South Korea as a context for English language learning

One major aspect of the managers’ self-positioning was how they presented themselves in relation to images of Korean speakers of English that are widely circulated in Korean society. While Korea is a country with a relatively strong degree of monolingualism in Korean, the English language has played a significant role in how Koreans understand themselves in the modern world, indexing an idealized global order against which Koreans were positioned as backwards and inferior (Park Reference Park and Tupas2015). This is reflected in metapragmatic talk about English. In news reports, language policy debates, jokes that people tell, television shows, and everyday conversation, one can often find explicit and implicit articulations of how Koreans lack proper competence in English despite the large investments they make in English language learning; how embarrassing it is therefore to have to speak English in front of others; how all of this should be blamed upon the national curriculum for English language learning, which is perceived to be test-centric, grammar-based, and insensitive to practical communicative needs (for a detailed discussion of ideologies of English in Korea, see Park Reference Park2009). Such metapragmatic statements, circulated and interconnected through multiple channels and genres of discourse, contribute to the shaping of a particular characterological figure—the incompetent Korean speaker of English. The deep sense of anxiety and insecurity Koreans hold about English can be seen as shaped and reinforced through the way they align themselves with such characterological figures across various social contexts (Park Reference Park and Tupas2015).

In the managers’ talk, the context of English language learning in Korea was invoked as a prominent chronotope, with the characterological figure of the incompetent Korean speaker of English serving as an important point of reference against which they calibrated their own positioning. For example, when I asked the managers whether communicating in English presented a challenge in their daily work, they plainly said that it did not. Given that work at the managers’ offices was routinely and predominantly carried out through the medium of English, this was of course unsurprising. Yet, such claims are significant given the dominant Korean discourse of English, in which plain acknowledgement of one's competence in English is rarely observed. Moreover, in making such claims, the managers frequently attributed their competence in English to the fact that they had worked for a long time in an environment where English was part of the expected linguistic repertoire. The significance of this can be seen in cases where the managers presented their experience of working in non-Korean MNCs in opposition to the characterological figures and interactional regimes of the chronotope of English language learning in Korea. For instance, in the following example, Mr. Seong, a marketing manager at a manufacturing firm, explains how, even though working abroad in English came naturally to him due to the specific linguistic environment he was exposed to, it would not be the case for other Koreans.

1. (1) 그래도 영어로서는 토익 영어랑 실상에서 쓰는 영어랑 좀 많이 비즈니스 영어랑 차이가 많이 나니까, 아마 진짜 외국계에서 일하고 싶지마는 겁이 나서 못 가는 사람도 많을 거예요.

   ‘In terms of English, TOEIC English is quite different from English as it is actually used, from business English, so there would be a lot of people who want to work at foreign companies but are afraid to go abroad.’

In formulating this statement, Seong invokes several prominent elements from metapragmatic discourses of English language learning in Korea. For instance, TOEIC stands for the Test of English for International Communication, a standardized test widely used in Korea for assessing the English language competence of white-collar job applicants. The expression TOEIC English indexes the widespread view that English language learning in Korea mainly focuses on test preparation and thus is divorced from ‘English as it is actually used’. The statement also underlines how this perceived inadequacy of Korea as a site for English language learning has implications for Koreans’ subjectivity—that is, how it leads them to be ‘afraid to go abroad’. In other words, specific characterological figures (Korean learners of English who fear their English would be inadequate for communication in the global workplace) and interactional regimes (English language learning that is characterized by a lack of ‘actual’ interaction and merely focused on test preparation) deriving from the chronotope of English language learning in Korea are juxtaposed with Seong's here-and-now (living and working in Singapore, away from the time-space of Korea) to provide a semiotic basis for Seong's distinction of himself from Koreans back in Korea.

At the same time, however, the managers also closely aligned themselves with the chronotope of Korea as a site for English language learning, representing the problems often attributed to English language learning in Korea as their own. For example, Mr. Noh, a sales development manager for a US-based manufacturing company, related to me that even if he were offered a higher management position at his company, he would not likely accept it, as he was unsure whether his competence in English would be good enough to handle the greater responsibilities of leading the region. In doing so, he looked back upon his experience of learning English in Korea, which he evaluated as thoroughly ineffective.

1. (2) 참! 지금 생각하면 쓸데없는 공부를 하고 있는 거죠. … 그 매일 공부를 해도 아까 말씀드렸듯이 그 뭐 리스닝, 참 머리에 와 닿지도 않는 타임지 괜히 폼으로 갖고 다니면서 막 서너 줄 읽는데 한 시간 걸려가면서 끙끙대고 아니면 괜히 작문, 작문 같은 거는 괜찮죠. 어차피 해야 되는데. 그런 부분에 너무 많은 시간을 투자를 했던 거 같애요. 뭐 공부는 했으나 실제적인 생활에 나중에 자기 미래에 별 도움이 안되는.

