Exploring the complex relationship between language and immigration in the United States, this timely book challenges mainstream, historically established assumptions about American citizenship and identity. Set within both a historical and a current political context, this book covers hotly debated topics such as language and ethnicity, the relationship between non-native English and American identity, perceptions and stereotypes related to foreign accents, code-switching, hybrid language forms such as Spanglish, language and the family, and the future of language in America. Work from the fields of linguistics, education policy, history, sociology, and politics are brought together to provide an accessible overview of the key issues. Through specific examples and case studies, immigrant America is presented as a diverse, multilingual, and multidimensional space in which identities are often hybridized and always multifaceted.

Explores the complex relationship between language and immigration in the United States.

About the Author
Dominika Baran is Assistant Professor of English at Duke University, North Carolina, specializing in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology in transnational contexts. Her interest in language and immigration in the United States stems partly from her own background as a political refugee from Poland who settled in New York at age fifteen and spoke only minimal English. Her ongoing projects include a discourse analytic study of narratives of migration among Polish immigrants in Anglophone countries.


Book Information
ISBN 9781107689817
Author Dominika Baran
Format Paperback
Page Count 388
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 630g
Dimensions(mm) 228mm * 152mm * 18mm