Joseph Sung-Yul PARK: In Pursuit of English: Language and Subjectivity in Neoliberal South Korea

Abstract

In Pursuit of English presents an incisive aetiology of South Korea’s national obsession with the acquisition of English (“English fever”) and, more broadly, demonstrates the importance of subjectivity—emotions, perceptions, beliefs and the like—in understanding the relationship between language choice and the speaker’s situated environment. Park argues that 1) recent history and policy choices have turned English into an index of wealth, prestige, and good moral character in South Korea; and 2) the resulting subjectivities of language, consisting of such affects as desire, moral responsibility, anxiety, and insecurity, now perpetuate English fever as a neoliberal self-development project. In doing so, Park successfully makes the case for us to examine attitudes toward language-learning as a mechanism born of, and now serving, a particular political-economic and social paradigm.