group identity

Friendships For the Mono- and Bi-Lingual College Student: Does The Language You Speak Make A Difference in How You Make Friends?

In the course of our research, we endeavored to examine the difference in the social life of UCLA college students, their capacity to make friends, and satisfy their need for social support with fellow students based on their status as a monolingual or bilingual speaker of English. Drawing on support from previous research dealing with different student populations, we concluded that the way bilingual students are treated and form communities is different from the way monolinguals do, whether because of “othering” by speakers who did not understand their language or culture or because they sought out connections with those who shared their ethnic or linguistic ties. It was almost universal in our interviews where bilingual speakers had a bias towards others who spoke their non-English language, and many of the monolinguals admitted to preferring the company of those who shared their language and culture. Not every speaker who our team interviewed had an exactly identical experience, however- none of our bilingual speakers derived from the same culture or spoke the same language- and there were a few interesting perspectives and outliers.

Introduction

In the course of their education, every single college student is faced with the point where they realize that they are now, effectively, adults and they are now- potentially for the first time- on their own. Many freshmen entering into university are inbound to a new city, a new county, new state, or even an entirely new country. The locale, culture, and people are all different than where they are originally from.

This gap in culture (and sometimes even language) and the responsibilities endowed by college life can make it difficult to make friends in a new place– but it is also extremely pivotal for mental and social well being to make social connections, given the loneliness of being far from home and isolation from the people one knows.

Researching into how students- particularly bilingual students- construct their new friendships is invaluable for anyone incoming to university. Using UCLA students as a representative example, we can explore some of the insights of students navigating their new social landscape. Most specifically, we want to see how- and if- monolinguals and bilinguals differ when it comes to trying to form friendships, and why.

Methods

We began our research on how bilinguals and monolinguals in college differ in making friends and their differing level of social satisfaction in the college environment by consulting various published literature on the subject, but intended to do our own interviews and surveys to see if anecdotal evidence matched the broader scientific findings. Across many different papers- from bilingual college students of Chinese or Latinx descent all the way to the bias of young monolinguals from 4 to 6 years of age- we found a fairly consistent trend: bilinguals liked grouping with other bilinguals (specifically ones of their own culture and language) and monolinguals tended a slight cognitive bias (conscious or otherwise) towards other grouping with monolinguals.

When we had seen the literature’s assessment of college friendships by bilinguals, we formed our hypothesis about the difference: that bilinguals tended to find it easier to make friends with bilinguals from their culture and that monolinguals tended either to “not care” or stick with monolinguals. We also sought out whether being bilingual was particularly helpful in making social connections compared to monolinguals, and other potential social benefits of bilingualism in a predominantly English-controlled American college environment. With our research question and secondary and tertiary objectives in mind, we put our theories and the broader literature to the test through qualitative and quantitative surveys and interviews.

Results

The results of the interviews with bilinguals were quite illustrative in relation to social connections through their first language. Using direct quotes from interviews, many of the answers were quite straightforward:

INTERVIEW 1 – BILINGUAL

I: Did you find it easier to connect and meet people who spoke the same language as you?

J: Yes, most definitely. Uhm, I really liked connecting with people who also spoke Vietnamese because there were a lot of like, you know, Vietnamese language jokes that only Vietnamese people would get.

INTERVIEW 2 – BILINGUAL

I: Have you found it easier to connect with people who speak the same language as you?

S: […] Definitely, yeah. It’s much easier. I mean, it really depends on the person. I wouldn’t say, “Oh, I’m going to go and make friends with whoever speaks Farsi”, because some people, it depends on how approachable they are or if I vibe with them. But in terms of, uh, having one thing to connect. Yes, I would say it’s much easier for me to connect to someone who speaks the same language versus non-Farsi.

INTERVIEW 3 – BILINGUAL

I: Do you find it easier to connect with people who speak the same language(s) as you?

E: Definitely, I feel like it’s easier if I can also speak your language and understand what I’m saying.

Very consistently across bilingual speakers that we interviewed, sharing a language and culture was essential for forming social ties. They expressed feeling at ease with people who spoke their own language, or how being among a bilingual speaker enhanced their experience more than it would be otherwise.

