University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

"Fragile bilinguals: rescaling ""good"" and ""bad"" South Korean bilinguals"

Choi, Lee Jin

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Lee Jin_Choi.pdf

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/50370

Description

Title
"Fragile bilinguals: rescaling ""good"" and ""bad"" South Korean bilinguals"
Author(s)
Choi, Lee Jin
Issue Date
2014-09-16
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Lo, Adrienne S.
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Lo, Adrienne S.
Committee Member(s)
  • Dyson, Anne H.
  • Harris, Violet J.
  • Park, Joseph Sung-Yul
Department of Study
Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp
Discipline
Educational Policy Studies
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Date of Ingest
2014-09-16T17:12:15Z
Keyword(s)
  • bilingual education
  • multilingualism
  • second language acquisition
  • transnational education
  • subjectivities
Abstract
My dissertation explores how U.S.-based multilingual South Korean speakers of English and Korean negotiate their positions in the over-crowded and complex lingusitic market, and try to stake a claim to being legitimate bilinguals through the process of metapragmatic typification (Agha, 2007). First, I investigate how tensions between Koreanness (nationalism/tradition) and cosmopolitanism (national betrayal) are exercised and displayed through mediatized discourses. Using discourse analysis, I then analyze interactions among a group of transnational South Korean graduate students who attend a North American university. By analyzing naturally occurring data from their social meetings and computer-mediated conversations, I examine how they consume circulating language ideologies, and locate themselves through the selective production of ideological representations or language registers associated with certain models of personhood. In particular, I focus on the process of metapragmatic typification, which shows how participants discursively typify linguistic registers, linguistic practices and models of personhood as indexical emblems of ‘good/successful’ or ‘bad/failed’ bilinguals as an attempt to legitimize themselves. By analyzing both macro- and micro- contexts, my dissertation highlights how such tensions have been reconstructed and rescaled in society, and how individuals participate in the process of developing sense-making discourses (Heller & Duchêne, 2012) in order to secure their positions and marginalize ‘other’ English speakers (e.g., Agha, 2003; Inoue, 2006).
Graduation Semester
2014-08
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/50370
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2014 Lee Jin Choi

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