• Title/Summary/Keyword: ethnic language

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Fish out of Water: Linguistic outsiders in a Nigerian University Setting: Impact on information access, learning and social wellbeing

  • Chidinma Onwuchekwa Ogba;Adeyinka Fashokun
    • International Journal of Knowledge Content Development & Technology
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    • v.13 no.3
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    • pp.7-30
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    • 2023
  • Nigeria is a country with multiple ethnic groups; as a result, English language is used as a lingua franca to enhance information flow. Despite this, the Indigenous languages of communities are mostly used for interactions, even in university environments thereby affecting smooth interaction for those who do not understand them. This study therefore investigated the impact of being a linguistic outsider on information access, learning and social wellbeing of students. Descriptive research of a case study was used for this study. The population for this study consisted of non-Yoruba indigenous students. Judgmental sampling technique was used to select 50 non-indigenous students; structured interview was used. Results showed that Yoruba indigenous language was used lightly in the classroom and heavily outside the classroom, with mixtures of pidgin and English languages. It was found that being a linguistic outsider had a negative influence on information access. However it was not a total dependent factor to social wellbeing of students who desire for their various languages to be predominantly used and for them to enjoy equal benefits with Yoruba indigenes. This study also revealed that being a linguistic outsider does not have negative influence on academic learning. It was recommended that the stakeholders in university management promote the complete use of English language in the classroom while students should be encouraged to interpret Yoruba language when spoken in the midst of non-indigenes.

Bilingualism and Bruneian Identity

  • Haji-Othman, Noor Azam
    • SUVANNABHUMI
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    • v.8 no.2
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    • pp.161-176
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    • 2016
  • This paper discusses how the concept of "bilingualism" can be used to reflect changes within Bruneian society since the 1940's. It argues that within the context of a linguistically diverse population, the various indigenous groups of Brunei used to speak their own traditional languages, but eventually learned to speak the language of the politically dominant Malays. The Malay language became a necessary additional language, hence leading to a population which could speak their own languages, alongside the Malay language. But the rise of schools teaching in English in the 1970's began to sow seeds of a different kind of bilingualism, encouraged by language shift processes among ethnic minority groups.

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Ethnic Congregation and Residential Changes in Korea

  • Kim, Hyejin
    • International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.55-66
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    • 2022
  • As the number of immigrants staying in Korea has gradually increased since the mid-1990s, the rate of chronicle migration from certain countries such as China and Vietnam remain high. Registered foreign residents have formed ethnic communities depending on their countries of origin, and the purpose of stay, Korean language literacy, rent, and accessibility have resulted in their self-congregation or forced segregation. This study aims to explore the direction in which immigrants' residential distribution move over time, and whether the ethnic communities show any differences in the level of congregation or segregation. It focuses on identifying the residential distribution of Korean-Chinese, Chinese, and Vietnamese at the city, county, and district level across the country in Korea and examining the congregation and residential changes of three groups over the past decade using centrographic method. Comparing the location as well as the level of residential congregation or dispersion of three groups, which account for the majority of non-professional immigrants in Korea, it will provide a basis for further research on residential congregation or segregation of immigrants in the future.

Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia and the Issue of Re-ethnicization (쿠레이쉬의 『교외의 부처』와 "재인종화"문제)

  • Rhee, Suk Koo
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.54 no.2
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    • pp.263-279
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    • 2008
  • Arif Dirlik in Postmodernity's Histories sees the issue of re-ethnicization in the case of John Huang, China's alleged attempt at lobbying the Clinton administration. In this view, Americans with Chinese surnames were suspected by the US Justice Department to be possible spies working for Beijing. Reethnicization here seems to serve the mainstream society in reducing an ethnic minority to a group of aliens operating for their countries of origin. However, re-ethnicization is not necessarily a one-way oppressive operation; it is often made use of by the ethnic minorities in their efforts to adapt to their country of arrival. Haroon and Karim, the protagonists of Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, are cases in point. They are portrayed as winning social recognition and securing a place of their own within the hostile host society through a strategic use of re-ethnicization, that is, masquerading as 'genuine Orientals.' This study brings to light possible fallacies or misguided expectations concerning the political position of first- and second-generation immigrants. One of the fallacies is found in the racist metropolis, which regards the ethnic minorities as a sort of resident aliens, no matter what immigrant generation the latter belongs to. Another fallacy is found in the kind of postcolonial criticism that automatically regards an anti-racist critique advanced by people like Kureishi as something motivated by a confrontational tactic, that is, an attempt at subverting the colonial power relations. The conclusion of this study is that Kureishi's agenda, as presented in The Buddha of Suburbia, is neither the preservation of an ethnic identity nor the subversion of colonial power relations but survival in the metropolis. On this account Kureish's agenda can be called a micro-politics.

