Korean American College Students’ Language Practices and Identity Positioning: “Not Korean, but not American”

Abstract

This article explores the intersection between language practices and ethnic identity for 8 second-generation Korean American learners who were participating in a Korean-as-a-foreign-language (KFL) class at a U.S. university. This study aims to examine the fluid nature of ethnic identity by examining how Korean heritage learners negotiate, construct, and position themselves in the landscape of American-ness and Korean-ness, through language practices. The data are drawn from observations, semistructured interviews, and audio-recorded classroom interaction during one academic year in a college-level KFL class. Findings show that the heritage learners employ the two available codes for different communicative purposes: English is used as a primary communication tool, and Korean is associated with their childhood memories, food, and kinship. Furthermore, their use of linguistic devices, such as pronouns, indexes their ever-changing relational positioning of themselves in a third culture, where they have taken on aspects from both.

Keywords:

• heritage-language learning
• ethnic identity
• Korean Americans
• code choice
• indexing

Notes

¹The Yale Romanization of Korean (1992) is employed in this article.