Most of the fieldwork consisted of participant observation, note writing, and conversation with social workers and children. For observations, the researcher visited the center once or twice a week for a stretch of two months and obtained informed consent from children’s mothers and social workers. Each observation lasted about one hour and was audiotaped and recorded in the field notes. All audiotaped observation/conversation data were transcribed verbatim. Besides, the researcher taught them English for about half an hour once a week. The participant observations led the researcher to know better about the children’s individual characteristics through building rapport and conversing with them, which we assume contributed to reducing the effect of the researcher’s presence. Although, for the first few observations, the children seemed to recognize the fact that they were being observed, they gradually came to get used to the researcher’s presence as they often approached to the researcher and initiated conversations with her. Finally, the researcher used pseudonyms to guard the anonymity of the participants and fulfilled the technical requirements necessary to demonstrate the use of ethical procedures in researching human participants.

Out of the entire data generated from the observations and note-taking was selected the portions that describe the situation when children’s cursing takes place and that show how social workers react to them. The data were thematically analyzed. That is, the researcher extracted important events related to the topic-children’s cursing-after completing coding and thematically parceling meaningful codes. Methodological analytic tools, such as contextualization cues and intertextuality, were employed for analyses. Contextualization cues refer to (non)verbal and prosodic signals and the manipulation of artifacts. Intertextuality means that some ideas are shared by means of an intertextual link. For this, the researcher focused on the connections between texts-how the knowledge from the previous text is related to that from in the current one.

This section discusses the findings of the study in four parts, respectively answering the research questions previously given. A close analysis of discourses reveals how a spiral cycle of the acts of cursing is generated through the interconnections among social workers’ ways of reaction, children’s cursing, and hidden rules of multicultural education. As for curse words that these South Korean children said in Korean, the researcher translated them into English in this paper. Of course, it is possible that the meanings of the translated words here could be different from their original meanings. However, since language is part of culture, there would be no perfect translation that does not lose any original meanings.

This section discusses how deficit theory is inscribed in a lead social worker’s well-intended generosity which could bring about the outcome of leaving children in trouble. Deficit theory refers to the idea that social workers form low expectations of children based on a perceived lack of cultural capital or intellectual ability and believe the children have low cognitive, language, and social skills. This leads children to live up to the low expectations for themselves, which negatively affects their performance. The lead social worker’s testimony below shows that the deficit theory governs her view of the children in her classroom.

The italicized words in this account signify the deficit theory that guides the lead social worker’s pedagogical decisions. Multicultural children are defined as lacking learning assistance, resources, and Korean language skills, and in need of help and attention from an afterschool program.

Over the course of informal conversations with her, the researcher realized that the fundamental issue was her conception of a good teacher for multicultural children, which affected the way she dealt with their violence. She carefully brought up her thought about the children as follows:

According to the above statement, she viewed multicultural children as the objects of oppression. For this reason, she might think, as the last sentence of her testimony reveals, that punishing or inhibiting what they do or say could disempower them. Her dichotomous understanding of oppression versus freedom seems to blind her to the fact that the children were plunged into a chaotic state of indulgence disguised as freedom.

At the moment the researcher entered the classroom for the first time, her excitement and confidence was sapped, all of a sudden, by one boy boldly saying, with a frown of disapproval, “you are so ugly.” Of course, the researcher did not respond to him, and neither did the lead social worker (On that day, no assistant teacher was present). Transcript 1 is the discourse that shows the above incident.

Korean language has two different forms, plain and honorific. The honorific form of the language reflects the observance that a speaker should follow when the recipient is older than him or her. In the above case, Min Soo did not use the honorific form when he spoke to the researcher. Gee (2005) argues that a word or a phrase is offensive when the intention of the speaker is “to cause or insinuate physical or emotional harm” (xii). The receiver in a dialogue can notice the profanity or offensiveness of what is said through other non-verbal cues such as emotional or facial expressions, tone of voice, and gesticulation (Gee, 2005). According to Sullivan (2011), psychological bullying in schools includes verbal and non-verbal. Based on this, children’s (non)verbal interactions were analyzed and interpreted.

