Discussion Post #10

If I were to receive a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Korean and its culture, I would like to study two things: aegyo and how that affect Korean’s pop culture. During my first year seminar class with Dr. Kissling, I actually got the opportunity to do a research paper on the purpose and effects of a phenomenon called “aegyo.”Aegyo can be described as performed winsomeness, or the feeling of childlike joy or innocence that is attractive or pleasing to others. More specifically, it is a layered articulation of behaviors, gestures, vocal and linguistic adjustments, narratives, and fashions that serve to enact child-like charm and infantilized cuteness. Then, I argued that aegyo gave an individual social power. I thought this topic was fascinating of itself, however, when I started to conduct intense research on it, there were not many published data and sources about this topic. I think something I would like to conduct if I receive this grant is to see how performers of aegyo switch up the grammatical structures of their sentences in order to sound more cute and innocent-like, thus making them more likeable. 

Aegyo plays a significant role in East Asian countries mainly due to the influence of Korean pop culture and girl group figures that regularly practice performed winsomeness. I also want to research just how much aegyo is influenced by pop culture and vise versa.

I believe the best way to get started on this project is to immerse myself into the culture directly with people who use aegyo. As a result, I would travel to Korea to be in direct contact with the individuals and see the results for myself. 

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