High-End Immigrants Create An Imagined Community in Costa Rica: Examining the Evolving Discourse in Ethnic-Minority Media

• In Event: Deconstructing Mediated Myths of the Marginalized

Abstract

In this paper I examine the ways high-end, English speaking immigrants create an imagined linguistic/cultural community in a foreign environment. Through critical discourse analysis I analyze in-depth interviews in Costa Rica to better understand how English speakers utilize a minority-language media outlet for community building following the theoretical basis of imagined communities as postulated by Anderson (1983). The connection between imagined communities and media is salient, but has primarily been studied only in under-represented populations.

Author

• Anthony Spencer, West Texas A&M University