| Going to the countries where English is used as a first language was believed to be the best way of gaining the language ability among Koreans, thus it resulted in many Koreans being English users. Koreans who experienced the second culture were mainly adolescents and the identity construction seemed difficult for them; the relationship between culture and language is crucial. The objectives of this study are exploring the current language use and the language identity of the adult Korean-English speaking returnees with two research questions: what are Korean-English users of adults’ language and cultural experiences in English speaking country, and how do the cultural and language experiences affect their construction of language identity after returned to Korea. The research is qualitative, which has adopted an interview-based method, and the data was collected by answering the questionnaire and conducting an interview. The data was analyzed by discovering which stages of the construction of cultural identity participants have gone through followed by analyzing the theoretical framework from Bucholtz and Hall’s identity construction principles. The results varied according to the individuals’ experiences, especially if the starting point of living abroad is earlier, their current language use and the identity construction clearly showed different aspects from those who went abroad later. They showed the ‘third-culture kid’ (TCK) alike attitude, where one can belong to both or neither cultures, thus creates one’s own unique identity. |