Korean Linguistic Use in Korean American Children's Literature

• In Event: AERA Research-in-Progress Roundtable Session 1
  In Invited Roundtable: Research Insights into Literacy, Literature, and Media: Information-Seeking, Linguistics, and Data Use (Table 11)

Abstract

In immigrant-themed and multicultural children’s and adolescent’s literature, it is common to incorporate the heritage language. Using Korean American immigrant themed children’s and adolescent literature, this study explored the uses, domains, and functions of Korean. By conducting critical content analysis using intertextuality and doing a linguistic analysis of Korean, this study investigates cultural themes, representations, and identities through the contexts and purposes of Korean. Through a postcolonial lens, the research looks at how the Korean American protagonists experience Otherness. The study identifies themes of struggling with Korean American identity, cultural representations through language, linguistic power dynamics, generational Korean use, and Korean as invisible cultural ethos.

Author

• Prisca Kim, University of New Mexico