2022 Linguistics Student Conference
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Joseph Sung-Yul Park
National University Singapore
Subjectivity and English as a global language: The case of South Korea’s English fever
What sustains English as a global language? While it is often assumed that it is the practical utility of English that leads people around the world to pursue it as a language of economic and social opportunity, such orientations to English can be properly accounted for only through the lens of subjectivity – that is, the dimensions of affect, morality, and desire that characterize people’s lives as agents in social context. This talk discusses how the heated pursuit of English in South Korea that took place during the two decades since the mid-1990s, often called the English fever (yeongeo yeolpung), was shaped by subjectivities invoked by Korea’s rapid neoliberal transformation. As increasing competition and precarity in the job market pushed Korean workers and families towards greater anxieties about the future, investment in English came to be seen as an index of responsible management and care of one’s own human capital. This suggests that the English fever was a process by which Koreans were led to become ideal neoliberal subjects who embrace their anxiety and channel it towards endless self-development, including enhancing English language skills.
2022 Schedule of Events
| Undergraduate Session 5:30 - 6:30pm | |
| Kaylee Jordan Linguistics (BA) |
Siblings as literacy-based play partners |
| Jesse Lentz Linguistics (BA) |
Adapting to ESL learners needs in non-routine situations |
| Alan Ochoa Linguistics (BA) |
Anti-mask discourse analysis |
| John Ayodeji Odudele Applicant (MA) |
Effects of gesture and shadowing to aid language fluency |
| Keynote Address 6:45 - 7:45pm | |
| Graduate Session 8:00 - 9:00pm | |
| Matt Ford Applied Linguistics (MA) |
Teacher emotions in the ESL classroom: a research plan design |
| Gina Schlobohm Applied Linguistics (MA) |
Language Ideologies and Sugt’stun Orthography |
| Tara Palmer Anthropology (PhD) |
Investing in Inequality: The political economy of adult ESL |
| Sooyoung Kang Applied Linguistics (MA) |
Locating the roles of an ESL teacher: Implementation of Discussion Leader |