This study explores acculturation process among New immigrants from
Southeast Asia and their children. Since the beginning of this century, foreign female
spouses (renamed as New Residents) from Southeast Asia have been immigrated to Taiwan in great numbers due to intermarriage with Taiwanese citizens. They brought with them their ethnic languages and cultures, which are totally different from those of Taiwanese. Through contacts and conflicts with other groups in Taiwan, the New Residents from Southeast Asia have been going through a process of acculturation. However, the extent to which these individuals have been acculturated has yet to be investigated in Taiwan. This study intends to do so. The understanding of the degree to which they are acculturated can help us understand language and social problems faced by these groups. As New Residents from Vietnam and Indonesia are the two largest and most rapidly growing groups of the new immigrants from Southeast Asia, the impact of their acculturation on Taiwan's sociolinguistic environments should be greater than the others. Therefore, the acculturation among New Residents from Vietnam and Indonesia and their children has been chosen as the focus for this study.
A bidimensional model of acculturation (i.e., integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalization) is used to investigate to what extent these New Taiwanese have been acculturated in the past two decades. Language behaviors, linguistic competence and cultural identity are dimensions used to examine the extent to which this group of people have been acculturated to the host culture in Taiwan in the last two decades. Data will be collected through questionnaires and interviews throughout Taiwan. The collected data will be demographically analyzed in terms some vital social factors, e.g., generations (foreign-born vs. native born), length of immigration, ages, social status (occupations, and schooling) and residential areas.
The results of the study can contribute to our understanding of the process of acculturation of these two ethnic groups, and the social and linguistic problems they have faced. An implication of how sociolinguistic changes in the host country can seriously affect the acculturation process of immigrants will be drawn.