Displacement of the Korean Language and the Aesthetics of the Korean Diaspora (한국어의 탈지역과 한국적 이산의 미학)

  • Yim, Jin-Hee
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.54 no.1
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    • pp.149-167
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    • 2008
  • Korea has persisted in the notion of "ethnic nationalism." That is "one race, one people, one language" as a homogeneous entity. This social ideal of unity prevails, even in overseas Korean communities formed by voluntary and involuntary displacement in the turmoil of modern history: communities made intermittent with the Japanese colonial occupation and with postcolonial encounters with the West. Given that the Korean people suffered from the trauma of deprivation of the language caused by the loss of the nation, nation has been equated with the language. Accordingly, "these bearers of a homeland" are also firm Korean language holders. The linguistic patriotism of unity based on the intertwining of "mother tongue" and "father country" has become prevalent in the collective memory of the people of the Korean diaspora. Korean American literature has grappled with this concept of the national history of Korea and the Korean language. The aesthetics of Korean American literature has been marked by an influx of literary resources of 'Korea' in sensibilities and structure of feelings; Korean myth, folk lore, songs, humor, traditional stories, manners, customs and historic moments. An experimental use of the Korean alphabet, Hangeul, written down as pronounced, provides an ethnic flavor in the midst of the English texts. Despite its national framework of mind, however, Korean American literature as an interstitial art reveals a keen awareness of inbetweenness, and transnational hybrid identities. By exploring the complex interrelationships of cultural and linguistic boundary-crossing practices in Korean American literature, this paper argues that the poetics of the Korean diaspora challenges the closed structure of identity formation, and offers a transnational sphere to deconstruct a rigidly demarcated national ideology of "one race, one people, one language," for the world literary history.

The Formation of Korean-ness and the Advent of the Split-Consciousness: Embracing Multiple Realities in Yeom Sangseop's Mansejeon

  • Capener, Steven D.
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.64 no.3
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    • pp.347-360
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    • 2018
  • It is ironic but not coincidental that the loss of Korean sovereignty to Japan roughly paralleled the formation of the idea of Korean ethnic identity. The coalescence of the content of this heretofore amorphous notion of a "pure" and transcendental (in the class sense) ethnic essence was, again ironically, the result both of ideologies taken from (or given by) Japan and resistance to Japanese encroachment. What resulted was the birth of a hybrid (sub) consciousness that was able to accommodate disparate, or even contradictory, realities simultaneously without any sense of contradiction (Christian and shaman for example). If, as Kim Chul has asserted, the colonial period was the most impactful in forming today's Korean society and "giving birth" to today's Korean, it becomes easy to imagine how this formation process included elements of Japanese and western culture. This meant that there was going to be an inevitable cognitive dissonance when these influences collided with the imperatives of ethnic nationalism which became the touchstone for a common Korean identity (North and South). This paper attempts to show how this split-consciousness was manifested in Yeom Sang seop's Manse jeon with the aim of identifying how it affects discourses related to nationalism and identity.

