Imagined Communities and Language Socialization Practices in Transnational Space: A Case Study of Two Korean “Study Abroad” Families in the United States

Abstract

Abstract This is a yearlong ethnographic case study of 2 study abroad South Korean families' language socialization practices in their home. It explored how these parents', particularly the mothers', future visions of their returning community in South Korea influenced their home language socialization practices. As their future vision, it employed the notion of “imagined communities” (ICs) (Anderson, 1991; Kanno & Norton, 2003; Norton, 2001; Norton & Pavlenko, 2007). The data from interviews and participant observations revealed that these 2 mothers not only created different ICs, but also aligned themselves differently with their ICs. I argue that each family's unique negotiation of multiple memberships among communities they left behind, local ones, and ones they hoped to become part of in the future caused that diversity, which led to their divergent practices and attitudes toward different languages in their home. Furthermore, having membership renewal as the main goal in their IC, these families strived to maximize their language learning opportunities overseas and at the same time imposed constraints on their daily practices through language ideologies brought from their ICs.

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