One notable observation was that the lead social worker’s reaction was passive when Min Soo told the researcher that she was ugly. It is unusual that an adult in South Korea does not respond or intervene in the situation when a child is disrespectful to an adult. Stress on “OK” in line 7 acts as a placeholder since after that her speech has a flat intonation pattern (Bloome et al., 2005). That is, as the children started laughing all together, the social worker tried to turn their attention to their assignments (line 7: “OK. Go back to your homework. I am going to see who has done a good job.”), rather than trying to caution them for the matter.

The same reaction from the social worker was found in the subsequent incident when Min Soo cursed and hit Jae Min. The lead social worker was nearby but did not interrupt the violence. Instead, she simply warned him not to bother Jae Min. Also, she did not interpret his behavior as violence, but as an act of bothering (In line 14, she said, “Min Soo, don’t bother him.”). This indicates that she did not seem to grasp the magnitude of the problem.

Considering the severity of the effects of children’s offensive language, it is not just bullying, but violence by means of language. And its impacts are never less than those that physical violence incurs. As Toni Morrison (1993, December 7) addressed in her Nobel lecture, “oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence.” This is confirmed in Transcript 1 when Min Soo’s abusive language eventually escalated into physical violence toward Jae Min (line 8: [hits Jae Min on the head and laughs]) (Violence Prevention Resources, 2008). For example, Min Soo and Jae Min seemed to have a bullying-bullied relationship. Jae Min continuously resisted physical attacks from Min Soo. In line 11 ( “STOP it.”), prosodic signals (e.g. stress, volume shifts, intonation patterns, etc.) provide an understanding of the speaker’s intention (Bloome et al., 2005); Jae Min stressed the word ‘stop’ indicates his strong resistance to Min Soo’s bullying. This contextualization cue (Bloome et al., 2005) indicates that Jae Min strongly resisted Min Soo’s physical and verbal violence. In this conversational segment, violent language replaced physical violence.

The following two conversations reveal how this deficit theory, inscribed in the social worker’s conception of multicultural children, serves as justifying evidence for her permissive teaching style. The incident described in Transcript 2 took place during reading time. As usual, Jae Min was troubled by verbal abuse and physical attack from Min Soo.

In this transcript, whenever verbal and physical violence occurred, the social worker resorted to verbal interventions, such as brief remarks and commands, in order to control it. Of course, the fact that such an incident as verbal and physical violence repeatedly occurred proved that the way she handled the problem was not effective.

Whether the situation is really resolved or not depends on the quality of the social worker’s intervention. Sullivan (2011) states that reflective teachers(social workers) can prevent bullying and explains how four different types of teaching (authoritative, authoritarian, neglectful/cynical, and permissive) contribute differently to children’s bullying. Having said that, the social worker’s management style is ‘permissive.’ What is more, she ended up being neglectful, as she did not “follow up when things [went] wrong” (Sullivan, 2011: 118).

Although Jae Min strongly asked the social worker and the assistant teacher for help (line 5: “TEACHER.”), the tone of their voices was monotonous, with no shift in volume. These paralinguistic cues are critical indicators that show the social workers’ intent of speech and attitudes towards the situation. For instance, the assistant teacher’s blunted responses, with no emphasis in the tone of her voice, corresponds to her next movement of stepping back and moving to other students (line 10: [steps back and goes to other students]), which indicates how she passed over the handling of the situation to the lead social worker, whose response did not differ from hers.

The permissive style of the lead social worker is well evidenced in her reactions. In line 11 ([hugs Min Soo from behind] “Min Soo”), the social worker’s acting of hugging could imply that verbal and physical violence is condoned. This leads her to be inconsistent and unclear about what is acceptable and what is not in regard to children’s words and behavior.

She did not take any proactive approach to the incidents related to children’s verbal violence. Her permissive style in relation to multicultural children’s verbal and physical violence inscribes the deficit theory that, as expressed in her testimony above, dominates her view of them. This is clearly demonstrated in Transcript 3 as well. The following happened during English lesson time, when the researcher taught them English, standing in front. The children were split into two groups seated around separate tables.

The lead social worker did not intervene (line 14: “[looks at the researcher] Please let him be..”) in Min Soo’s offensive speech until the researcher started admonishing him. Her silencing practice governed the children’s understanding of what is acceptable and what is not in regard to their language use and relationships with peers.