   ‘Well! Now that I think about it, we were studying useless stuff. … Like I said, even though we studied every day, we did things like listening, we carried around Time magazine just for show, struggling for an hour just to read three or four lines, or working on composition, composition's okay, as we need to do it anyway. But I think we invested too much time in those things. Even though we studied, it was not useful for practical life or for one's future.’

Here, Noh's characterization of his past English language learning efforts in Korea as a university student borrows heavily from metapragmatic discourses critical of the state of English language learning in Korea, including a typical list of activities from the preglobalization chronotope of the 1980s—‘listening’ (passive listening to recordings of native speakers on language-learning cassette tapes), studying Time magazine, and ‘composition’ (structured exercises of constructing written English sentences)—which are in turn evaluated as ‘useless stuff’ that does not contribute to ‘practical life’. By interdiscursively bringing in this metapragmatic discourse into his interaction with me, Noh makes sense of his current struggles with English and their consequences for his career; the Korean chronotope of English language learning is presented as having enduring relevance throughout his transnational trajectory, serving as the very source of his difficulties with English in the present.

This shows that the interdiscursive connection the managers make with the chronotope of English language learning functions not so much to oppose the image of incompetent Koreans with that of competent managers, but to represent the tension-filled position that the managers occupy in transnational space; in the managers’ view, while their work beyond Korea's borders has endowed them with a certain degree of comfort with English, their past history as English language learners in Korea continues to weigh on their present, leaving them insecure about their legitimate place in the global workplace.

Interacting interculturally

Another chronotope prominent in the managers’ talk was intercultural communication that takes place through their routine daily work. As noted above, the managers’ work commonly involved communicating with people in country offices whom they supervised, and even though work was predominantly conducted in English, they needed to deal with speakers with a wide range of accents and proficiencies as well as communicative styles. The managers commonly highlighted this diversity as a central aspect of the interactional regime that defined the time-space of their work, and frequently mentioned dealing with such diversity as one of the major challenges of working in the regional office. For instance, Mr. Han, a manager with an engineering background at a chemical company, said the following in response to my question about whether he experienced problems in communication in his line of work.

1. (3) 페이스 투 페이스로 정확한 업무 얘기하면 뭐 큰 그거는 없지만, 뭐 만나서 업무 얘기만 하는 거 아니잖아요. 또 뭐, 근데, 그, 아직 백 프로, 뭐, 이해 못해요. 잘 못 알아듣고, 특히 전화하거나 뭐 이러면, 사람이 얼마나 다양해요. 저희가, 인도사람이나 뭐 여기, 온 지금 여기 아시아 각국 사람들이 다 있으니까 뭐. 빠른 사람, 느린 사람, 깨끗이 말하는 사람 뭐, 그 다음에 또 에듀케이션 백그라운드가 다르잖아요. 좀 많이 배운 사람 뭐, 적게 배운 사람, 뭐 말을 많이 하는 사람, 말도 안 하는 사람,

   ‘If we're talking about specific business issues face to face then there's no big problem, but we don't always talk about business. So um, I don't understand one hundred percent yet. I may not understand, particularly when talking on the phone. We have all kinds of people. Indians and um, people from all over Asia. People who speak fast, people who speak slowly, people who speak neatly, and they also have different educational backgrounds. People with a lot of schooling, people with not so much schooling, people who speak a lot, people who don't speak much.’

Han says that he still has occasional trouble understanding people, particularly in contexts such as speaking on the phone. He then attributes this difficulty to the diverse ways of speaking English that can be found in the Asia-Pacific region, including different national varieties (e.g. ‘Indians’) as well as variation arising from differing degrees of proficiency (‘people who speak fast, people who speak slowly’) and educational background (by which he seems to imply differing degrees of adherence to globally recognized norms of standard English). What is noticeable is how neutral and continuous differences in ways of speaking (such as pace of speech) are employed in constructing discrete speaker types. For instance, while pace of speech in itself does not naturally correlate with proficiency, in the managers’ talk, fast speaking was commonly regimented as indexing a highly competent speaker of English who could command the language at ease, as I show in the next section. Through such discourse, then, the regional office was constructed as a meeting place of highly divergent speaker types, a challenging communicative context that required significant adaptive skills.

Thus, when the managers said that they did not have problems carrying out their routine daily work, what they usually meant was that they had developed and acquired a range of pragmatic strategies to ensure that mutual understanding had been achieved. For instance, in response to my question of how he deals with possible problems of miscommunication, Seong, from (1) above, explains how written communication integrated into business routines can serve as an effective backup to the leaky nature of spoken communication (especially when carried out through channels such as the telephone, as Han noted in (3)).

