ABSTRACT
This chapter examines kindergarten-age, Korean-English bilingual children’s use of the two languages and Korean honorifics according to different social contexts. Those who participated in this study included six five-year-old children enrolled in a Korean language school in the Midwestern United States. In order to understand the complexities of dual-language learning, the study adopted a sociocultural theory and translanguaging as its theoretical foundation. Employing a qualitative case-study method, data were collected over five months from multiple sources, including participant observations, interviews, children’s artifacts, and video/audio recordings, and analyzed thematically and socio-linguistically. The study found that the children employed language/form differently according to their different social relationships and communicative goals. The findings suggest that dual-language learning for early bilingual learners is a dynamic social and cultural process, involving multi-layered decision-making. The findings also suggest the role of translanguaging as a transformative tool that supports Korean-English bilingual children’s dual-language development. In order to support early bilingual learners, schools should be places where the children’s complex sociocultural factors are acknowledged and valued. By sharing empirical examples of Korean-English bilinguals’ utilization of the two languages and Korean honorifics, the study seeks to provide insights into the situated nature of dual-language learning.