As in Transcript 2, the lead social worker hugs Min Soo again right after he used rude and vulgar language (line 15: [hugs him from behind]). From a behaviorist perspective, this is a positive reinforcement that ends up increasing the likelihood of his violent language use occurring in the future. He continued to say, “kick her out of here” (line 16) and left the classroom (line 17). However, the social worker did not do any intervention to try to stop his verbal aggression or to offer him any guidance for a better action.

What lies beneath the social worker’s practices vis-à-vis the child’s verbal violence is the deficit theory that not only is inscribed in her view of the child but also governs her practices. And the best solution for her was to allow for his unlimited freedom of action and speech, though actually it was not a true sense of freedom, thinking of other children who were affected by his verbal violence.

This section discusses how his freedom of action and speech influenced the other children in the classroom. Transcript 4 shows how Min Soo’s verbal violence provoked a sense of fear to grow in their minds. The incident occurred during reading time.

Here, when Seong Jun took the book away from Dah Hae, she resisted vigorously. However, when Min Soo took a turn to snatch the book from her, first she was hesitant to say something. Although she insisted that the book was hers, her voice was so quiet that it was not heard (line 8: [quietly] “That’s │ mine.”). She even paused between ‘that’s’ and ‘mine.’ The pausing is a contextualization cue that provides an understanding of the speaker’s intention (Bloome et al., 2005). Regarding her intention, one interpretation could be that she was afraid of asking him to return the book.

Attention should be given to the other children’s reactions to his offensive language. In lines 10 (XXX [with wide eyes, steps back from Min Soo]) and 12 ([steps aside] “Don’t.”), Dah Hae and Jae Min stepped back/aside from Min Soo. This bodily movement was a paralinguistic cue signaling deep-seated fear in their mind, which made them want to be distant from him. In line 14 ([looks frightened and whimpers] “Don’t.” [scarcely audible].), Jae Min started whimpering right after Min Soo used curse words. His voice was almost inaudible, which demonstrates how powerless he might feel. The same situation was repeated in lines 15 ([laughs aloud] “You asshole.”) and 16 (“[cries out while burying his head in his arms]).

The next transcript also portrays how a sense of fear was deeply infiltrated into the children’s minds. It was during the transition time right before English class began. Jae Min and Soo Hyun were sitting next to each other, and Jae Min was looking for his textbook for English class.

In this transcript, it was Seong Jun who used violent language. Given that in line 8 (“Ah, shit. You stupid ass!”), Seong Jun did not make any physical attack or threat to children, their reactions in lines 9 ([closes the book and moves to another table]) and 10 ([stare blankly into space and moves to another table]) illustrate how the boy’s verbal violence aroused their anxiety and dread. Some children’s verbal violence had an intense impact on other children’s emotional security.

While the cursing engenders a climate of fear among the children, the acts of cursing and swearing are copied and mimicked by them, as children often learn their language and social skills through mimicry (Stel, 1998, Webb, 1972). Through the course of the observations, the researcher was able to notice that the children were substantially affected by cursing and swearing, which was first initiated by one particular child, but which spread into other children’s verbal habits. In the following transcript, the children were supposed to finish their school assignments before they went out to play. Min Soo was playing a game on his cell phone, but the social worker and the assistant teacher did not ask him to work on his homework. The assistant teacher was trying to help Seong Jun do his assignment.

The way of interpreting the text in this section is to parse the text into different message units, which are “the smallest unit[s] of conversational meaning” (Green & Wallat, 1981). Of course, acknowledging intertextual connections, the interpretation of a text here is based on the meanings drawn from other texts.

The texts above show how violent language is spread through mimicry in the classroom. Mimicry of language and behavior is one of the major strategies for creating shared experiences among children. Mimicry is defined as copying the other person’s postures, manner of speech, and facial expressions. And in many cases, children mimic others’ (non)verbal behavior and expressions (un)consciously, intentionally, and automatically (Stel, 1998). The understanding of mimicry has been sought by developmental, neurological and social psychological research. According to the explanation based on social psychology, people are inclined to copy the other person’s speech patterns and manners, the amount of speech, and gestures (Stel, 1998, Webb, 1972). In this regard, mimicry has the social function of assisting children to be adjusted to a social group by emulating socially and culturally accepted behavior and manner of speech. As language helps children’s mental functions, such as memory, feeling, attention, and problem solving, develop, copying the bad language another child uses can affect a child’s mentality or ways of thinking and feeling.

