Agnes Weiyun He

About

Agnes Weiyun He is a Professor of Applied Linguistics at SUNY-Stony Brook University, where she is also the Founder and Director of the Center for Multilingual and Intercultural Communication (MIC). She has served as Chair and Interim Chair of the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies. Professor He holds a B.A. in English from Beijing Foreign Studies University, a Diploma-in-Education from the National Institute of Education in Singapore, an M.A. in English as a Second Language from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from UCLA. Her research centers on how language use is motivated by contextual and co-textual contingencies and how everyday human interaction reconstructs identities, communities, and cultures in real-time. Her early work focused on discourse and pragmatics in institutional settings, while her recent work explores the impact of globalization and immigration on language and cultural practices, particularly the socialization of Chinese as a heritage language and the development of intercultural communicative competence among multilingual speakers. Professor He has published extensively in discourse linguistics, educational linguistics, and Chinese linguistics, and her work has been funded by prominent organizations including the Spencer Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Education. She was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2011. Her teaching includes courses on intercultural communication, Mandarin…

Research topics

• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Pedagogy
• Psychology
• Political Science
• Epistemology
• Linguistics
• Archaeology
• History
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• Language Proficiency Interviews: A Discourse Approach

  2012-01-01 · 100 citations

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• Identity construction in Chinese heritage language classes

  Pragmatics Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) · 2015-02-18 · 82 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  From an interactionally enriched linguistic anthropological perspective, this article promotes the view that identity is indexical with specific sets of acts and stances, which in turn are constructed by specific language forms. Based on detailed sequential and grammatical analyses of data from Chinese heritage language classes, it argues that identity is dynamic, constantly unfolding along with interaction, and thus has the potential to shift and mutate. It positions identity as emerging throug…

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• The Wor(l)d is a Collage: Multi‐Performance by Chinese Heritage Language Speakers

  Modern Language Journal · 2013-05-24 · 47 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT This study examines the simultaneous use of English and Chinese by speakers of Chinese as a heritage language (CHL). It focuses on spontaneous, dynamic, and high‐density mixing of the two languages within the smallest building block of a speaking turn: the turn constructional unit (TCU). Drawing upon data from different age and proficiency groups, it shows that CHL speakers migrate between and mingle the two language systems freely and frequently at multiple and nested levels of phoneme…

  PublisherDOI

• Discursive roles and responsibilities: a study of interactions in Chinese immigrant households

  Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development · 2016-02-10 · 23 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This study examines features of communication in American households where Chinese is used as a heritage language against the backdrop of global migration and technological advancement. It aims to elucidate how meaning emerges and evolves through repeated and varied performance by multiple participants over time, through mundane and iterative practices of everyday conversation. It focuses on how child and adult speakers in this context appropriate each other's vocabularies and voices, mimic and…

  PublisherDOI

• Literacy, Creativity, and Continuity

  2015-04-24 · 20 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding
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Frequent coauthors

• Elizabeth M. Keating

  University of Utah

  9 shared

• Yiya Chen

  Leiden University

  4 shared

• Richard Young

  4 shared

• Brian Lindsey

  Occidental College

  2 shared

• Snezha Tsoneva

  Plovdiv University

  2 shared

• Benjamin G. Davis

  University of Notre Dame

  2 shared

• Stéphane Roudeau

  Laboratoire de Physique des deux infinis Bordeaux

  1 shared

• Rowan K. Leary

  University of Cambridge

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Asian American Studies

  University of California, Berkeley

  2005

• M.A., Asian American Studies

  University of California, Berkeley

  2001

• B.A., Ethnic Studies

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1998

Awards & honors

• Guggenheim Fellow (2011)

Similar researchers at Stony Brook University

• William Chittickh-20
• Eriko Satoh-8
• Sachiko Muratah-8