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Language and identity of a Korean transnational youth in the U.S.

  • Myoung Eun Pang EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: May 10, 2022
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Abstract

The importance of multilingual use for the overall personal and educational development of transnational population is well documented, and many scholars have supported that language relates to identity. Given that adolescence is a critical period of identity construction, it is crucial to understand how transnational youth construct their transnational identity in adolescence, bordering across multiple languages and cultures in their everyday lives. Therefore, the current study examines the language and identity of one Korean transnational adolescent who lives with her family in the U.S. The purpose of this study is to explore how one Korean-American transnational adolescent youth navigates her identities utilizing her diverse linguistic and cultural repertoires in a range of contextual spaces. This qualitative case study collected semi-structured interview data to explore the following research questions: 1) How does a second generation Korean American transnational adolescent self-identify? and 2) How is her identity interconnected with her linguistic and cultural investment? This current study found that the participant has sites of specific identities as Korean or American: three distinct contexts of family, school, and community. In addition, the findings showed that the participant’s identity is related to her linguistic and cultural investment in transnational contexts.


Corresponding author: Myoung Eun Pang, Emory University, Atlanta, USA, E-mail:

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Received: 2020-11-15
Revised: 2021-08-23
Accepted: 2021-09-23
Published Online: 2022-05-10
Published in Print: 2023-11-27

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Special Issue 1: EMI in Chinese higher education; Guest Editor: McKinley, Rose and Curdt-Christiansen
  3. Editorial
  4. EMI in Chinese higher education: the Muddy water of ‘Englishisation’
  5. Review Article
  6. English medium of instruction in Chinese higher education: a systematic mapping review of empirical research
  7. Research Articles
  8. How to kill two birds with one stone: EMI teachers’ needs in higher education in China
  9. The incentivisation of English medium instruction in Chinese universities: policy misfires and misalignments
  10. Motivations to enrol in EMI programmes in China: an exploratory study
  11. A translanguaging and trans-semiotizing perspective on subject teachers’ linguistic and pedagogical practices in EMI programme
  12. Commentary
  13. English as a medium of instruction in Chinese higher education: looking back and looking forward
  14. Special Issue 2: The dynamics of Korean transnational families, language practices, and social belongings; Guest Editor: Hakyoon Lee
  15. Editorial
  16. Editorial: The dynamics of Korean transnational families, language practices, and social belongings
  17. Articles
  18. National belonging and citizenship in an era of globalization and transnational migration: Korean migrant youth in the United States
  19. Korean immigrant teenagers’ literacy practices and identity negotiation through smartphone use
  20. Language and identity of a Korean transnational youth in the U.S.
  21. Adolescent Korean returnees’ perceptions of the change of language learning contexts as bilingual learners
  22. From trilingualism to triliteracy: a trilingual child learning to write simultaneously in Korean, Farsi, and English
  23. Migrant mothers’ heritage language education in South Korea: complex and agentive navigation of capital and language ideologies
  24. Designing new Korean mothers, daughters-in-law, and wives: an analysis of Korean textbooks for newly arrived marriage migrants in South Korea
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