Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: The Acquisition of Korean Grammatical Functions in Korean-Chinese Bilingual Infants.

Lee, Kwee-Ock, Kim, Hyoung-Jai

Kyungsung University, Busan, Korea(klee@star.ks.ac.kr)

Background and Aims : The purpose of this study is to investigate the acquisition of Korean grammatical functions in Korean-Chinese bilingual infants in Yanji, China, where Korean and Chinese are official languages. Korean and Chinese differ in terms of the system of indicating the grammatical role of the noun phrase in a sentence; Korean uses case markers like Japanese(e.g., -ka for subject, -lul for object), whereas Chinese uses word order, SVO, like English. Comparing this data with that of a Korean monolingual group, we may describe whether and how bilingual environments affect the acquisition of Korean grammatical functions.
Methods : This study included 26 bilingual infants from 25 months to 29 months of age. Parents speak Korean to their infants at home, and the infants attend Korean/Chinese speaking nursery. Each child's spontaneous natural utterances during interaction with his/her caregiver were videotaped for 35 minutes, and analyzed for the acquisition of syntax and morphology. Analysis included the acquisition of word orders and grammatical morphemes, such as case markers (nominative, accusative, locative, topic markers) for each subject.
Key Results: Bilingual Infants predominantly produce the canonical word order or sub-strings of the canonical order, SOV, SCV(e. g., nay-ka aki-ta ' I-NOM baby-COP:DECL' 'I am (a) baby.'), SV and OV. There is no noncanonical word orders in this sample, which show the same pattern found in the Koran monolinguals(Cho, 1983). Bilingual infants began to use the nominative marker(-i), which is allomorph of nominative marker(–ka) and the locative marker(-e) at about 24months-old while the first case markers produced by the Korean monolinguals at about 20months-old are the nominative marker(-ka), delimiting marker(-to), comitative marker(-lang/-hako)(Kim, 1997). Bilingual infants use the topic(-nun) and the accusative marker(-ul) earlier than Korean infants. Bilingual infants produce error in the use of case markers. However, they did not use -i-ka type of error which is very common in Korean monolinguals(Kim, 1997), rather they put -i before topic marker(-nun) .
Conclusion: The results show that Korean-Chinese bilingual infants acquire Korean grammatical functions of word order in the same way with that of Korean monolinguals. However, the bilingual infants produce the case markers differently in time and order from the monolinguals. These are consistent with the results of Gathercole(in press) who found that the bilingual children lagged behind the monolingual children in mastering grammar.

Publication Type: Dissertation
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The goal of my study is to take a 'different' approach to the discussion about Korean American children's 'identities' to complicate our common dialogue about them. Specifically I will take a look at how historically shifting and contextually varying discourses sanction different conceptions about Korean American children and how the discourses are institutionalized and played out through teacher's pedagogical practices as the embodiment of dominant discourses. I also view their identity negotiation as a technology of the self. For this, I will use both Foucauldian historical (genealogy) and quasi-ethnographic (critical discourse analysis) analyses to answer two different questions about historically shifting and contextually varying discourses that constitute Korean American children. The concepts of discourse, power/knowledge, subjectivity, the technology of the self and inclusion/exclusion doublet, which will be the key concepts that I will implement for the analyses of the topic through this study, will be explored in relation to Korean American children and their education. The research questions of the study are as follows: (1) how have Korean American children been historically, socially and contextually constituted?; (2) how do teachers’ ideas and pedagogical practices as embodiment of institutionalized dominant discourses about a good Korean American child lead to the construction of their identity?; and (3) how are Korean American children’s negotiations of their ‘multiple’ identities, as a technology of the self, acted in different contexts in their early schooling? For this, I will reveal how Korean American children are constructed by the totalizing (all encompassing) efforts of teachers’ discourses about normalcy, Koreanness/Asianness, the notion of a child, model minority stereotype, and children of color. Reframing the topic of identity and culture, especially with regard to so-called ‘minority’ children, within a different epistemological/theoretical territory is a reformatory act in that previous studies about this topic view power as something that can be possessed and therefore children are considered to be disempowered, passive recipients rather than actors exercising power. Since my study brings up different discourses making up Korean American children, I do not explain their identity construction under the limit of cultural effect. In my study, ‘Korean’ refers to not only culture but also discourses defining and commonly associated with Korean American children.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: How do Japanese of Korean descent identify themselves, transmit their roots and colonial migration history? Japaneseness has been associated with mainlanders of non-outcaste origin while the boundary of Japaneseness per se is constantly in flux. Koreans remained aliens in the postwar era due to their legal exclusion as former colonial subjects or descendants. With legal barriers to citizenship falling, structural assimilation of otherwise culturally assimilated Koreans has accelerated because of high rates of intermarriage and steady increase in naturalization. Based on in-depth interviews, this paper explores the extent to and conditions on which the practice of “diasporic cultural citizenship” (Siu 2001) depends. In addition to addressing who obtains diasporic identity, I illustrate the implications of cultural citizenship with which minorities not only challenge the dominant notion of authentic membership but also accommodate themselves in negotiation with the existing social structure.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study explores how a Korean American girl displays identity and cultural adaptation based on audio taped interviews and ethnographic observations. It focuses on three main questions; (1) to which cultural identity did the girl primarily orient herself (2) with what communication style did she interact in the Korean community;(3) how did she adapt her communication style to the Korean culture? The main subject was a 17-year old Korean American girl living in a southern coastal city in the United States. In-depth interviews of both the informant and her mother revealed bicultural orientations. In other words, the 17-year old girl considers herself as both an American who is familiar with Korean culture and a Korean who is familiar with American culture. Her discourse, however, shows the dominance of an American identity. Additional studies are needed to further our understanding of how such an identity is constructed in everyday interactions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore the forces and processes that underlie the construction of racial minorities¡¯ cultural identity in western society. An ethnographic research was conducted to identify the ways in which 1.5 generation Korean immigrants in Greater Vancouver talk about whites, ethnic Chinese and Korean themselves. 1.5 generation immigrants refer to a half and half generation who immigrated to the host country when they were relatively young. The key argument is that non-white cultural identities are always constructed and negotiated within white racist representations. Non-whites are constantly given their identities by the dominant western discourse of race while they actively appropriate and negotiate the meanings of imposed identities. I discuss young Korean immigrants¡¯ struggles with contending identities in relation to the presence of four types of subjectivities constructed in white-privileged society of Canada: 1) an internalized white superiority, 2) a racial stigma, 3) a pan-Asian identity and 4) ethnocentrism.