Language socialisation and korean as a heritage language: A study of Hawaiian classrooms

Transcripts were made of teacher–student conversations in four Hawaiian classrooms in which Korean is taught as a heritage language. The study examines the use of the sentence-ending particle yo, the meaning of the particle, the way it is used in interaction, and its sociopragmatic implication. The following research questions are addressed: (1) Is yo, spoken by the teachers, used to index politeness towards their students? (2) What social meaning does the marker signal in classroom conversation? and (3) What effects can we speculate that the teacher’s use of yo has on the socialisation of the students? Analysing the teacher–student’s spontaneous conversations with a special focus on teacher-talk, the paper argues that yo is a powerful tool of socialisation, with which the teachers instruct their students explicitly and implicitly on the social meanings of the marker.