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Forming capital: Emblematizing discourses of mobility in South Korea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2017

Adrienne Lo  and
Lee Jin Choi
Adrienne Lo
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
Lee Jin Choi*
Affiliation:
Korea University
*
Address for correspondence: Lee Jin Choi Department of English Language Education, Korea University, 145 Anam-dong, Sungbuk-gu Seoul, South Korea 136701[email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines how listening subjects (Inoue 2006) mediate understandings of mobility in South Korea. Focusing on a cybercampaign to discredit the hip-hop star Tablo, it traces the ways that a listening public regimented signs relating to educational credentials, language, citizenship, and demeanor into forms of institutionalized, embodied, or objectified capital (Bourdieu 1986). Through the crafting of certain signs as icons that pointed to Tablo's ‘true’ character, and others as fronts, they were able to cast aspersions upon his command of English grammar, spelling, and interaction, and his character and educational credentials. By tracing how Tablo skeptics deployed metasemiotic discourses about emblems and figures of failed mobility, this article contributes to theories of semiosis that decenter the agentive speaking subject. (Capital, mobility, listening subject, English, South Korea)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 46 , Special Issue 1: Metapragmatics of Mobility , February 2017 , pp. 77 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

* Earlier versions of this article were presented at the American Anthropological Association conference, the American Association of Applied Linguistics conference, Language and Superdiversity Conference, Seoul National University, and Washington University. We thank Joseph Park for his patience and constructive feedback on various iterations of this work, and Elaine Chun, Michele Koven, Angela Reyes, Jonathan Rosa, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. This work was supported by an Academy of Korean Studies Grant (AKS-2012-R24).

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