The role of native language fluency in the cultural intersubjectivity of Chinese and Korean American youth and their immigrant parents

The following study examines the role of native language fluency and usage in Chinese and Korean first- and second-generation adolescents on the quality of parent-adolescent communication, parental respect and adolescent adjustment outcomes. The study proposes that the newly defined concept of cultural intersubjectivity can help explain the processes and outcomes that unite language fluency with parent-adolescent communication and the transmission of cultural values within immigrant families. The study utilizes both quantitative and qualitative data as a way of comprehensively describing the processes described above. Results indicate that the native language serves both a pragmatic and sociocultural function in Asian immigrant families and that both immigrant parents and their adolescents can articulate instances of both of these functions in their descriptions of incidents involving the native language.