1. (4) 미팅을 하고나면 미팅 끝나고 하루나 이틀쯤 뒤에 그걸 한 번 브리핑을 쫘악 해가지고 상대편에 보냅니다. 우리가 했던 게 이런 이런 내용인데 그게 맞고 아니면 내가 빠진 부분이 있냐라고 메일을 보내요. 그럼 거기서 내가 잘못 이해를 하고 있는 부분이 있다고 그러면 그 양반들이 고쳐줘가지고, 어 이건 이 뜻이 아니고 이 뜻이다라고 문서를 보내고. 주로 그런 식으로 많이 어 카버를 많이 하는 편이고.

   ‘After a meeting, a day or two later I do a briefing and send it to the other party. This is what we discussed, is this correct, is there anything missing; I send such an email. Then if there's something I misunderstood they correct it and say, no, this means this, not that, sending me a document. We often deal with it that way.’

Managers such as Seong presented these routines as technologized strategies designed to meet the needs of the highly multicultural global workplace. That is, the strategies are presented as generalizable techniques that are applicable to a wide range of contingent situations, deeply integrated into the routine of work. For instance, apparatuses of recording such as ‘briefing’ or ‘email’ are elevated to the status of a work-related resource that can confirm whether mutual understanding has been achieved, as well as a mechanism for flagging whether any miscommunication might have occurred due to linguistic and cultural difference.

By invoking such interactional regimes (linguistic diversity requiring careful monitoring of difference) and speaker images (the Korean manager with technologized competence for dealing with such diversity) associated with the chronotope of intercultural communication, then, the managers constructed the global workplace as a challenging time-space populated by a variety of speaker types, with the Korean managers positioned at the center of that diversity, efficiently engaging with diverse speakers using technologized strategies and know-how for communicating interculturally. In this sense, the managers represent themselves as expert users of English as a lingua franca (ELF), who use the language in a fluent and competent way not so much in orientation to dominant norms of speaking English but in order to efficiently facilitate communication across cultural boundaries (see also Canagarajah Reference Canagarajah2013).

But at the same time, the Korean managers’ use of technologized strategies is presented as making up for their less than perfect competence in English (‘I don't understand one hundred percent … particularly when talking over the phone’). In this way, the image of the manager as a competent user of ELF is recalibrated, through interdiscursive connections with the figure of the incompetent Korean speaker of English deriving from the chronotope of English language learning in Korea. On the one hand, the managers are presented as having overcome Koreans’ problematic inability to use English properly, as evidenced by their mastery of intercultural skills; on the other hand, they are still less than fully competent English speakers, as they must rely on the crutches of such technologized skills to navigate the complexities of intercultural communication that constantly challenge their competence in English.

Engaging with corporate discourse

Even though the managerial position at the regional office was seen as a possible stepping stone to a higher position, in reality Koreans did not have a good chance of reaching global headquarters. In fact, in the companies where the managers I spoke to were working, no Korean had succeeded in joining the ranks of global-level management. The managers I spoke with often attributed this to issues of communication. In their view, even though Koreans are great implementers who deliver results, they are not as savvy in communication, a skill that was seen as crucial for the role of the visionary leader that those in higher management are expected to play—for instance, articulating long-term strategies in an abstract and refined language and justifying them through persuasion and argumentation (Park Reference Park2013). Indeed, Indian managers, who were understood as having greater familiarity with English and a more outspoken style of communication than the Koreans, were the largest group of Asians who succeeded in joining the higher management otherwise populated by white Westerners.

In the managers’ interviews, one chronotope was prominently referred to in conveying this point: internal meetings at the Singapore office where higher-order issues such as long-term business strategies and visions were debated, and which in turn had important implications for performance evaluations and opportunities for promotion. Even though such meetings also took place in the regional office, because of the distinct characterological figures and interactional regimes that populate them, those meetings constituted a chronotope distinct from the chronotope of intercultural communication, and also had a specific consequence for the managers’ work of self-positioning; metapragmatic discourse about such meetings was often used as grounds for rationalizing the failure of Koreans to move beyond the rank of regional manager. In the following example, for instance, Noh, who we have seen above in (2), explains his discomfort with the high-speed exchanges in internal meetings and how it makes him feel inadequate.

