About Me
Taking language as a window to life, I am interested in exploring and examining the way we talk, and beyond that, the way we are.
Bio
Hi! I am Gary, Ao Ieong Wun Un.
Drawing upon qualitative methodology (e.g., conversation analysis, discourse analysis, ethnography) in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology to a transdisciplinary understanding, I focus on how identities and different social meanings are negotiated in social interaction through the interplay of self, others, and ideologies.
Research Interests
I am working on the following projects:
Education
MA & BA in English Studies, Univ. of Macau
Further to disseminate the idea beyond the disciplinary boundaries, I endeavor to create and transform it into the media form of art project. I have led and completed a governmental-funded project “Living Here, Living Together” as a director which utilizes the forms of in-depth interview video and sound roaming to explore the identity negotiation of Filipino youth immigrants in Macau.
I focus on how individuals draw upon linguistics resources from their repertoires to negotiate identities between self, other and ideological structure - see the way we are from the way we talk.
My particular focus is immigrants who tend to face more tensions (e.g., the conflict between different ethnicities); thus their needs for identity negotiation are intensified.
I have conducted an ethnography on Filipino youth immigrants in Macau from 2023 to 2025.
I employ conversation analysis to examine how individuals (esp. couple) utilize various semiotic resources sequentially to construct the (dis)alignment and (dis)affiliation in conversation.
I attempt to show that, beyond alignment and affiliation, individuals strive for affective reciprocity (or love more generally) in the sequential unfolding of conversation.
I am interested to examine the ways in which media performers recruit ideologically-loaded linguistic resources, as a form of style, to construct persona.