Abroad Perspective: Conceptualizing the Relationship between Language and Identity

In the field of migration studies, research on transnationalism has been well established. By applying an intersectional framework of post-colonial narrative and sociolinguistics to research on transnational migration, this research allows us to better understand how the transnational immigrant deploys language. Through a nostalgia studies approach, this study is able to analyze how transnational immigrants place value on their heritage and second languages, and reflexively deploy their language sets to reflect their unique positionality. This paper is a case study examination of five adult members of the 1.5-Generation of Filipino American immigrants, who immigrated to the U.S. before the age of eighteen and have academic, employment, or residential affiliation with the Filipino diaspora of Daly City, California. Through data analysis of oral histories collected through in-depth sociolinguistic interviews, this study uses these nostalgic perspectives to better understand how the relationship between language and identity formation is affected by socio-spatial experiences. By examining the intergenerational, post-colonial and transnational interplay of the narrators' language ideologies, this study asserts that translanguaging, or the cognizant, situational deployment of a multilingual repertoire, reflects a transnational identity formation.