INTERVIEW 1 – MONOLINGUAL

I: Do you think language or culture has any bearing on who you choose to interact with in your day to day life?

A: Uhm, I definitely would say so… it’s easier for me to talk to or be around someone who has the same language and culture as me.

INTERVIEW 2 – MONOLINGUAL

I: Do you think language or culture has any bearing on who you choose to interact with in your day to day life?

J: […] It kinda sounds like an asshole thing to say– but I think that I’m accepting of a lot of different cultures and stuff– I think there are some subconscious elements, but I wouldn’t know what they were, there are probably some groups I don’t interact with just off of, I don’t know, vibes…

Monolinguals, in their parallel questions to the bilingual speakers, hedged a little when answering but definitely seemed to be likewise confident that they preferred to stay within their own clade of language and culture.

When it came to the respective groups, bilinguals occasionally went out of their way to specifically connect with their own cultures (the interviewee of Interview 1 professed to specifically looking for Southeast Asian clubs on campus in order to connect with others and make friends) but monolinguals had no such compunctions (no one we interviewed was, for instance, attending an “Born American Student” or “Monolingual English” club, nor did such a thing exist). When it came to making friendships, typically they went for shared hobbies unrelated to culture (in one case, gaming clubs).

This is not a zero sum game, however– in many cases, bilinguals at UCLA had the added benefit of being able to draw on their extra language in addition to monolingual strategies, meaning their opportunities for friendships were more diverse than the monolingual opportunities. Though the potential for exclusion from these more monolingual-oriented experiences is possible, rejection by monolingual speakers for language or culture was rare, if existent at all.

Many of the monolinguals we interviewed wished they had the opportunity to learn other languages and be fluent in them, viewing their English exclusion as a missed opportunity; only one subject of interview wanted to remain a monolingual, though when pressed admitted he would like to learn American Sign Language (and advocated that the rest of the US did, as well) and wasn’t sure if that counted as being multilingual. Broadly speaking in our interviews, bilinguals were happy to provide a social bridge for monolingual to monolingual interactions and delighted to get the chance to share their culture or language with others. No one regretted being bilingual or thought it made their social opportunities at UCLA worse.

Conclusion

A primary finding that stood out in our research was the absence of in-group/out-group biases within both groups. Instead, we found that linguistic diversity among the population created opportunities for cultural exchange and that in-group preferences did not completely discourage students from reaching out to other cultures. Our results revealed that bilingual students expressed stronger social ties to their cultural communities compared to their monolingual counterparts who conversely expressed a strong desire for second-language acquisition.

These findings led us to conclude that: (1) linguistic diversity can foster a positive school environment by providing opportunities for cultural exchange among different cultures, (2) in-group/out-group biases do not pose negative effects on social relationships among bilingual and monolingual students, (3) bilingualism and second-language acquisition can potentially enhance the social experience of students.

However, these findings are limited by several factors within our study. Firstly, our population of study is representative of a unique environment with a relatively higher proportion of politically liberal, ethnically diverse students than the average American university. Our research is also limited to the study of English-speaking students, restricting our data from being representative of environments with speakers of different dominant languages. Given these limitations, we believe that linguistic diversity thrives most successfully in diverse environments wherein cultural exchange is a social norm and speakers are collectively open-minded to learning

We believe that our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the importance of second-language acquisition in childhood development to enhance social connections in adulthood and potential positive effects of bilingualism in combating cultural differences in diverse settings. Furthermore, these findings highlight the importance of language knowledge of one’s own culture in strengthening community ties and individual identity. We believe that future research in bilingual and monolingual differences should focus on studying the potential positive effects of second-language acquisition on social skills, educational development, and in overcoming cultural differences.

