Abstract

This study provides a sociocultural account on whether heritage and non-heritage Korean speakers use the first person plural pronoun wuli ‘we’ in the same way as native Korean speakers do. Previous studies claim that wuli is used to refer to the speaker’s in-group, and the concept of ‘ingroup’ is utilized to account for its functions. To make a sociocultural comparison of the uses of wuli by native and (non-)heritage Korean speakers, the study collected and analysed the conversation data from (non-)heritage Korean speakers in the USA and Japan. It turns out that native, heritage and non-heritage Korean speakers use the pronoun wuli differently for different discourse-pragmatic functions.

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