Bilingual Students’ Identities in EFL Settings

Abstract

This research examines bilingual students’ language choice between Korean and English and their identity negotiation in Korean local contexts. As the world has been globalized, the absolute association between one nation and one language fades. In some cases, maintaining a heritage language is the choice of an individual. Drawing concepts from community of practice, social identity, imagined communities, and the notion of investment, this study uses the quantification of bilingual participants’ language production and a qualitative research design. The quantitative data demonstrates that the participants’ language choice depends on the interlocutors. The qualitative findings show parents’ attitude, peer group as a community of practice, and ideology of the local community influence their language use and language identity construction. These findings show that the bilingual participants are influenced by the conflicting ideologies (ethnic language maintenance and hegemony of English) of Korean society.