다문화 가족의 언어 사용과 아동의 사회정체성

Abstract

This study aims to review theories and literature on bilingualism and social identity of immigrant children, and to examine language development and social identity of children of the multicultural family in Korea. The data for statistical analysis came from the survey of marriage immigrants conducted in 2006 by the Ministry of Gender Equality. Main findings are as follows. Generally speaking, children of the multicultural family have potential to become bilingual users and their identity is likely to be dual rather than single. Research results of this study show, however, that members of the multicultural family in Korea use Korean most of the time, and only 10% of the parents speak their mother language. Also, most of the parents regard their children as Korean citizens or Korean ethnic members rather than persons holding dual identity. Thus,objective conditions for the development of bilingual ability and dual identity are very unfavorable. Even under these conditions, the parents who speak the language of the home country with their children are more likely to regard their children as persons of dual identity than those who speak only Korean. These findings imply that if having dual identity is helpful for persons of multicultural backgrounds to develop healthy identity, providing bilingual education at home is the foremost task.