References

Byers‐Heinlein, K., Behrend, D. A., Said, L. M., Girgis, H., & Poulin‐Dubois, D. (2016). Monolingual and bilingual children’s social preferences for monolingual and bilingual speakers. Developmental Science, 20(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12392

Toppelberg, C. O., & Collins, B. A. (2010). Language, culture, and adaptation in immigrant children. Child and adolescent psychiatric clinics of North America, 19(4), 697–717. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2010.07.003

Wang, L., Gonzalez, P. D., Lau, P. L., Vaughan, E. L., & Costa, M. F. (2023). “Dando gracias”: Gratitude, social connectedness, and subjective happiness among bilingual Latinx college students. Journal of Latinx Psychology, 11(3), 203-219. https://doi.org/10.1037/lat0000227

Sebanc, A. M., Hernandez, M. D., & Alvarado, M. (2009). Understanding, Connection, and Identification: Friendship Features of Bilingual Spanish-English Speaking Undergraduates. Journal of Adolescent Research, 24(2), 194-217. https://doi.org/10.1177/0743558408329953

Xu, C. L. (2022). Portraying the ‘Chinese international students’: a review of English-language and Chinese-language literature on Chinese international students (2015–2020). Asia Pacific Education Review, 23(1), 151–167. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-021-09731-8

bilingualism, college students, cultural identity, culture gap, group identity, othering

The Role of Phatic Expressions in Group Identity

Sociolinguistics

“How are you today?” Wait- Before you answer this, consider that this innocuous question in fact is compelling you to respond in a certain way. This phatic expression is a social tool aimed at maintaining communication channels. But these expressions also contain packets of information intended to guide the recipient’s behavior. This project aims to recognize the significance of phatic expressions in communication dynamics and how they intertwine with identity development. Our study will aim to go deep into the intricate relationship between language similarities and identity formation within the context of a vibrant Latina community. We will focus on undergraduate Latina students affiliated with UCLA’s Hermanas Unidas organization. We also gathered data on how people in the Latina community often used slang to communicate with their peers. The use of slang made their communication more personal and easier. We examined informal speech and phatic expressions in English-Spanish dialogue within the Latina community. By observing the way they spoke their language and communicated with slang, we gathered that language truly shapes relationships and reveals the complex layers of language, identity, and communication dynamics. This study will allow us to observe how language forms relationships and unravel the various layers of language, identity, and communication.

Introduction & Background

Within Jakobson’s six language functions, the emotive and conative functions are specifically those which convey information about the speaker and recipient. The latter function is generally considered to contain imperatives in the form of information about the recipient. However, certain other language functions also index facets of the identities of participants in this way or feature similar containerization. Among these are phatic expressions, those which are concerned primarily with the communication channel (Žegarac and Clark, 2024).

A commonly recognized form of phatic expression is a greeting such as, “How was your day?” Chances are, the questioner would find it frustrating if they were met with every detail of the respondent’s day. So, by asking “How are you?” The questioner is compelling the listener to respond only in a certain way. Therefore, this expression might be considered to have an imperative component. That’s not necessarily a bad thing– it provides the recipient with a quick and easy path to the locus of the conversation. But this additional capability for encoding the intentions and attitudes of the speaker can obviously be exploited for certain ends. Therefore, we were curious about whether or not phatic expressions are actually used by speakers to transmit information this way. We at first wondered about the exclusionary purposes of these expressions; for example, in the aforementioned example, the speaker is attempting to exclude a certain unwanted response. We realized that this exclusionary purpose may serve to delineate inter-group and intra-group identities. Therefore, we also asked to what extent phatic expressions index group identities in general. In fact, could phatic expressions also help to establish and maintain notions of identity by these mechanisms?

Methods

Figure 1: An instance of a phatic expression that indexes shared group knowledge

Figure 2: Use of phatic expressions during a representative 3-minute sample of presentations at a Hermanas Unidas club meeting. Instances featuring implicit imperative components, as well as instances that index specific aspects of the shared club and/or linguistic identity are indicated

Our research was conducted on two meetings for the club Hermanas Unidas de UCLA, the first being a general body meeting where group members welcome both past members and new members to meet on a weekly basis to discuss different topics and act as a debrief circle, and the second meeting being an event where past members, also open to new members as well, meet to complete activities and talk in a more intimate space in comparison to the general body meeting. The general body meeting consisted of around 30 members, while the second event only had about 15. In both settings, members were prompted to both speak in the large setting to the entire group, and were also split into smaller groups. In these settings, we were able to analyze the communication between the members and how it shifted when there either was use of phatic expressions, or was not. This club primarily consists of Latina undergraduate members, so we were able to observe the use of phatic expressions in both Spanish and English, as well as both languages used together. When members spoke in the larger settings during the general body meetings, it was noted that the main speaker was often using words such as “y’all” and “um”, which made the speaker sound more natural when addressing the crowd, as well as the crowd being more engaging.

