Linguistic competency and citizenship: Contrasting portraits of multilingualism in the South Korean popular media

This paper examines how metapragmatic framings of multilingual competency and incompetency have become indexes of global and South Korean citizenship in the South Korean popular media. Drawing upon depictions of multilingualism in South Korean television deurama ('drama'), comedy skits, and popular music, it examines how the locus of modernity and cosmopolitanism is moving away from the U.S.-oriented overseas Korean (gyopo) and towards the figure of the elite transnational returnee (saldaon saram). It argues that as the transnational circulation of people, media, and ideologies accelerates in the age of globalization, intra-ethnic discourses of linguistic mockery will also intensify. Adapted from the source document.