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Bilingual Belonging and the Whiteness of (Standard) English(es)

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

In this article, the author examines from multiple perspectives a phenomenon she calls acoustic identity and demonstrates the inseparability of speech from race, ethnicity, culture, and nationality as criteria used to establish identity. The study begins with an autoethnographic account of the Anglo-American author's voluntary immersion into the medium of northern Mexican Spanish and is followed by an ethnographic inquiry into the linguistic experiences of several other mono/bi/multilingual individuals. This auto/ethnographic methodology exposes the sociocultural and political significance of acoustic identity by comparing the disparate experiences and treatment of mono/bi/multilingual speakers from dominant (Euro-American) and nondominant (Mexican American, African American, and Australian Aboriginal) social groups. Among the ethical implications of this analysis is the imperative to recognize the relationship between linguistic and racial/ethnic stereotyping as well as the conflation of (Standard) English(es) with whiteness and the West.

Key Words: bilingualism/bidialectalism • racial/ethnic stereotyping • acoustic identity • whiteness • auto/ethnography

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