Papers by Bong-gi Sohn
Routledge eBooks, May 15, 2023
Multilingual Matters eBooks, Dec 31, 2023
Proceedings of the 2021 AERA Annual Meeting
RELC Journal
Arising in Europe in the early 1990s, content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has become ... more Arising in Europe in the early 1990s, content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has become a popular educational approach. CLIL involves a dual focus on content and language learning with an additional language used as the medium of instruction. Although CLIL has received much attention and spread widely around the world, there is limited discussion that critically examines CLIL in relation to its core construct of integration between content and language learning. In particular, the phrasing of ‘content and language integrated learning’ gestures towards viewing language and content as separate entities. With these fundamental issues in mind, we discuss ways in which translanguaging pedagogies can provide a fruitful direction towards a critical integration of content and language learning in multilingual settings. With a view to contributing to a dynamic integration of content and language learning, we argue that CLIL pedagogies informed by translanguaging allow fluidity in me...
Applied linguistics review, May 5, 2022
Textbooks are sociocultural materials, reflecting political decisions, educational beliefs and pr... more Textbooks are sociocultural materials, reflecting political decisions, educational beliefs and priorities, cultural realities and language policies. As part of a larger ethnographic study which investigated the multilingual socialization of foreign wives in South Korea, I present the nature and extent of the gender-making process through an analysis of Korean textbooks for recently arrived female marriage migrants, which provides an understanding of the extent to which gender and race are ingrained in shaping linguistic nationalism in globalized times. I first introduce a four-stage life cycle designed by the South Korean government and situate Korean textbook series called Korean Language Learning With International Marriage Migrant Women as an intervention used early in the settlement period for foreign mothers. Then, I analyze the textual and multimodal representation of family identities taken from six textbook series, focusing on lessons, dialogues, and characters that are presented. The results of the study demonstrate how the state presents its attempts to transform foreign wives into a new type of 'wise mother good wife' in the globalized, multilingual world. I demonstrate the ways in which state-driven gender identity production is not simply (re)producing the gender divide but also aligned with nation-making processes that are facing challenges in these globalized times.
The Korean Educational Administration Society, 2016
Drawing from the national and regional governments’ bilingual education policy documents for the ... more Drawing from the national and regional governments’ bilingual education policy documents for the languages of ethno-linguistic minorities, we investigated the intersections between bilingual education in the languages of ethno-linguistic minorities and language ideologies embedded in the selected policy documents. Applying a textual analysis of the data (Fairclough, 1995, 2003; Wodak & Meyer, 2009), we (a) explored the ways neoliberal language ideologies discursively (re)reproduced in the Korean national government’s bilingual education policy for teaching the languages of ethno-linguistic minority students and their families in the school, and (b) examined how a regional government interpreted the national ideological agenda. In doing so, we (c) analyzed the ways that the national and regional governments applied the language-as-resource framework to legitimize bilingual competency and bilingualism as a social norm in South Korea as well as a global norm in the globalized new economy where South Korea is situated.
Applied linguistics review, 2022
Textbooks are sociocultural materials, reflecting political decisions, educational beliefs and pr... more Textbooks are sociocultural materials, reflecting political decisions, educational beliefs and priorities, cultural realities and language policies. As part of a larger ethnographic study which investigated the multilingual socialization of foreign wives in South Korea, I present the nature and extent of the gender-making process through an analysis of Korean textbooks for recently arrived female marriage migrants, which provides an understanding of the extent to which gender and race are ingrained in shaping linguistic nationalism in globalized times. I first introduce a four-stage life cycle designed by the South Korean government and situate Korean textbook series called Korean Language Learning With International Marriage Migrant Women as an intervention used early in the settlement period for foreign mothers. Then, I analyze the textual and multimodal representation of family identities taken from six textbook series, focusing on lessons, dialogues, and characters that are presented. The results of the study demonstrate how the state presents its attempts to transform foreign wives into a new type of 'wise mother good wife' in the globalized, multilingual world. I demonstrate the ways in which state-driven gender identity production is not simply (re)producing the gender divide but also aligned with nation-making processes that are facing challenges in these globalized times.
In L. Wright & C. Higgins (Eds.), Diversifying Family Language Policy (pp. 237–256). Bloomsbury., 2022
This study presents the ways in which foreign mothers in South Korea (henceforth Korea) who belon... more This study presents the ways in which foreign mothers in South Korea (henceforth Korea) who belong to a new type of intercultural/interethnic damunhwa (multicultural) family, which consists of a Korean man married to a foreign woman, articulate a neoliberal ideology about their own language(s) . Although the Korean government has enthusiastically designed a multicultural and multilingual family language policy (FLP) for the integration of damunhwa families, there has been a lack of support for family multilingualism (Park 2019; Kim and Kim 2015) . Instead, the language of damunhwa mothers is selectively promoted based on what is viewed as profitable and valuable for advancing Korean interests (Sohn 2018; Sohn and Kang 2021) , which is as part of a top-down mandate facilitated by the government. Contrary to what is promoted by the Korean government, recent work on FLP (King, Fogle, and Logan-Terry 2008; Curdt-Christiansen and Lanza 2018; Higgins 2019,...
