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Label Use And Mixed Race Asian Americans: Discourses, Performances, And Boundaries, Ellen Macdonald

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A person's identity is not fixed or stable, rather it changes over time and even from moment to moment (Nagel 1994). Throughout an individual's life he or she constantly cites discourses that relate specific appearances, actions, and behaviors to certain labeled social categories and those discourses make an individual intelligible as an acknowledged type of person (Butler 1990). The self, or identity, that someone presents at any point in time is comprised of the different types of information, both verbal and nonverbal, that the person provides to his audience (Goffman 1959). Labels are one verbal source of information that can …