In order to better understand how children share and extend cursing experiences through mimicry, the researcher employed a different strategy here for the analysis of the above text. The text consists of more of one level-up unit from a message unit, which is called an interactional unit. The researcher assumes that the mimicry creates an interaction between more than two speakers and/or listeners. An interactional unit formed by message units is determined through the analysis of verbal aspects of each message of a speaker and contextualization cues(Green & Wallat, 1981).

In Interactional Unit 1, Seong Jun’s talk in line 3 can be interpreted as a response to Min Soo (lines 1 and 2), considering his kinesic act in line 3 ([looks at Min Soo]). Similarly, the way that Seong Jun expressed his feeling in line 6 was the same as how Min Soo cursed in line 4 ( “This sucks” [with stress on words]). Seong Jun was almost repeating Min Soo’s verbal violence, as seen in Interactional Unit 1.

In line 7 (“*Teacher*, I don’t want to do this.”), Seong Jun initiated an interaction with an assistant teacher. Stressing on the first word called attention, which was a way of starting a new topic. His response (line 7) to the teacher was again curse words. As in Interactional Unit 1, the I-R (initiation-response) sequence is repeated in Interactional Unit 2 and 3.

Seong Jun used the same cursing words and phrases, such as ‘fuck’ and ‘this sucks,’ that Min Soo just said. One interpretation of this repetition could be that Seong Jun copied what Min Soo said. Therefore, through mimicry, the use of vulgar and violent language was spread and circulated in the classroom. This same pattern is found in the conversation between In Young and Seong Jun (line 11: “Fuck you.”, line 12: “*What are you looking at?*”). Here, the I-R sequence in their interaction consists of all curse words. As seen in Transcript 6, the impact of Min Soo’s verbal violence on other children is that it created a chain of verbal abuse as an acceptable form of conversation among the children. As seen in Transcript 6, the impact of Min Soo’s verbal violence on other children is that it created a chain of verbal abuse as an acceptable form of conversation among the children. Transcripts 1-6 arranged in the order of the time of occurrence show that the frequency of other children’s use of abusive language increased over time.

This paper highlighted how the deficit theory deep-seated in the social worker’s view of multicultural children governed her ways of dealing with the issues of children’s verbal violence and how her permissive attitude and practice shaped multicultural children’s experiences of cursing. As the social worker viewed multicultural children as victims who are deficient, deprived, and in need of help, their verbal violence ended up being unconstrained under her permissive attitude/practice. As a consequence, the findings of this study implicate the following.

First, deficit theory, underlying social workers’ practices, was found to form a permissive teaching style that further affects children’s emotions, learning, and relationships. The result of the study about this particular group of children and social workers is not generalizable to other studies. Nevertheless, it is meaningful in that this in-depth study shows how verbal violence in a classroom creates an emotionally unsafe environment where children can’t shake the fear and anxiety. This paper highlights what a social worker’s view of a child brings to children’s peer relationships. Of course, as Moon (2001) pointed out, teachers are cautious of doing“hasty ‘labeling’ the children as‘rejected’ or ‘problem’ children” (24) as they believe that any classroom incidents are part of children’s developmental processes. However, such a teacher’s perception of children’s problem and belief in child development involving no intervention in children’s problems does not make any difference but perpetuates what is happening in a classroom, masking power relationships embedded in children’s culture (Corsaro, 1997). Likewise, both the social worker and her assistant in this study did not make visible children’s cursing and swearing─verbal violence. This result is consistent with the finding of Tepetaʂ, Akgun, and Altun (2010) that teachers “rarely consider verbal and psychological aspects of bullying” worsening children’s bullying (1678). Although their study discusses teachers’ practices, we can infer that such attitudes and practices of social workers also likely aggravate multicultural children’s negative experiences of cursing. Besides, as Lee (2005) argued that the lack of teachers’ interventions was associated with children’s permissive attitude toward peer bullying, this study also reveals that a social worker’s noninterference rendered verbal violence dominating. Consequently, as Cawood (2010) asserted, evidence-supported interventions should be implemented in order to address children’s verbal violence. Appropriate intervention and supervision are critical in ensuring children’s well-being (Pepler, Craig, and O’Connell, 1999).