We present the Pristine survey, a new narrow-band photometric survey focused on the metallicity-s... more We present the Pristine survey, a new narrow-band photometric survey focused on the metallicity-sensitive Ca H & K lines and conducted in the northern hemisphere with the wide-field imager MegaCam on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). This paper reviews our overall survey strategy and discusses the data processing and metallicity calibration. Additionally we review the application of these data to the main aims of the survey, which are to gather a large sample of the most metal-poor stars in the Galaxy, to further characterise the faintest Milky Way satellites, and to map the (metal-poor) substructure in the Galactic halo. The current Pristine footprint comprises over 1,000 deg 2 in the Galactic halo ranging from b ∼ 30 • to ∼ 78 • and covers many known stellar substructures. We demonstrate that, for SDSS stellar objects, we can calibrate the photometry at the 0.02-magnitude level. The comparison with existing spectroscopic metallicities from SDSS/SEGUE and LAMOST shows that, when combined with SDSS broad-band g and i photometry, we can use the CaHK photometry to infer photometric metallicities with an accuracy of ∼0.2 dex from [Fe/H] = −0.5 down to the extremely metal-poor regime ([Fe/H] < −3.0). After the removal of various contaminants, we can efficiently select metal-poor stars and build a very complete sample with high purity. The success rate of uncovering [Fe/H] SEGUE < −3.0 stars among [Fe/H] Pristine < −3.0 selected stars is 24% and 85% of the remaining candidates are still very metal poor ([Fe/H]< −2.0). We further demonstrate that Pristine is well suited to identify the very rare and pristine Galactic stars with [Fe/H] < −4.0, which can teach us valuable lessons about the early Universe.
In D. Dippold & M. Heron (Eds.), Classroom interaction at the internationalised university, 2021
Multilingua, 2021
Global flows of migration to South Korea bring a new challenge of how to negotiate the identities... more Global flows of migration to South Korea bring a new challenge of how to negotiate the identities of migrants. Unlike other reported cases that reframe the value of migrants’ first language as part of contingent practices of diversity management, the South Korean government has responded to this challenge by explicitly reframing so-called damunhwa mothers (foreign women married to Korean men) as bilingual workers, imagining them as self-governed, autonomous workers whose linguistic capital can be mobilized for the betterment of South Korean society. The government’s adoption of linguistic entrepreneurship and ethnocentric nationalism becomes particularly salient in this process. This paper studies how four damunhwa mothers respond to this new bilingual worker identity as promoted in the bilingual policy texts. We examine the ways in which they negotiate their bilingual worker identities by echoing the government’s new linguistic nationalism and linguistic entrepreneurship on the one hand, and by problematizing the insecure job markets, stratified linguistic needs, lack of systematic training for bilingual instructors, and native Korean’s misunderstanding of their new roles on the other. Finally, we discuss the implications of Korea’s bilingual policy, elaborating on the significance of linguistic entrepreneurship in language policy planning and practice and calling for more reflective accounts of ecological and translingual policy implementation in Korea.
Journal of Administration and Educational Policy, 2016
Drawing from the national and regional governments’ bilingual education policy documents for the ... more Drawing from the national and regional governments’ bilingual education policy documents for the languages of ethno-linguistic minorities, we investigated the intersections between bilingual education in the languages of ethno-linguistic minorities and language ideologies embedded in the selected policy documents. Applying a textual analysis of the data (Fairclough, 1995, 2003; Wodak & Meyer, 2009), we (a) explored the ways neoliberal language ideologies discursively (re)reproduced in the Korean national government’s bilingual education policy for teaching the languages of ethno-linguistic minority students and their families in the school, and (b) examined how a regional government interpreted the national ideological agenda. In doing so, we (c) analyzed the ways that the national and regional governments applied the language-as-resource framework to legitimize bilingual competency and bilingualism as a social norm in South Korea as well as a global norm in the globalized new economy where South Korea is situated.
Thesis Chapters by Bong-gi Sohn
In the context of unprecedented globalization and migration flows, South Korea, known for promoti... more In the context of unprecedented globalization and migration flows, South Korea, known for promoting the modern nation-state’s ‘one-nation, one-language’ ideology, has undergone recalibration of its national identity and language ideologies. Since the mid-2000s, the South Korean government has developed a dual contradictory bilingual framework—assimilative Korean as a Second Language and celebratory multilingual development—particularly for damunhwa (multicultural) families consisting of international marriages between Korean men and foreign women and their children. Despite the government’s enthusiastic development of language policy, little is known of the grounds on which this bilingual initiative was established and how it is practiced in families. Adopting an approach that Bronson and Watson-Gegeo (2008) have called “language socialization as topic,” this qualitative study employed a document analysis and interviews to investigate the representational practices of foreign mothers across their lifespan in South Korea. I first address how the national-level language policy guides the regulation of foreign mothers’ four linear life trajectories: marriage, migration, childbirth and education, and home economics. Findings from the policy analysis represent the government’s (1) emphasis on damunhwa mothers’ exclusive use of Korean, (2) selective recommendation of heritage/foreign language for nationalistic purposes, and (3) discouragement of heritage language use in damunhwa families. They also demonstrate the government’s lack of concern with the roles of Korean fathers in family language socialization. The four damunhwa mothers in this study—from Japan, China, Vietnam, and Kyrgyzstan—presented their survival stories on learning to become dedicated mothers who are expected to use Korean with their children. Their narratives also demonstrate how the linguistic hierarchy is exacerbated and how they are demoralized in their bilingual workplaces. The mothers’ stated promotion of heritage languages often serves instrumental purposes rather than fostering bilingual and bicultural identities. These findings explain how damunhwa mothers have become the heart of linguistic nationalism in globalized times for South Korea, where the government has failed to recognize the fundamental importance of the situated nature of multilingual socialization of families. Through illuminating what has been neglected by policy makers, this dissertation calls for more equitable and gender-sensitive approaches to bilingual education in transnational and translingual times.
Peer-reviewed publications by Bong-gi Sohn
Uploads
Papers by Bong-gi Sohn
Thesis Chapters by Bong-gi Sohn
Peer-reviewed publications by Bong-gi Sohn