Role-play and language socialization among bilingual Korean children in the United States

Abstract

This article examines children's role-play within the framework of language socialization, as well as the relations between (a) utterances made by young bilingual Korean children within the role-play frame and (b) metacommunicative utterances about the play. It analyzes the language features that children use to set up the context of role-play and explores the relationships of the children who participate in the process of role-play socialization. Data analysis includes thematically and pragmatically related sequences of naturally occurring interactions during lunch time and play time in a Korean Baptist church in the United States and play time at some of the children's homes. Results indicate that bilingual children socialize themselves and jointly construct their identities through role-play in the communities of practice using specific features of language such as metacommunicative verbs, deictics, and code-switching.