[KS] linguistic modernity & power relations

[Frank Hoffmann]

Dear All:

Maybe you can help me with some bibliographic 
information about the area linguistic modernity 
and power relations?

I will be quoting from a 2004 piece by Professor 
Kang Nae-hûi (Chungang University) to introduce 
the topic:

--------quote--------
In early March of 1960, as a third grader, I 
attended outdoors class in which my teacher 
talked about the presidential election to be held 
in mid March. He gave some explanation - which I 
don't recall - as to why certain candidates 
should be chosen as the next president and vice 
president. After his lecture he wanted to see how 
well students had learned his lesson. (...) The 
discomfort was not that I did not know the 
'correct' answer (...). It was not only that I 
felt pressured to support candidates whom others 
around me saw as dictators. Rather the discomfort 
was because I had to reply in a language still 
foreign to me. Born in Kyongsang Province, I 
spoke (and am still speaking) in a regional 
dialect. Speaking standard Korean involved the 
construction of sentences with -da inflections. I 
don't recall my response but distinctly remember 
my heart pounding with fear as I tried to speak a 
foreign language.
Today, some forty years later, I compose -da 
sentences without difficulty. (...) Yet, to 
become expert, one needs more than the basics. 
The ability to write -da sentences is thus 
tantamount to the exercise of a particular kind 
of power. (...) In sum, the ability to compose in 
the -da style allows one to discern the 
factuality  of facts, which is the domain of 
professionals and experts.

  [ And earlier in the same text:]

Probably the most important feature of standard 
Korean today is that most of its sentences end in 
-da. (...) It is surely no coincidence that the 
military, one of the most important disciplinary 
apparatus in Korea, has been actively involved in 
the obligatory use of -da. (...) The present -nda 
and the past -ôttda appear in many 
nineteenth-century documents. The -da system of 
endings, however, never dominated. Until the 
1910's, it appeared with far less frequency than 
-ra endings (...). Once it came to dominate 
modern fiction, -da started to spread to literary 
criticism, academic papers, and newspaper 
editorials in the 1920s. By the late 1920s and 
early 1930s, it had come to dominate the range of 
modern discourse.
-------End of quote-------

Interestingly, you see the very same phenomenon 
in South and South East Asian languages (e.g. 
Thai, Burmese, Khmer language), but I found only 
little literature on the issue when it comes to 
Korean language. In South and Southeast Asia you 
will see that minority languages (or better, 
languages spoken by ethnic minorities) in these 
areas have "resisted" such developments. Now, 
that is really interesting, I think, because it 
seems to be a one-to-one reflection of power 
relations and resistance. This is of course a 
very rough assessment, and things are, as always, 
a bit more complicated. But from what I have seen 
so far this is the bottom line. And if you think 
of Korean one might listen to North Korean radio 
and see how Korean language is used in DPRK 
media, schools, etc. and Professor Kang's 
explanation above gets further strengthened.

Now, I am not interested in the topic from a 
linguistic point of view -- although some on this 
discussion list might well be. But looking at the 
introduction of Western art and modern art 
production in colonial Korea, I am looking at 
changes in audience/cliental, reception, tools 
and patterns of cultural production in the 
colonial modernization process, and how all this 
relates to power relations -- real and imagined 
ones. I therefore wonder if you can help me with 
bibliographic info on the language part ... I 
would not know where to start my search as I am 
not familiar with all the linguistic 
publications. Is there anything on this topic 
written from a non-technical point of view?

Thanks.

Frank


-- 
--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws
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