Abstract
This paper examines how entrepreneurial visions of the future contribute to neoliberalism’s appropriation of language learning as a strategy for capital accumulation. Taking as an example South Korea’s heavy investment in children’s English language learning – commonly known as early English education (yeongeo jogi gyoyuk) – it discusses how affective conditions of anticipation (Adams, Murphy and Clarke. 2009. Anticipation: Technoscience, life, affect, temporality. Subjectivity 28(1). 246–265.) may serve as a basis for rationalizing the incorporation of language learning as an essential element of entrepreneurial visions of the self. Based on examples from the discourse of the Korean private English education market and ethnographic observations from early study abroad (jogi yuhak) families in Singapore, we show how the English language learning of young children in the Korean context was framed and justified as an investment in the future. We then discuss how parents’ hopes and fears about their children’s future played a major role in transforming English language learning into a matter of neoliberal anticipation. We conclude by considering how this affective orientation to the future inherent in early English education may serve as a juncture for critiquing the entrepreneurial vision of the self that underlies the logic of human capital development.
References
Adams, Vincanne, Michelle Murphy & Adele E. Clarke. 2009. Anticipation: Technoscience, life, affect, temporality. Subjectivity 28(1). 246–265.10.1057/sub.2009.18Search in Google Scholar
Ahmed, Sarah. 2004. The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Bae, Sohee. 2013. The pursuit of multilingualism in transnational educational migration: Strategies of linguistic investment among Korean jogi yuhak families in Singapore. Language and Education 27(5). 415–431.10.1080/09500782.2012.709863Search in Google Scholar
Bae, Sohee. 2014a. Language ideology and linguistic investment among Korean educational migrant families in Singapore. Singapore: National University of Singapore PhD dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Bae, Sohee. 2014b. Anxiety, insecurity and complexity of transnational educational migration among Korean middle class families. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 24(2). 152–172.10.1075/japc.24.2.01heeSearch in Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah. 2000. Good to talk?: Living and working in a communication culture. London: Sage.10.4135/9781446217993Search in Google Scholar
Choi, Wonguk. 2017. Gongmuwon cheoeum dojeonhana? [Challenge for civil service exam?]. Chosun Ilbo. http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/20/2017092000244.html (accessed 15 January 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Curdt-Christiansen, Xiao Lan. 2013. Family language policy: Sociopolitical reality versus linguistic continuity. Language Policy 12(1). 1–6.10.1007/s10993-012-9269-0Search in Google Scholar
De Costa, Peter, Joseph Park & Lionel Wee. 2016. Language learning as linguistic entrepreneurship: Implications for language education. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher 25(5–6). 695–702.10.1007/s40299-016-0302-5Search in Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2008. The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Search in Google Scholar
Gee, James Paul, Glynda A. Hull & Colin Lankshear. 1996. The new work order: Behind the language of the new capitalism. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin.Search in Google Scholar
Gillies, Donald. 2011. State education as high-yield investment: Human capital theory in European policy discourse. Journal of Pedagogy/Pedagogický Casopis 2(2). 224–245.10.2478/v10159-011-0011-3Search in Google Scholar
Go, Yeonggeun. 2007. Hangukeoui sije seobeop dongjaksang. Seoul: Taehaksa.Search in Google Scholar
Holborow, Marnie. 2015. Language and neoliberalism. London. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315718163Search in Google Scholar
Jang, In Chull. 2018. Legitimating the Philippines as a language learning space: Transnational Korean youth’s experiences and evaluations. Journal of Sociolinguistics 22(2). 216–232.10.1111/josl.12275Search in Google Scholar
Jin, Myeongseon. 2009, March 8. Hakwon lebelteseuteuga mwogie. [What is hakwon level test]. Hangyoreh. http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/schooling/342845.html (accessed 15 May 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Kang, Jiyeon & Nancy Abelmann. 2011. The domestication of South Korean pre-college study abroad (PSA) in the first decade of the millennium. Journal of Korean Studies 16. 89–118.10.1353/jks.2011.0001Search in Google Scholar
Kang, Yoonhee. 2018. A pathway to ‘constant becoming’: Time, temporalities and the construction of self among South Korean educational migrants in Singapore. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2018.1435584 (accessed 08 February 2018).Search in Google Scholar
KEDI (Korean Educational Development Institute). 2009. The number of students in K-12 who left for study abroad in 2008. http://edpolicy.kedi.re.kr (accessed 2 September 2010).Search in Google Scholar
Kim, Girak. 2017. Nae levelteseuteu seongjeoke puljukeun urieomma sagyoyukeul mitkedwaetta [My mom who is disappointed with the result of level test started to believe in private education]. Newspim. http://www.newspim.com/news/view/20170904000105 (accessed 9 January 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Kim, Hisam. 2011. A study on equity and efficiency of investment in learning English. Seoul: Korea Development Institute. http://www.kdi.re.kr/kdi_eng/publication/publication_view.jsp?pub_no=12356&pg=5&pp=10&mcd=002002 (accessed 5 January 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Kim, Jeehun. 2010. ‘Downed’ and stuck in Singapore: Lower/middle class South Korean wild geese (kirogi) children in Singapore. In Emily Hannum, Hyunjoon Park & Yuko Goto Butler (eds.), Globalization, changing demographics, and educational challenges in East Asia, 271–311. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing.10.1108/S1479-3539(2010)0000017012Search in Google Scholar
