an impasse, constantly dangled between the label of “model minority” and the ability to never be “American enough,” (Wong and Babel 2017) reinforced by an aura of linguistic chauvinism that rejects the validity of non-SAE speech styles, particularly those developed by racial minorities and lower socio-economic classes. Indeed, “listeners who reported being aware of ethnoracially-based language variation were more likely to be accurate in ethnoracial discrimination of Asian talkers from other talker groups,” while listeners who were ambivalent about language diversity were less successful (Chang and Fraser 2023). 

Nonetheless, the previously mentioned studies, as well as those by Charles B. Chang and Kate Fraser (2023), Michael Newman and Angela Wu (2011), Charles B. Chang and Danielle Dionne (2022), and Phoebe Wong and Molly Babel (2017) have evinced the existence of definable elements of an Asian American ethnolinguistic repertoire. In the study by Newman and Wu, Asian American speakers were shown to have “higher spectral tilts than all the non-Asians…[which] support[s] the idea that [a] breathier voice is characteristic of ‘sounding Asian,’” (2011). This is also confirmed by Cheng and Cho, whose results stated that “speakers who were rated as most likely to be Asian had the highest-pitched voices”, (2021). More informally, this finding manifested itself with characterizations of “‘upspeak’, an ‘upward lilt’...‘lack of assertiveness,’” (Hanna 1997) and “the ‘Valley Girl’ stereotype,” (Cheng and Cho 2021) particularly the second to last pointing to the widely held belief that Asians tend to be meek, submissive, and unassertive. Whether this derived from a self-fulfilling prophecy or some other unknown factor is yet to be determined. 

More empirically, factors that distinguish Asian American talkers from others include “longer mean VOTs [voice onset times] than the non-Asians,” the production of /ɛ/s that are particularly low and back, somewhat greater rhoticity (Newman and Wu 2011), “/ð/-stopping… aspiration in word-initial and word-medial /t/, and word-final devoicing…relatively faster speech rate and raised pitch at prosodic boundaries (also called high rising terminals, or “uptalk”),” and “less reduction in unstressed syllables,” (Cheng and Cho 2021). This essentially means that Asian American speakers aspirate strongly, tend to pronounce words starting with th- with a d-, and have lost the vowel distinction between words such as cot and caught. While many Asian American speakers of English concretely demonstrate these properties, it is worth noting that many of these features are associated with stereotypes concerning English speakers of Asian ancestry, such as “the phenomenon of not producing a distinction between the lateral /l/ and the rhotic /ɹ/…[which] is based on the logic that substrate influence from an Asian heritage language that does not contrast laterals and rhotics (e.g., Japanese) could lead to failure to distinguish these sounds,” (Chang and Dionne 2023). Interestingly, none of the Asian American speakers in any of the aforementioned trials were of Japanese descent, but nevertheless, this feature has spread to other Asian ethnicities, gesturing to the genesis of a pan-Asian American repertoire. 

Perhaps subconsciously, however, many of the elements of a possible Asian American ethnolinguistic repertoire reflect enduring stereotypes of the community, such as the L/R-Conflation and upspeak mentioned above. In addition, the Korean American female speakers of Cheng’s and Cho’s study seem to confirm to “the perception [that] Asian identity in female voices does appear to be closely tied to pitch and other suprasegmental vocal properties,” as “the speakers who were rated as most likely to be Asian had the highest-pitched voices; however, this was only true for female speakers,” (2021). On the other hand, having identifiable vocal markers may help marginalized communities signal status as an in-group member when visual cues are not possible, such as on the phone, or simply, some Asian Americans may emphasized certain phonological traits to aid acceptance into American society by buying into the mainstream media’s portrayal of Asian Americans. 

Regardless of the salience that an Asian American accent holds in contemporary national culture, recognition of such an accent is still largely confined to the Asian American community itself (Chang and Dionne 2023). Throughout the studies, listeners of Asian descent were consistentlyconsistenly able to successfully label speakers as Asian at a rate higher than all other racial groups. The narrow use of “Asian” in these cases, however, presents a caveat to these findings, as the vast majority of studies have only concerned speakers of East or Southeast Asian descent. Only one study (that by Wong and Babel) used in this paper researched any South Asian ethnicity. In the name of practicality, Asian Americans of South Asian descent are committed “to restrict the number of variables…[as] a methodological judgment,” (Hanna 1997). While understandable from a procedural viewpoint, this decision ultimately emphasizes the East Asian-normativity that continues to plague the Asian American community, and for that reason, a renaming of the prospective “Asian American Accent” is warranted. 

The linguistic landscape of the United States is in constant flux, with old dialects fading into obscurity and new ones gaining visibility daily. Likewise, the demographic makeup of America is also evolving, and Asian Americans will play an even greater role in the coming future. The unique language spoken by young second- and third-generation Asian immigrants forges an integral role in the sense of identity held by a demographic that is both put on a pedestal, yet held at an arm's length away from the prevailing standard of whiteness. Creation of a shared understanding, a communal memory, and a cross-ethnic camaraderie is all facilitated by the existence of a collective medium of verbal communication, so the “Asian American Accent,” whether it be pronouncing bit as beet or using an excessive amount of “like,” (Cheng and Cho 2021), bears the mark of the mixture of the stereotyped and the voluntarily adopted, the unity of the Asian community in the vastness of America. 

