Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Language, Literacy, ED.D., Exceptional Education, and Physical Education

Major Professor

Camilla Vásquez, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Matt Kessler, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Wei Zhu, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Yi Zhang, Ph.D.

Keywords

Chineseness, Community, Culture club, Identity, Linguistic Ethnography

Abstract

Chinese identity has been viewed as a debated and contested notion in sociolinguistics (Wong et al., 2021). Existing sociolinguistic research, which has centered on Chinese identity-related questions, such as “Who can be or cannot be Chinese?”, has been closely involved with the current political tensions between mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, as well as their associated linguistic tensions between simplified Chinese writing and traditional Chinese writing, and Cantonese and Mandarin. Building on these studies, this dissertation goes beyond the scope of Sinophone contexts traditionally examined in prior research (e.g., mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong) to examine how US students with diverse sociocultural backgrounds and life trajectories (e.g., Asian American, Chinese American, international students) construct an institutional image of a Chinese cultural club on campus and negotiate their individual cultural identities through the discussion and organization of club events.

Informed by the notion of assemblage (Pennycook, 2017a; 2017b; 2021), I conceptualize the construction of Chinese identity as the process of the employment of heterogeneous elements (e.g., linguistic, visual, and material elements) to achieve a localized representation of Chinese culture in a specific spatiotemporal context, and such Chinese cultural representations are orientated to US students with various levels of Chinese cultural knowledge. I conducted an ethnographic study of one cohort of ten club officers of this Chinese club at a large U.S. university during the 2024-2025 academic year. Data collection included participant observation, event-based fieldnotes, audio recordings of members’ interactions, material artifacts, digital posts, and semi-structured interviews. Drawing on discourse analysis, this study examines how club members employ diverse discursive and semiotic resources to make meaning, negotiate social relationships, and construct cultural identities across online and offline settings.

My analysis shows that club members had distinctive ways of expressing their cultural identities (e.g., mocking other club members’ Chinese pronunciations, enacting teaching roles, and using the stereotypical symbolic element) over the course of the year. Because of their different motivations for joining the club, their ethnic-cultural backgrounds, their levels of Chinese proficiency, and their officer roles in the club, each club member experienced a different trajectory of identity change over the year. Additionally, the club members collaborated to construct this club as a Chinese cultural education organization by using the symbolic elements to index Chineseness and by establishing linguistic and cultural barriers with club activity attendees. This Chinese club also collaborated with several other cultural clubs on campus, and they framed the Chinese culture and the club in different ways (e.g., an exclusive Chinese cultural club, one of the Asian cultural clubs, and one of the ethnic minority clubs) in ways that legitimized their various forms of collaborations. Overall, this dissertation project sheds light on sociolinguistic identity, assemblage, and campus cultural organizations and offers implications for future ethnographic research on Asian American identities in U.S. university contexts.

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