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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1199

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

To be or not to be ethnicist: Language contact and identity in South Korea

Authors: Hadzantonis, Dimitrios Michael
Submitted by: Hadzantonis, Dimitrios Michael (Sungshin University, Korea, Republic of (South Korea))

South Korean ethnic attitudes may influence attitudes and efforts toward foreign nationals in South Korea (Shin 2006). Consequently, these foreign nationals can experience alienation, loneliness, and generally a lack of consideration by South Korean nationals, contributing to social marginalization. This interaction between South Korean and foreign nationals has received little scholarly attention, despite development of increasingly complex interethnic social networks in the region (SERI 2008), thus exposing a gap between identity selection through methods such as code choice, and efforts to address this issue. Investigating code selection in South Korea has thus become vital, as it informs issues related to multilingual competence, selection of social identity, and integration with a foreign other.

Observing sociodiscursive intertextualities, the current study argues that, more so than in other regions, South Korean social attitudes can influence a code selection, which is associated with large group and ethnic identity. Factors affecting these attitudes can include a strong sense of national ethnicity and identity, patriarchy, (neo)Confucianism, the Hoju Jedo, significant language contact, new national and transnational modernities, perceived hegemonies from other sociopolitical regions, lack of adequate preparation for global integration, sociohistorical trends and practices, and formal pedagogical frameworks. These factors affect interethnic integrativeness and investment during contact with the foreign other, while pointing to language choice as a predictor of Ethnolinguistic Vitality. The paper presents initial preparatory findings, supported by theories of social identity, qualitative empirical data in the form of surveys (500 participants), and literature, so to elicit attitudes of South Koreans towards non-Korean nationals in South Korea, thus developing a formatory research model for code selection. The paper then suggests a research model for the extended and longitudinal study, investigating a specific correlate which can expose motives for code selection in South Korea, and hence, to investigate ways in which, as well as the extent to which, ethnic affiliation affects language choice in South Korea.

This study until the present constitutes a twelve-year investigation of South Korea, aiming to observe a relatively unique sociolinguistic phenomenon, and that of extreme code choice during interethnic interaction. Subsequent to the initial collection of empirical data, this study discusses factors that influence in/outgroup selection, locates patterns of this group selection, and contributes to a discussion of the correlation of social and linguistic elements in South Korea. The study advances understanding of language and social identity by challenging essentialist conceptions of ethnicity, and by observing sociocultural spaces between South Koreans and the western other, thus locating a specific correlate and its variable effect during change in Ethnolinguistic Vitality, as speakers code select to position, contest, and negotiate their own and others’ social identities.

References:

SERI. (2008). Retrieved on January 28, 2009, from the website: www.seriworld.org.

Shin, G. W. (2006). Ethnic nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, politics, and legacy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.