A study of a multilingual student community’s language practices and perceptions at a Korean international university

Abstract

The number of incoming international students in Korean higher education (HE) has been steadily increasing by virtue of the intensification of internationalization policies in Korean universities. These students not only experience the local language and culture but are also exposed to various other lingua cultures through social participation in international communities. Although South Korea is part of Kachru's(2005) Expanding Circle context, a great number of international students in Korean HE use English as a lingua franca (ELF) as the main source of communication.Moreover, in many cases, they creatively exploit their multilingual ELF resources to negotiate meaning and identity. This implies that the role of English in Korean HE has become of paramount importance and that English should no longer be associated with dominant standard ideologies. However, empirical research on international students in terms of their socialization through ELF practices in Korean HE has been very scarce.

Therefore, this study explores this issue by examining international students’practices and perceptions in the multilingual ELF context of a Korean university. Grounded in the communities of practice (CoP) framework, this study adopted a qualitative ethnographic approach to closely observe nine students from Malaysia,South Africa, Lithuania, Japan, Germany, the US and France. Data was collected over one academic semester at a university in Seoul. The main sources of data were audio recordings of naturally occurring group conversations and interviews and these were supplemented by documents, social media, field notes and a research diary. Empirical evidence provided a profound understanding of the fluid, hybrid and intricate nature of ‘languaging’ and culture formation in the community. The participants portrayed their creative and innovative use of multilingual resources in ELF communication.The use of ELF became meaningful through the negotiation of the participants in localized ways. The participants also revealed adaptability and localization of their identities through liminal and transcultural spaces.

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Identifiers

ORCID for William Baker: orcid.org/0000-0003-0533-2795

ORCID for Marion Demossier: orcid.org/0000-0001-6075-1461

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