What matters is the quality of a social worker’s intervention in children’s verbal violence. As the findings of the study show, simple verbal warnings from a social worker are not effective enough to change a target child’s behavior or a situation. Therefore, the intervention strategies in children’s verbal violence should be deliberately planned, designed and implemented for any situation in which violent and abusive language is used among children (Cawood, 2010).

Secondly, the act of cursing and swearing spread through a chain of mimic actions in the classroom since the social worker granted the children unregulated freedom without any intervention. Her way of reacting to multicultural children’s cursing seemed to be a means of compensating for their deprivation as she viewed them as the objects of oppression outside the space of her reign. However, her well-intended generosity toward children’s verbal violence maintained their cursing rituals. Accordingly, children’s verbal abuse served as an elicitor leading to victim or bystander children’s emotional experiences that were “the physiological arousal state frequently associated with emotions, combined with the experiential, subjective apprehension of that arousal-the feeling” (Feito, 1997, p. 4). Whether a child’s cursing was an expression intended to insult others or just self-talk, it negatively affected other children by invoking the feelings of fear, anxiety, and anger. This cycle of verbal abuse definitely hampered their learning and threatened a sense of security as they were frequently distracted from their work and called for help (Leadbeater & Hoglund, 2009).

Thirdly, though the social worker viewed multicultural children as the oppressed, her permissive attitude toward their cursing rendered her approach oppressive, though she was unable to realize it. This study has demonstrated how social welfare systems are deeply rooted in the oppressed/oppressor framework (Cowie, 2010; Strier & Binyamin, 2013), but practitioners working against oppressive practices may unconsciously join the oppressor force when they identify multicultural children as deficient and forget critically reflecting upon their own practices. As Baines (2007) argued, anti-oppressive practices are critical in social work, particularly for multicultural children, since they are living under multiple layers of marginalization.

In the case of multicultural children, how social workers as teachers in afterschool programs intervene in children’s language use would have a strong effect on their lives since in South Korea multicultural children often learn in segregated places for an afterschool program tailored to their unique needs and wants. However, this spatial isolation brings about a problem when social workers consider it a protected space for the children. Social workers’ stereotyped image of multicultural children can make them miss ‘teachable moments’ through which the children can learn desired behavior and develop empathy. Since these social workers work as teachers in the welfare center, the implication of this study can be applied to the fields of both social work and education in which practitioners teach and manage children from other cultures in the multicultural society.

The policy implications of this study are as follows. First, particularly for afterschool programs for multicultural children, most of classroom managers and teachers did not major in education. Therefore, it is necessary to provide training opportunities to them on how to handle children’s verbal and physical violence. Besides, it is necessary for them to understand that even a low level of aggression and/or cursing/swearing could negatively affect all children exposed to them. Secondly, social workers working with multicultural children should get involved in an ongoing critical self-reflection upon their practices in order to problematize ways of reasoning embedded in their behavior, thought, and feeling and take an anti-oppressive approach to working with multicultural children. Of course, social structures per se of the larger society should be (re)built inclusively with multicultural families and children, liberating them from any label, prejudice, and stereotype which discursively envision what being multicultural children is like.

This paper was not intended to problematize an individual social worker’s teaching practices and management skills, but to openly discuss how the belief system of social workers working with multicultural children is closely linked to the quality of children’s experiences in peer interactions. The conjunction of the deficit construction of multicultural children, embodied by a social worker’s permissive practice, and children’s behavioral tendency of imitating what their peers talk and do maintains and circulates children’s verbal violence when it comes to segregated management systems for children from multicultural families. Social workers’ uncriticized practices may put them at risk of unwittingly neglecting children’s needs and emotional security. Therefore, this paper points out the importance of focusing on the strengths, possibilities, and potentials that children from multicultural families possess, rather than limiting their possibilities through the lens of deficit theory.