Ethnicity and Identity: Language and Culture Among Greek-American Youths

Abstract

This article explores Greek ethnicity through traditional measures of self-identification and distinction. The author attempts to confirm various hypotheses of previous researchers and theories of ethnicity by studying a select group of Greek-American students at two private universities.

The below study reveals that the transmission of “Greek” values, customs, and traditions is largely successful among a select group of Greek-American university students. Yet, as in the extant literature, successive generations of Greek extraction increasingly detach themselves from Hellenic linguistic ties and from active participation in substantive institutional life. Despite their strong attachments to family, Greek ethnic identity, Greek Orthodoxy, and Greek sociable, as opposed to cultural/social, life.