Kim, Jeehun & Sumie Okazaki. 2017. Short-term “intensive mothering” on a budget: Working mothers of Korean children studying abroad in Southeast Asia. Asian Women 33(3). 111–139.10.14431/aw.2017.09.33.3.111Search in Google Scholar
Kim, Young Chun. 2016. Shadow education and the curriculum and culture of schooling in South Korea. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/978-1-137-51324-3Search in Google Scholar
King, Kendall A. 2016. Language policy, multilingual encounters, and transnational families. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37(7). 726–733.10.1080/01434632.2015.1127927Search in Google Scholar
Kwon, Hyeryeon. 2017. Cheongchunui ddo dareun ileum gongsisaeng [Gongsisaeng, another name for Korean youths]. Chosun Ilbo. http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/06/01/2017060101756.html (accessed 15 January 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Lee, Jaehoon. 2015. Jogiyuhaksaengsu chui [Change in the number of jogi yuhak students]. Yonhap News. http://m.yna.co.kr/kr/contents/?cid=GYH20151117000300044 (accessed 5 January 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Lo, Adrienne, Nancy Abelmann, Soo Ah Kwon & Sumie Okazaki (eds.). 2015. South Korea’s education exodus: The life and times of study abroad. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lo, Adrienne & Jenna Kim. 2015. Early wave returnees in Seoul: The dilemmas of modernity and morality. In Adrienne Lo, Nanacy Abelmann, Soo Ah Kwon & Sumie Okazaki (eds.), South Korea’s education exodus: The life and times of early study abroad, 168–188. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lutz, Catherine & Lila Abu-Lughod (eds.). 1990. Language and the politics of emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
McElhinny, Bonnie. 2010. The audacity of affect: Gender, race, and history in linguistic accounts of legitimacy and belonging. Annual Reviews of Anthropology 39. 309–328.10.1146/annurev-anthro-091908-164358Search in Google Scholar
Ministry of Education Korea. 2017. Seoul hakwon miljip jiyeok deasang hakbumo “bulan maketing” 88 gae hakwon jeokbal [Uncovering 88 hakwons in Seoul which used anxiety marketing to the parents]. https://if-blog.tistory.com/6937 (assessed on 20 March 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul. 2009. The local construction of global language: Ideologies of English in South Korea. Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110214079Search in Google Scholar
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul. 2016. Language as pure potential. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37(5). 453–466.10.1080/01434632.2015.1071824Search in Google Scholar
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul. 2018. Mediatizing neoliberalism: The discursive construction of education’s ‘future’. Language and Intercultural Communication 18(5). 478–489.10.1080/14708477.2018.1501843Search in Google Scholar
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul & Sohee Bae. 2009. Language ideologies in educational migration: Korean jogi yuhak families in Singapore. Linguistics and Education 20. 366–377.10.1016/j.linged.2009.09.001Search in Google Scholar
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul & Adrienne Lo. 2012. Transnational South Korea as a site for a sociolinguistics of globalization: Markets, timescales, neoliberalism. Journal of Sociolinguistics 16(2). 147–164.10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00524.xSearch in Google Scholar
Park, So Jin & Nancy Abelmann. 2004. Class and cosmopolitan striving: Mothers’ management of English education in South Korea. Anthropological Quarterly 77. 645–672.10.1353/anq.2004.0063Search in Google Scholar
Piller, Ingrid & Livia Gerber. 2018. Family language policy between the bilingual advantage and the monolingual mindset. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2018.1503227.Search in Google Scholar
Shin, Hyunjung. 2016. Language ‘skills’ and the neoliberal English education industry. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37(5). 509–522.10.1080/01434632.2015.1071828Search in Google Scholar
Shin, Jihu. 2018. Hakgyoe eopseojin yeongeo, hakwon chajaseo [Going to hakwon in search of lost English education]. Hankook Ilbo. http://www.hankookilbo.com/v/f3cce1f3b1ab41e097d0cd7ca837d2e9 (accessed 9 January 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Song, Jesook. 2009. South Koreans in the debt crisis: The creation of a neoliberal welfare society. Durham: Duke University Press.10.1215/9780822390824Search in Google Scholar
Song, Yira. 2017. Wol 200 manwone iphaksiheomdo … Daehakboda gagi himdeun yeongeo yuchiwon [Monthly fee 2 million won … English-only Kindergartens more difficult to get admission to than universities]. E-daily. http://www.edaily.co.kr/news/news_detail.asp?newsId=01354646616129000&mediaCodeNo=257 (accessed 5 January 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Statistics Korea. 2018. Chojunggo sagyoyukbi josa kyeolgwa [Survey on the expenditure on private education for grade 1–12 in 2017]. http://kostat.go.kr/portal/korea/kor_nw/2/13/1/index.board (accessed 30 January 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Urciuoli, Bonnie. 2008. Skills and selves in the new workplace. American Ethnologist 35(2). 211–228.10.1111/j.1548-1425.2008.00031.xSearch in Google Scholar
Wilce, James M. 2009. Language and emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Youm, Kangsu. 2009. In-depth seires reporting on Korean jogi yuahk.Chosun ilbo. http://www.chosun.com. (accessed 5 September 2010).Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston