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Interests: Linguistic anthropology, literacy and writing,
youth culture, beauty pageants, popular culture, Tibetan,
English, Tibetan Diaspora.
Recent shifts in literacy practices among Tibetan youth
in the diaspora mark the emergence of linguistic valuations
of Tibetan and English that make their practices distinct
from older Tibetans and the Tibetan exile government.
Because Tibetans tend to use spoken Tibetan equally across
generations, these linguistic valuations can only be
understood through an examination of written language.
In my research, I study a wide variety of written forms such
as emails, letters, lists and text messages written by
Tibetan youth. In these writings young Tibetans
outline and retrace their social space within diasporic
social hierarchies. Yet while a specifically local
written linguistic marketplace is emerging among Tibetan
exile youth, this marketplace is also a space in which
internationalized identities are negotiated and performed.
Young Tibetan exiles, influenced by Indian and international
popular cultures such as beauty pageants and movies, enact
internationalized identities in their everyday literacy
practices. My work has significant implications for
the study of writing as an independent medium of identity
negotiation and challenges the importance placed on social
institutions, like education and the family, in the
valuation of linguistic and social practices.
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