Consuming Global Language and Culture: South Korean Youth in English Study Abroad

In globalizing South Korea, it is a prevalent belief that English competence and global awareness are key qualifications for successful employment. This belief has led South Korean young adults to pursue transnational experiences to improve their employability in the neoliberal job market. This thesis examines how the ideology of English as a global language produces the necessity of learning the language abroad and governs students’ overseas learning and life, through the case of Korean youth studying English in Toronto. Drawing on 13-month ethnographic fieldwork in Toronto, two research trips to South Korea, and various types of relevant documents, this thesis analyzes sociolinguistic trajectories of a group of Korean students attending a private language school. Especially, from a political economic perspective of language and culture, the thesis focuses on the ways in which the Korean students consume and negotiate desired types of English and English speakers. This study shows that the majority of students accessing the English study abroad market were students from non-elite universities who had no legitimate global experiences and low levels of oral proficiency in English. Recognizing the necessity of linguistic and cultural capital, the Korean youth decided to study English abroad, as their parents agreed to financially support their overseas education. In the private language teaching industry, such social, linguistic, and economic positions of the Korean youth led them to be strategic, calculative, and consumerist in terms of their English learning. In multilingual Toronto, the Korean students stratified English speakers according to the latter’s authenticity, proficiency, and intimacy. They constantly navigated “good” English programs and teachers in their language school. However, their status in the Western society, which remained as temporary visitors, non-native English speakers, and (East) Asians, posed challenges to immersing themselves in local cultures. Furthermore, this thesis demonstrates that the Korean students’ attitudes toward life and learning emphasizing accountability and effectiveness caused emotional burn-out and intercultural fatigue. Subsequently, the Korean students temporarily suspended the normative ways for success in English study abroad and pursued an alternative way of life. They enjoyed leisure activities such as travels and everyday mingling, thus constructing their version of cosmopolitanism.Ph.D