The Importance of Ethnic Identity

In the article SecondLanguage Socialization in Bilingual Chat Room, it mentions how the two girls in the study who emigrated from China feels out of place in the US. This is caused by the difficulty of interacting with other English speakers. The differences in language and culture causes feelings of estrangement because without similar linguistic competence and knowledge on certain topics, such as when people gossip or talk about television shows, there is no way to make comments aside from listening. By communicating with others like themselves(emigrants from China) who speak Canto but write in English or romanized Chinese, the two girls are able to improve their English through discussions that are more relevant to them and more understandable. This is also the reason why in US schools the people of a same ethnicity tend to flock together more often, e.g. Asians are more often seen with Asians while Hispanics often times hang out with other Hispanics.