Discussion Post #10

[Amy Jeon]

If I received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of my target language and culture, I would want to conduct research on Korean-Americans who moved to Korea and Koreans who moved to America. As a Korean who moved to America, the cultural and language differences were hard to grasp and understand. When I compared my experience with my sister, I realized that we had completely different experiences despite coming to America at the same time. I think it would be really interesting to research the experiences of learning a new language and adjusting to Korean culture as a Korean-American, and comparing the two. For phonetics, it would be really cool to compare which areas of phonetics each group struggles with. Because English and Korean have different phonetic inventories, analyzing the differences in where they excel or struggle in phonetics would be interesting. I would also want to analyze the impact of cultural shifts after moving to a different country. Korea and America both have very different cultures in terms of honorifics, hierarchy, body languages, and more. It would also be interesting to see how they learn and excel in the target language and see the differences between the methods used when learning English as a Korean-American and Korean as a Korean-American. I also want to analyze the differences in pragmatics, which is the study of meaning in a particular context. Koreans generally have “nunchi, '' which is having the ability to know other people's moods or surroundings and act accordingly to it. So, when conversing with Koreans, we tend to have nunchi, and if we don't, we would be criticized and judged. However, in America, we tend to be more direct on what we want to say. I think it would be interesting to see how Korean-Americans in both countries respond to these cultural differences.

[Susmita Adhikari]

Amy these are very interesting ideas! I am so intrigued by you mentioning how you and your sister had different experiences in spite of coming to the US at the same time. That just goes on to show how we humans and our perceptions can greatly vary in spite of being in similar circumstances. I also love the query on cultural shock. Being an immigrant myself, I have had my fair share of cultural shock after moving to the US. Studying them systematically across a wide range of Korean immigrants might indeed show some very interesting results.

[Kayla Wise]

I think that's such an interesting idea to look into as I bet it was definitely a transition from coming to the U.S. after living in Korea. Looking at different points of life that people move to America after living in another country like Korea would be really interesting too to see the similarities and differences between those who come to America as an infant, child, teen, or adult years. If you ever visit Korea again with your family, I wonder how the experience would be for your younger sister!