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Korean beats French

By December 14, 2009June 2nd, 20198 Comments3 min read13,482 views

zu_poll_results_14_12_2009

If you could choose to learn a foreign language, which one would it be? And why?

Such choices are usually constrained by what is on offer. However, someone must choose the offerings – e.g., language policy makers around the world have for the past couple of decades decided that English is a must-have first foreign language for anyone and everyone who doesn’t speak it as a first language.

Rarely do language students get an actual say in institutional offerings and a current polling initiative by the Student Council at Zayed University is therefore the more exciting. This internal poll has been running for a couple of days and I can’t take my eyes of it: for a sociolinguist this is like Melbourne Cup Day without the hats!

The way the survey was first published a few days ago, the choice was between Chinese, French, German, Italian and Spanish. “Chinese plus the usual choice of European languages” I thought and noticed particularly that none of these languages are widely spoken in the UAE while some of those spoken by large segments of the UAE population such as Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu or Tagalog are absent.

This is not particularly surprising as language learning is often about the desire to reinvent oneself and that desire is crucially influenced by media discourses and these discourses often set up Western identities as the pinnacle of desirability as Kimie Takahashi and I have shown in a study of the Occidental longings of young Japanese women and how they are exploited by the English language teaching industry (available from our Resources Section (click on “Language learning, gender & identity” > ”A passion for English”).

محمد إدريس, who blogs on “Language and Globalization,” has a similar, even if somewhat more sinister explanation for the reasons why learning Spanish has become so popular in Germany: he sees Germans’ desire to learn Spanish as mindless copying of US tastes and preferences, an acceptance of US hegemony. He argues that learning Spanish is undoubtedly in the interests of US-Americans and so that preference is mediated by Hollywood to the world, even if German foreign language learners would be better served with the languages of neighboring countries such as Czech, French or Polish. So, that’s similar to my own observation that there were no regional languages offered in the Zayed University Student Council Poll.

Well, it’s not all that simple, at least not here at ZU: after the original poll was published, the members of the Japanese and Korean clubs demanded the inclusion of these languages, and since then Korean had been gaining ground steadily on French, the initial leader, until it drew ahead yesterday.

So, does that invalidate the idea that the desire to learn another language is influenced by hegemonic discourses? It doesn’t – it just shows that the center of gravity is shifting. The West is no longer the only source of desirable identities, and particularly cool youth identities, on offer. South Korea has been an exporter of popular melodramas for about a decade and the popularity of Korean youth culture has become known as Korean Wave or even “Korean Fever” in China and Japan. Little surprise then that this also opens up a market for Korean language teaching!

I’ll keep watching that poll – for now, I’m betting on Korean.

ResearchBlogging.org Piller, Ingrid, & Takahashi, Kimie (2006). A passion for English: desire and the language market Aneta Pavlenko. Ed. Bilingual minds: Emotional experience, expression, and representation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 59-83

Ingrid Piller

Author Ingrid Piller

Dr Ingrid Piller, FAHA, is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research expertise is in bilingual education, intercultural communication, language learning, and multilingualism in the context of migration and globalization.

More posts by Ingrid Piller

Join the discussion 8 Comments

  • Kimie says:

    So, what’s the result of the internal poll?

  • Joanne Hong says:

    I think dramas are strongly based on the culture and life of the background country. Due to the popularity of Korean drama, particularly among Asian countries, Korean food and culture started to get a lot of attention. I remember, some years ago, some Korean writers or reports mentioned that Korean ‘Kim-chi’ was recognized more as ‘Ki-mu-chi’ with Japanese pronunciation. But, after Korean Wave started, I’ve never heard ‘Ki-mu-chi’. I don’t know about how drama and film are different, but I think the drama genre is more culturally based than the film genre, because it mainly focuses local audience, mainly based on something like life, love, historic events, and etc, while the film includes more variety of genres, such as Sci-fi, fantasy, and so on in which the culture is more generally covered.
    In this regard, the dramas could be a kind of material for learning cultures.

  • Mariam says:

    many people think that we only want to study Korean because of dramas and so, but we are actually more interested in the culture and the life of Korea, their food and so on.

  • Joanne Hong says:

    As a Korean, I’m so happy about this surprising news. I found that the term ‘Korean wave (‘Han-ryu’ in Korean) sounds very very interesting. The term has been coined, based on Korean entertainment, which has been popular mainly in China and Japan. Actually, I’m a big fan of Korean dramas and still watch at least one episode of the drama almost every day.^^ Interestingly, I heard that the desire of Korean entertainment industry to win the audiences around the world has contributed to misrepresentation of Korean identity, due to the enterpreneurial ideology which is probably ‘Capitalism’. This reminds me of American animation, especially Disney, who has created the characters more globally acceptable in the aspects of culture, religion and so on, in its animations. Then, this resulted in changes in American identity representation.
    However, one good thing is that Korean language is getting more globally recognizable in the era of ‘Korean Wave’. I think that generally, ‘Gaining’ companies with ‘Losing’.

  • Jenny Zhang says:

    Sometimes, I wonder which language people across the world would choose to learn as a foreign only for the sake of sheer happiness. I know that’s gonna happen only in Utopia, since language learning is always influenced by the cultural politics of a nation-state. But, it’s good to see Korean and some other languages wavered the center of gravity in FLL in some parts of the world.

  • Don Glass says:

    Mariam,
    If you want to make a Korean Club in DXB, I’m sure that we can make that happen…send me an email so I can get in touch.

  • Mariam says:

    Interesting thing to read, especially about Korean fever.
    and I wish we have a Korean club here at ZU-dxb.
    fav. ^^

  • Don Glass says:

    You hit the nail on the head with the Korean Wave comments. I run the Korean Club here at ZU in AUH and the girls are crazy about all things Korean. Many of them watch Korean dramas and listen to Korean pop music. We have lots of plans to expose them to Korean Culture starting with an exhibition of Korean Art and Photography and a Korean Movie (200 Pounds Beauty) next week. I must admit being a bit of a cheerleader for the Korean Language cause and I encouraged the girls to get out there and vote. This could, of course have some effect on numbers but the interest is there for Korean Language as evidenced by the fact that about 130 girls signed up for the Korean Club on club day this year.

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