James Joyce and Ethno-sexual Boundary Crossings

  • Choi, Seokmoo
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.56 no.3
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    • pp.487-500
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    • 2010
  • In the history of colonization, how and to what extent the colonizer interacted with the local population differed according to race relations in specific periods. Generally speaking, social or sexual contact between two communities was tolerated when race relations were relatively relaxed. When the racial relationship became aggravated, however, such contact between the colonizer and the colonized was discouraged in order to forge and maintain ethnic solidarity. In Ireland, the colonizer's interaction with the colonized was not different from that of colonized countries in the Third World. Unlike those colonies, however, the settlers, that is, Protestants, simply could not be treated as the colonizer because they had lived in Ireland long enough to assert their Irishness. Joyce is keenly interested in intergender ethnic boundary crossings. In his works, two kinds of ethno-sexual interactions are presented from two totally different perspectives. As shown in the cases of the young lady in the street stall, Polly, Milkwoman, Sheila, and Cissy, Joyce describes the interaction of Irish women with Englishmen from a skeptical viewpoint. All of those cases demonstrate typical relationships epitomizing power relations in a colonial society. They reflect the turbulent time at the beginning of the century when Ireland had to fight with England to gain its independence. At such a transitional time, the ethnic relationship became aggravated and boundary crossings were discouraged. On the other hand, through the relationship between Stephen and Eileen, Girty and Reggy Wylie, Browne and Irish ladies, and Mr. & Mrs. Kernan, Joyce presents the interaction between Protestants and Catholics in terms of romantic or human relationships rather than power relations. From his description of those interactions, we can assume that Joyce, in the time of nation building, provided a blueprint for the future Irish nation, where Protestants and Catholics could build a nation and live harmoniously.

Ethnic Conflicts of the Have-nots: Emergent Hispanic Ethnicity (미국 빈민층 민족집단간의 갈등: 남미계 이민집단의 등장을 중심으로)

  • Kwon, Sang-Cheol
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.31 no.4
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    • pp.672-684
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    • 1996
  • This paper explores the inter-ethnic conflicts between Blocks and Hispanics focusing on the emergent Hispanic ethnictity that reveals situational character in the US contexts. In the US census categories, major groups are indetified by race and ethnicity in which the Hispanic orgin is a category based on their common language while diverse in nationality. The census defined Hispanic category extends conveniently to acquiesce Affirmative Action and other government resource distribution. Internally, Hispanics have established numerous organizations to coalesce and assure their interests. The achieved dual language program and jurisdictional revision to represent language minority work as leverages to their cohesiveness. Under diminishing public resources and welfare payment, it is more difficult sharing burdens than benefits between minority groups. Block are not comfortable with the benefits Hispanics receive form the civil rights achievement without having had to struggle for it. The ethnic conflicts of the have-nots have become a new ethnic phenomenon attributable to the emergent Hispanic ethnicity.

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Factors of Korean Japanese youth's ethnic identity formation and its effect analysis (재일코리안 청소년의 민족정체성 형성요인과 효과 분석)

  • Lee, Seokin;Yim, Youngeon
    • International Area Studies Review
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    • v.15 no.1
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    • pp.525-547
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    • 2011
  • Currently, about 58 million Korean Japanese reside in Japan. To overcome the discrimination of the Japanese government and society, the previous generation of Korean Japanese had been maintaining a strong ethnic identity in Japan. But some of Korean Japanese adolescents were naturalized by the Japanese government's assimilation policy. As a result, Korean nationality disclaimer has been increasing. In this context, this study examines what is the determining factors of ethnic identity of Korean Japanese youth, and explores the effect of ethnic identity. The main results of this study are as follows. First, age, name, nationality, school, parental influence, and Korean language skills were confirmed as the determining factors of ethnic identity. Second, Strong ethnic identity of adolescents prevents from naturalization, increases lots of interests about Korea, and makes them positive participation in the Korean network.

Current and Ethnicity Issues Represented in Child-Rearing Practices of Korean-Chinese Families in YanBian, China (중국 연변 조선족 유아 양육 실제에 나타난 시대성과 민족성 이슈)

  • Yoon, Gab Jung;Goh, Eun Kyung;Chung, Kai Sook
    • Korean Journal of Child Studies
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    • v.29 no.5
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    • pp.31-50
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    • 2008
  • The current and ethnic issues represented in child-rearing practices of Korean-Chinese families in YanBian, China, were studied with the participation of 7 primary caregivers (4 mothers and 3 grandmothers) of young children who were interviewed and observed in their homes. Current issues were categorized as competitive bilingual ability, expectations about third language learning (English), expectations of high academic accomplishment and early education, and economic challenges in parenting. Ethnicity issues included ethnic pride as Korean-Chinese, conflicts of ethnic education, participation in local Korean culture, and rearing the child to have the self-expressive and assertive characteristics of typical Korean children. Results were discussed in terms of understanding and supporting child-rearing of minorities and families with multi-cultural background.

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