English or perish: how contemporary South Korea received, accommodated, and internalized English and American modernity

Abstract

This paper discusses the positionality of English in South Korea as a form of symbolic capital that represents the discursive power of Americanism and East Asian Social Darwinism. By employing Bourdieu's and Foucault's theoretical orientations, this paper traces how South Korean linguistic policies to incorporate English loan words coincide with South Korea's struggle to face its historical challenges from a pre-modern to a modern postcolonial society. In doing so, this paper illustrates how Americanization is conceived as the process of winning global competition where only the ‘survival of the fittest’ reigns (a Social Darwinist discourse that justifies the power of Americanism).

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