Korean students’ perceptions of identities and cultural capital
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v1i1.107Keywords:
identity, Korean cheong, critical social theory, dialogism, power, cultural capitalAbstract
This article presents four Korean adult students’ personal narratives about their experiences in Canadian university programs. Using Bourdieu’s critical social theory, Bakhtin’s dialogism and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory as a conceptual frame, I focus on the students’ perceptions of identities, cultural capital and different social relations of power embedded in their language learning contexts. The students share certain commonalities such as being Korean and educated in Korea. However, their diverse investment in, evaluation and negotiation of their second language discourse practices, challenge stereotypic, monolithic labels and attributed identities as second language learners.
References
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981) The dialogic imagination: Four essays. (Trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist) Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986) Speech genres and other late essays. (Trans. Y. McGee) Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1986) The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (ed.) Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education 241–58. New York: Greenwood Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1998) Practical reason: On the theory of action. London: Polity Press.
(CBIE) Canadian Bureau for International Education. (1997) The national report on international students in Canada, 1996/7. Ottawa: Canadian Bureau for International Education.
Canale, M. and Swain, M. (1980) Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1: 1–47.
Choi, S. C. (2000) Korean psychology. Seoul: Choong-ang University.
Davies, B. and Harré, R. (1990) Positioning: Conversation and the production of selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20(1): 43–63.
Davis, K. (1995) Qualitative theory and methods in applied linguistics research. TESOL Quarterly 29: 427–53.
Firth, A. and Wagner, J. (1998) SLA property: No trespassing. The Modern Language Journal 81: 285–300.
Foucault, M. (1980) Power / Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1971–1977. New York: Pantheon Books.
Gubrium J. F. and Holstein, J. A. (eds) (2003) Postmodern interviewing. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Han, G. and Choi, S. (2004) Cheong: A Korean illustration of narrativized mind state. Paper presented at the Third international conference on the dialogical self. August 27, 2004, Warsaw, Poland. Unpublished.
Harré, R. and van Langenhove, L. (1991) Varieties of positioning. Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour 21(4): 393–407.
Knight, J. (1995) Internationalizing higher education: A shared vision. [Report]. Ottawa: Canadian Bureau for International Education, Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and Association of Canadian Community Colleges.
Lantolf, J. (ed.) (2000) Sociocultural theory and second language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, H. (2002) Different individuals, different approaches to L2 literacy practices. Proceedings of knowledge and discourse 2 conference. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong. http://ec.hku.hk/kd2proc/proceedings/theme2.asp
Lee, H. (2004) A sociocultural analysis of the processes of two Korean sibling’s L2 literacy practices. In A. M. Lorenzo Suárez, F. Ramallo and X. P Rodríguez-Yáñez (eds) Bilingual socialization and bilingual language acquisition. Proceedings from the second international symposium on bilingualism (University of Vigo, Galicia-Spain, October 23–26, 2002) 59–67. Vigo: Servizo de Publicacións da Universidade de Vigo.
Lee, H. (2005) A socio-cultural-historical analysis of six Korean students’ experiences in second language learning contexts: Learner agency and symbolic power. Unpublished PhD dissertation, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
Lee, K. and Wesche, M. (2000) Korean students’ adaptation to post-secondary studies in Canada: A case study. The Canadian Modern Language Review 57: 637–89.
Long, M. (1990) Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology. In K. de Bot, C. Kramsch and R. Ginsberg (eds) Foreign language research in cross-cultural perspective 39–52. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Maguire, M. H. (1994) Cultural stances of two Quebec bilingual children informing storytelling. Comparative Education Review 38(1):115–44.
Maguire, M. H. (1999) A bilingual child’s choices and voices: Lessons in noticing, listening, and understanding. In E. Franklin (ed.) Reading and writing in more than one language 115–49. Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English and Speakers of Other Languages.
Maguire, M. H. and Graves, B. (2001) Speaking personalities in primary children’s second writing. TESOL Quarterly 35: 561–93.
Mahoney, M. (1996) Connected knowing in constructive psychotherapy. In N. Goldberger, J. Tarule, B. Clinchy and M. Belenky (eds) Knowledge, difference, and power 126–47. New York: Basic Books.
McKay, S. and Wong, S. (1996) Multiple discourses, multiple identities: Investment and agency in second-language learning among adolescent immigrant students. Harvard Educational Review 66: 577–608.
Mishler, E. (1986) Research interviewing: Context and narrative. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mishler, E. (1999) Storylines: Craftartists’ narratives of identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Moll, L. C. (1992) Bilingual classroom studies and community analysis: Some recent trends. Educational Research 21(2): 20–24.
Pavlenko, A. and Lantolf, J. (2000) Second language learning as participation and the (re)construction of selves. In J. Lantolf (ed.) Sociocultural theory and second language learning 155–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Peirce, B. (1995) Social identity, investment, and language learning. TESOL Quarterly 29: 9–31.
Pennycook, A. (2001) Critical applied linguistics: A critical introduction. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Roebuck, R. (2000) Subjects speak out: How learners position themselves in a psycholinguistic task. In J. Lantolf (ed.) Sociocultural theory and second language learning 79–96. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Patten, B. (1995) Attending to form and context in the input. An experiment in consciousness. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 12(3): 287–301.
