[KS] Questions about Style and Students-Abroad : 113,000 Korean-national Students receiving 100% 英語講義 英語沒入 敎育 every year in the US....

[Kye C Kim]

Hi,

This is actually a query about "students-abroad" and "literary style", from
the looking-glass of writing styles and their changes throughout the
history of Korean.  I hope the Korean literature specialists would help
with their insights.  I would also like to ask for the attention of Chinese
and Japanese specialists as I believe some comparative perspective would be
very helpful.

*Impact of students-abroad on the literary styles of home languages:*
I guess I am thinking here of early changes, or innovations, to the
literary styles of East Asian languages in modern times.  This area seems
to be have been rather extensively studied in the case of Japanese and
Chinese.  We have for example the 1991 classic ""Rewriting Chinese: style
and innovation in twentieth-century" by Edward M. Gunn, providing even a
full time-lined and sourced catalog of rhetorical innovations in Chinese,
introduced largely by Chinese students-abroad.  And in the case of
Japanese, the recent innovations in style, grammar, and even vocabulary
have been extensively explored in the many works of Yanabu Akira.  His
works have become the focal point of renewed interest by Western scholars
examining the transformative role of translation in East Asia; and many of
his works are now available in English translation in "Translation in
Modern Japan" edited  Indra Levy, recently reissued through Rutledge to
meet the growing demand.  Of course, here too, it was the cadre of
"Japanese students-abroad" that were at the center of that great literary
and stylistic transformation that Yanabu Akira explores for the Japanese
case.


*The impact of students-abroad, 100 years ago*:
It is probably no exaggeration to say students-abroad's impact was
fundamental and decisive.  In Korean, somewhat chronologically, we could
list, 유길준 (서유견문), 서재필 (독립신문), 윤치호(영어일기/찬양가).  I am inclined to include
James S. Gale and Underwood family, as instances of "reverse"
students-abroad. I obviously shouldn't omit 이광수 and 김동인.  I am somewhat at
a loss as to how to categorize those stylists who never traveled out of the
country but nevertheless received 한문몰입, 국어몰입,  일어몰입  or 영어몰입 education. The
question is, How did their study-abroad inform/impact their own writing
styles?  And how is one to characterize how their styles relate to the
writing/literary style that dominates writing/speaking today?

*What will the impact of current students-abroad be?*
113,000 is a very significant number, and this has been the approximate
level for the last ten years.  Still, when I look at the writing style of
홍정욱, the iconic student-abroad in Korea, in 7막7장 (vol. 1 and 2),  I can
detect no "stylistic innovation" or "any significantly different.stylistic
features"   Are there other stylistic innovations that have taken hold
introduced by the New Student-Abroad generation that I am missing?  The
general impression is that the smaller cadre of students-abroad of a
century ago practically altered the stylistic landscape while the new
cadre, numbering in the million now, seems to have little or no impact on
the styles.  What is going on?

Regards,

Joobai Lee

12/6/2011
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