Works Cited

Benor, Sarah Bunin. “Ethnolinguistic repertoire: Shifting the analytic focus in language and ethnicity¹.” Journal of Sociolinguistics, vol. 14, no. 2, Apr. 2010, pp. 159–183, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2010.00440.x.  

Chang, Charles B., and Danielle Dionne. “Unity and diversity in Asian American language variation: Data from Chinese, Filipino, Korean, and Vietnamese Americans.” Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001669.  

Chang, Charles B., and Kate Fraser. “On the auditory identifiability of Asian American identity in speech: The role of listener background, sociolinguistic awareness, and language ideologies.” Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, vol. 8, no. 1, 27 Apr. 2023, p. 5558, https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5558.

Cheng, Andrew, and Steve Cho. “The Effect of Ethnicity on Identification of Korean American Speech.” Languages, vol. 6, no. 4, 9 Nov. 2021, p. 186, https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6040186.  

Eckert, Penelope. “Where do ethnolects stop?” International Journal of Bilingualism, vol. 12, no. 1–2, Mar. 2008, pp. 25–42, https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069080120010301.  

Hanna, David B. “Do I Sound ‘Asian’ to You?: Linguistic Markers of Asian American Identity.” University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 4, no. 2, 1997, pp. 141–153. 

Labov, William. The Social Stratification of English in New York City, 9 Nov. 2006, https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511618208.  

Laguda, Ayoka. “The Globalization of African American Vernacular English (AAVE).” Ayoka Laguda, Ayoka Laguda, 13 Dec. 2023, www.ayokalaguda.com/writing/the-globalization-of-african-american-vernacular-english-aave  

Newman, Michael, and Angela Wu. “‘Do you sound asian when you speak English?’ racial identification and voice in Chinese and Korean Americans’ English.” American Speech, vol. 86, no. 2, 1 May 2011, pp. 152–178, https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-1336992.  

Wong, Phoebe, and Molly Babel. “Perceptual identification of talker ethnicity in Vancouver English.” Journal of Sociolinguistics, vol. 21, no. 5, Nov. 2017, pp. 603–628, https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12264.

Think of the top ten slang words you use daily. I’ll give you some of mine: “yass”, “diva”, “bet”, “mama/mother”, “bruh”, and the list goes on. I’m going to bet that at least one of your top 10 words originated in the queer community. You may be surprised, but it is no surprise to linguists; this is simply how American English stays relevant—by appropriating slang from subordinate groups. American English would be stagnant unless it borrows trends, fads, and slang from its marginalized communities, whose slang seems cool and interesting to the mainstream. This process is the start of many problems for the queer community.

There are a few useful terms to explain this phenomenon. First are dominant and subordinate (marginalized) groups. The groups, coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, refer to groups with power in a facet of identity. Appropriation always involves a marginalized group having something borrowed or taken from them by a dominant group or culture in a way that many members of the marginalized group find offensive or do not agree with, and it often involves the dominant group “insidiously refashioning” the object to fit dominant norms. Because the queer community is so diverse, it has uniquely become both an appropriator of language from its queer POC subgroup and an appropriated lexicon, co-opted by straight, white America. Queer slang today has taken on the complex role of both the appropriator and the appropriated, the former of which is not often recognized.

Well, how did queer slang come to be what it is today? Research suggests that a large part of the queer lexicon’s history was influenced by the global acceptance of queerness and evolved as a way to protect members of the community from recognition or ‘outing’ them. One of the major roots of queer slang was a dialect called Polari, used by gay British men in the early 20th century. Polari originated in European port cities as a hybrid language made up of Italian, Romani, rhyming slang, sailor slang, and thieves’ cant. It was mainly used by homosexual British workers in the theater scene and among the British Merchant Navy. Words like “drag,” “camp,” and “zhuzh” all originated from Polari. Polari was used to maintain secrecy, but also as a means of socializing with like-minded people more safely. This protective protectional aspect of queer language was also especially exhibited in another queer space known as ballroom culture.

First occurring in the 1920s in Harlem, gay balls were born out of racial tension. People of color were not allowed to participate in the lavish gay affairs of the white community, so the gay Black community created a social space to express their sexuality freely. Balls began as extravagant underground drag performances, but by the 1970s, the events had evolved to feature an array of themes to celebrate the performers’ artistic expression, gender identities, sexualities, and ethnicities. The art and slang that stemmed from ballroom culture were appropriated by the larger queer community, and much later, broader America.

