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Australian Review of Applied Linguistics: Online-First Articles

1.5-generation Korean-New Zealanders’ perceptions of bilingualism, heritage language competence, and identity

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This study explores four 1.5-generation Korean-New Zealanders’ perceptions of bilingualism, heritage language (HL) competence, and identity. Drawing on interview data, the study shows that the participants were strongly connected to their ethnic group and strove to accept and strengthen their hyphenated Korean-New Zealander identities through foregrounding their bilingual and bicultural competence. In addition to their Korean use at home, socializing with other Korean speakers at church and in peer groups aided their learning of a wide range of registers in context, while providing culturally sensitive places for the participants to explore their identities. Nevertheless, the study also found that the participants encountered racial and linguistic hierarchical structures from which they were marginalized, which delayed their construction of positive bilingual identities. The findings enable a deeper understanding of how family-internal and family-external factors shape immigrant children’s identities, and suggest that substantial institutional and societal support are needed to foster immigrant children’s bilingualism and biculturalism.

Keywords: Heritage language use, language maintenance, bilingualism, ethnic community, identity, Korean, New Zealand
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Heritage language and identity
    • 2.2Heritage language use and identity among Korean immigrants
    • 2.3The Korean community in New Zealand
  • 3.The study
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.3Data collection and analysis
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Self-rated HL proficiency
    • 4.2Contributing factors in HL maintenance
    • 4.3Perceived value of bilingualism
    • 4.4Construction of hyphenated identities as Korean-New Zealanders
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion and implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 28 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.21091.par
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