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NEGOTIATING IDENTITIES IN A KOREAN AMERICAN-OWNED BEAUTY SUPPLY STORE
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In: Doctoral Dissertations (2020)
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Abstract:
In this dissertation, I analyze the interpersonal interactions that occurred in a beauty supply store to demonstrate how a Korean immigrant storeowner’s family and their African American neighbors negotiate their identities through business communication. This research is based on four months of participant observation, interviews with ten customers, and the recordings of 75 interactions in Mr. Kim’s store. Firstly, I look into the interactions as a speech genre (Bakhtin & Ghāsemipour, 2011) of “hair-talk,” which allows the participants to build a speech community (Hymes, 1974) in the store using communication competence about the specific speech genre. Participating in a speech genre implies knowing how to use it, which allowed me to discuss “otherness” (Bakhtin, 1986) through different epistemic stances in relation to the hair-talk. Second, I discuss the notion of “voices” (Bakhtin, 1981) via the investigation of language crossing, footing change, and the religious metaphors applied as discursive strategies. In the store, I found that various voices were used to establish the in-group and out-group boundaries among the participants in ways that served the particular interest of the speakers. Central to these voices is the voice of Christianity and the multilingual abilities to switch from English, either to Korean to create an in-group for the storeowner’s family, or to African American Vernacular English (AAVE) to create solidarity with the customers. Lastly, I investigate the main features of dangol business – a Korean business practice that treats regular and returning customers specially, while aiming to achieve long-term business relations, as is the case in my research setting. The residents of the low-income Black neighborhood understand the dangol service as a sign of respect and caring. Yet, throughout the chapters, I have shown that communication between the storeowner’s family and their regular customers represents the different socio-economic status of the two parties. In this dissertation, I analyze the interactions that took place in the store and how the elements play a pivotal role in negotiating the identities of the two parties – the Korean storeowner and residents of the Black neighborhood – by reflecting on and constructing their perception of “we” and “other.” I also elaborate here on a point that ran throughout the dissertation: the asymmetric power relation between the two groups. These relationships represent the prevalent racial disparity within the beauty supply industry, which may in turn, be reinforcing discrimination against Black people in US society. This study expands the boundaries of interracial interaction studies by presenting (a) a set of data collected from a Korean-owned store that provides updated information about Korean-Black relations; (b) new perspectives to understand Korean-Black business interactions closely connected to the potential of conflict within the beauty supply industry; (c) the economic and political discourses surrounding “hair” as a research agenda for interracial communication studies; and (d) a case of minority-minority (non-White) interactions where a distinctive power dynamic and racial discrimination is found.
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Keyword:
and Ethnicity in Communication; Beauty supply; Discourse analysis; Ethnography of Communication; Gender; International and Intercultural Communication; Interpersonal and Small Group Communication; Interracial communication; Korean-Black relation; Race; Sexuality
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URL: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3078&context=dissertations_2
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2003
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| 2 |
Beziehungen in pädagogischen Arbeitsfeldern und ihren Transitionen über die Lebensalter
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In: Bad Heilbrunn : Verlag Julius Klinkhardt 2019, 333 S. (2019)
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| 3 |
Ideational meanings of science and interpersonal position of readers in science textbooks for basic level in Indonesia
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In: Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, Vol 9, Iss 1, Pp 38-47 (2019) (2019)
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| 4 |
Pragmatic Features of Chinese Ostensible Invitations
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In: Cross-Cultural Communication; Vol 15, No 2 (2019): Cross-Cultural Communication; 35-40 ; 1923-6700 ; 1712-8358 (2019)
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| 5 |
Parent-mediated interventions for promoting communication and language development in young children with Down syndrome
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| 6 |
Culturally sensitive adaptation of the concept of relational communication therapy as a support to language development: An exploratory study in collaboration with a Tanzanian orphanage ...
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| 7 |
La relation didactique ; La relation didactique: Une source de dilemmes pour l’enseignant de langue
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In: ISSN: 2258-1510 ; Etudes en didactique des langues ; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01934000 ; Etudes en didactique des langues, LAIRDIL, 2014, 23-24, pp.63-75 (2014)
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| 8 |
Politique, humour et campagne électorale. Les enjeux d'une politique-spectacle
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In: Mots. Les langages du politique, n 101, 1, 2013-04-18, pp.61-75 (2013)
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| 9 |
Living with aphasia: Three Indigenous Australian stories
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In: Research outputs 2012 (2012)
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| 10 |
Uncovering and Managing the Impact of Methodological Choices for the Computational Construction of Socio-Technical Networks from Texts
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In: DTIC (2012)
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| 11 |
Grammaticalization, polysemy and iterated modality: the case of should.
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In: Corela, Vol 5, Iss 1 (2007) (2007)
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