Ballroom culture, while it created a safe space for Black queer people, was also subject to appropriation by the larger queer community. The appropriation of queer slang, as well as Black, queer slang, mirrors the broader cultural appropriation pattern in which dominant groups adopt and redefine elements from subordinate groups. Dominant cultures adopt language and culture “without fully appreciating their significance” in their communities. These terms become commodities in the dominant culture, used as symbols of ‘coolness’ and cultural relevance—an opposite purpose from the community-building origins of the terms. Marginalized communities have been turned into slang workhorses; they rush to create slang to rebuild community, only to have it turned into a product, trend, and prized possession for the dominant mainstream.

Similar to how the dominant mainstream adopts slang from subordinate groups, other subordinate groups can adopt slang from subordinate groups. An example of this is the white, queer community adopting slang from AAVE. These terms include “bruh,” “[a] Karen,” “child/chile,” “cake(s),” and “girl/gurl/bitch/sis(ter)”. Terms like “bruh” and “Karen” have been appropriated directly from AAVE into the modern lexicon. In contrast, terms like “child,” “cake,” and “girl/sis” have first been appropriated by the broader LGBTQ+ community before being appropriated into mainstream culture. Queer slang is therefore made up of terms that have been appropriated, and in turn, will be appropriated by the mainstream.

The majority of these terms have made their way into the modern vernacular through RuPaul’s Drag Race and Black Twitter. Examples include “it's giving,” “sksksk,” “ate,” “slay,” “gagged,” “wig,” “tea,” “clock,” “legendary,” and “throw shade”. Terms like “legendary,” which once described excellence in ballroom culture, have been diluted in mainstream usage, losing their cultural specificity and power while gaining ubiquity. This is a typical effect of slang appropriation. Slang is created amongst marginalized groups as a way to signal belonging; however, when slang endemic to a marginalized community becomes adopted by a dominant group, the term no longer brings power to a subordinate group and loses its rich linguistic history.

While appropriation often strips marginalized communities of linguistic agency, the reclamation of slurs represents an attempt to regain control over language and its power. Notably, two previously derogatory terms, “queer” and “faggot,” have been reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ community as words of empowerment. Slur reclamation is not unique to the queer community (consider the use of the n-word in the Black community), but it showcases a powerful process in language—language can both be appropriated, taking terms and power away from subordinate groups, but language that was previously derogatory can also be reclaimed to bring power and unity to subordinate groups.

In the totality of queer slang, it is impossible to police the borders and definitions of what is queer slang and what is not. Much of queer slang was created by POC within the queer community in the drag and ballroom scene, where drag acted almost like a “linguistic sponge” in queer communities of color. This begs the question of whether the broader queer community is allowed to claim Black queer slang as its own. Notice, too that there are near zero terms that the Black community has appropriated from the queer community, but tons of terms that the queer community has lifted from AAVE. This sets up a hierarchy of social groups following a slang appropriation flow: a term originates in AAVE, is used within queer spaces, and is later appropriated by white, heterosexual, mainstream culture. This is an example of intersectional oppression, where queer POC individuals feel the oppression of language appropriation of AAVE and queer terms.

So what should we do about our language appropriation problem? According to a Columbia Spectator interview with William Foley, a linguistics professor at Columbia University, “today’s slang becomes tomorrow’s everyday language. It’s very hard to police language like that”. There are plenty of examples of queer people being upset at their spaces, culture, and language being taken over by mainstream culture. However, the queer community is also an appropriator of Black queer culture, language, and spaces. Queer people have the power to put aside their guile at their slang being appropriated and recognize that they appropriate slang from queer POC. Recognizing the intersectional appropriation queer POC feel is the key to changing slang appropriation into slang appreciation. The queer community can start the reconciliation trend and set an example for mainstream America to follow, turning language appropriation into language appreciation.

However, we all must acknowledge the origins of our words to return power, acceptance, and recognition to their respective subordinate groups. So the next time you go to hype up your girly BFF with a “slay! Yas queen!”, think about the generations of Black drag queens who did it first.

Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, pp. 1241–99. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039.

Laing, Rachel E. Who Said It First?: Linguistic Appropriation of Slang Terms Within the Popular Lexicon, Illinois State University, United States -- Illinois, 2021. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/who-said-first-linguistic-appropriation-slang/docview/2556417327/se-2.

Lamour, Joseph. “Polari, the ‘Lost Language’ of Gay Men.” TODAY.com, TODAY, 28 June 2024, www.today.com/popculture/polari-language-slang-explained-rcna157225.

Chloe O. Davis. The Queens’ English : The LGBTQIA+ Dictionary of Lingo and Colloquial Phrases. Clarkson Potter, 2021. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2467462&site=ehost-live&scope=site. 

Kaif Abbas and Akhil Visha , Language, Terminology, and Cultural Appropriation in Queer Discourse, 7 (3) IJLMH Page 2512 - 2524 (2024), DOI: https://doij.org/10.10000/IJLMH.117742

Chen, Emily. “New Uses, Old Words: How Black LGBTQ Culture Influences Modern Internet Slang.” Columbia Daily Spectator, 29 Sept. 2022, www.columbiaspectator.com/arts-and-culture/2022/09/29/new-uses-old-words-how-black-lgbtq-culture-influences-modern-internet-slang/.