For this reason, we decided to analyze the presentation section of the general body meeting in order to establish a reliable baseline of phatic expression use relative to our specific areas of interest. We isolated a 3-minute segment of audio in which there were multiple presenters who would generally introduce themselves and their announcements, allowing for significant use of phatic expressions during the analyzed time period. The results are indicated in Figure 2: a significant fraction of the phatic expressions observed contain the imperative elements, index aspects of group identity, or both. During the second meeting, where members were split into groups of about 4-5 and were prompted with more personal questions. While the members were tasked to complete the activity they were given and answer these ice breaker kinds of questions, there was an instant switch in how communication was being made. We were able to hear phrases such as “I could’ve easily done Superman bro”, the word “like” and “literally”, “aw hell nah bruh” and using Spanish words when communicating (Araceli, 2010). The use of phatic expressions here also caused a more natural flow of conversation, more engaging body movement, and overall more emotion, such as laughing and smiling.

Results and Analysis

Upon thorough analysis of our data, particularly within a 3-minute segment of the general body meeting where a club member addressed the audience with an announcement, we observed the utilization patterns of “um” and “y’all.” The incorporation of phatic expressions notably enhanced the crowd’s engagement, leading to cheers from the rest of the club members. During this significant moment, the speaker effectively conveyed information that resonated with each audience member, fostering a collective connection. The evident impact of the speaker’s language in captivating the crowd underscores the influential role of phatic expressions in communication. Moreover, we encountered similar findings in the second dataset collected during a smaller meeting. Despite the smaller group dynamics, participants’ use of phatic expressions facilitated deeper engagement among individuals, rendering conversations more meaningful. This highlights the universal efficacy of phatic expressions in fostering interpersonal connections, irrespective of the setting or audience size.

Discussion and Conclusions

In relation to language, culture, and the course content overall, analyzing the use of phatic expressions through an anthropological lens provided us with a nuanced perspective of the use of phatic expressions within interpersonal communication and interethnic encounters. Examining the usage of language functions among Latina students on campus offered us insights into their communication dynamics and social comfort levels in these settings. This also uncovered unique communication patterns and preferences and provided an intimate look into the interplay between language and social interaction. In the overall aim of our project, we planned to identify specific language functions as they appeared in conversation, specifically at the Hermanas Unidas club meetings, and analyze how expressions that serve specific functions are used to accommodate differing identities (including linguistic and club identity). One of our research questions we want to answer is “In which cases do phatic expressions serve an exclusionary purpose?”, and we identified that _these uses of exclusionary language with words like ‘bruh’, ‘like’, or ‘literally’ did not serve an intentional purpose but rather a means of reinforcing cohesion and camaraderie amongst the group of students in the campus-organization Hermanas Unidas. Additionally, we captured how these interactions and use of expressions help to shape these students’ cultural identity in various sociocultural environments whether on campus or elsewhere.

References

De Katzew, L. (2004). Interlingualism: T]he language of Chicanos/as.

Nordquist, R. (2019, March 11). Making small talk: Phatic Communication. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/phatic-communication-1691619

Osorio, Araceli, “The role of Spanglish in the social and academic lives of second generation Latino students: students’ and parents’ perspectives” (2010). Doctoral Dissertations. 366. https://repository.usfca.edu/diss/366

Otto Santa Ana, A. (1993). Chicano English and the nature of the Chicano language setting. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 15, 3-3.

Vlad Žegarac, and Billy Clark. “Phatic Interpretations and Phatic Communication.” Journal of Linguistics, vol. 35, no. 2, 1999, pp. 321–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4176528. Accessed 1 Feb. 2024

group identity, Latina, phatic expression, Slang