1. (5) 사실 지금도 백퍼센트를 알아들을 수는 없는 거고 놓치죠 뭐. … 듣는 부분이야 상대편이 얘기하는 사람이 나를 신경쓰지 않을 때는 뭐 그냥 알아들었든 못 알아들었든 상관없이 회의가 흘러가니까 그나마 괜찮은데, 인제 내가 뭔가 얘기를 해야 할 때는 근데 이제 천천히 얘기를 해라 천천히 얘기를 해라 하지마는 상당히 뭐 우리나라 회의에서, 가령 삼성전자에서 회의를 하는데, 전 사람들이 흥분을 해가지고 막 회의를 하고 있는데, 갑자기 동남아시아나 뭐 어떤 외국인이 하나 끼어들어가지고 떠벅떠벅 한국말로 어, 뭐, 그, 그게 아닌, 뭐 이런 식으로 얘기할 때 그 회의 분위기가 상당히 쫘악 하듯이, 여기서도 뭔가 얘기를 했을 때 그 스피드라는 부분을 같이 못 따라가게 되면은 약간 좀 분위기가 어색해져요.

   ‘Actually I still cannot understand one hundred percent and I miss things. … When I'm listening and when others are not paying attention to me it's still okay, because the meeting will go on whether I understand or not. But when I'm required to say something, even though they say “Take your time, take your time”, well it's like when they're having a meeting at Samsung Electronics in Korea and everyone is excited and then a Southeast Asian or some foreigner jumps in and says in halting Korean, “Um, that, it's not…” and the whole atmosphere just dies. Here too, if I can't keep up with the speed then things get a bit awkward.’

Here, Noh presents a picture of the internal meetings by making interdiscursive connections with metapragmatic discourses about the incompetent Korean speaker of English, but through the mediation of another chronotope: a hypothetical interaction taking place in a comparable meeting at a Korean MNC in Korea, where a ‘Southeast Asian’ (typically seen in Korea as carrying less symbolic power than, say, a white Westerner) with a slower rate of speech and low fluency in Korean is presented as blocking the heated flow of the meeting. The recursive application (Irvine & Gal Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000) of the figure of the incompetent Korean speaker of English onto the figure of the incompetent Southeast Asian speaker of Korean, complete with subjective evaluations (‘the whole atmosphere just dies… things get a bit awkward’) that mirror the anxieties that Koreans report feeling about speaking English, presents the chronotope of internal meetings in Singapore as a time-space where fast-paced discussion in fluent English is the norm, and where those who do not have the ability to keep up are unfit to belong, despite the beneficent attitudes of other participants (‘even though they say “Take your time, take your time” ’). Through this, as well as the interdiscursive connection with discourses such as Han's in (3) above (in which fast pace of speech is presented as an index of proficiency), Noh's own problematization of the Korean managers’ competence in English and their position in the corporate hierarchy is powerfully naturalized.

Interdiscursivity between chronotopes also highlighted the mismatch between the expectations of global corporate culture and the managers’ communicative style. For instance, the managers frequently mentioned Koreans’ reluctance to openly promote themselves in front of superiors as a characteristic that disadvantaged them in such meetings. In the words of Mr. Kim, a manager in charge of finance at an American manufacturing firm:

1. (6) 서양 사람들 같은 경우는, 그러니까 사람별로 다 자기가 실제로 한 거는 별로 없는데, 한 거에 비해서 포장을 잘 해요. 예. 그런데 우리나라 사람들 같은 경우엔 한 거는 되게 많은데 겸손 때문에 그런지 그런 걸 뭐 이렇게 자기가 잘난 체를 안 하죠. 그냥, 네. 특히 한국 사람들이 그런 거 같고 싱가폴 사람들은 그런 거 모르고요. 어 인도 사람들은 약간 좀 틀린 거 같고 좀, 그 사람들은 말이 많고.

   ‘In the case of Westerners, even when they have not accomplished much, they package what they have done as much better than what they actually did. But Koreans, even when they do a lot of work, perhaps out of modesty, they don't boast about it. Yes. Koreans are especially like that, and Singaporeans don't care much about such things. Uh and Indians seem to be a bit different, they talk a lot.’

Kim's talk here interdiscursively links to diversity talk characteristic of the chronotope of intercultural communication, except the diversity in question here is among other colleagues at the regional office, rather than among employees in country offices supervised by the managers. Communicative difference is presented as varying significantly across essentialist national identities (‘Westerners’, ‘Singaporeans’, or ‘Indians’), to which ‘Koreans’ also belong as a category, with their reluctance to speak positively about their own achievements serving as an inherent cultural trait (‘modesty’) that distinguishes them from other nationalities, such as Singaporeans or Indians who ‘don't care much about such things (like modesty)’ and ‘talk a lot’—even though avoidance of self-promotion could also be motivated by pragmatic reasons rather than purely cultural ones (e.g. some managers disdainfully spoke about self-promotion as having nothing to do with getting things done). But since, in the interactional regime of internal meetings, self-promotion was taken as the communicative norm and necessary for favorable evaluations, this cultural difference was taken up not as a neutral difference characteristic of the global workplace, but a crucial flaw that harmed their career opportunities in the time-space of the MNC.

The interdiscursive work of the managers in presenting the chronotope of internal meetings, then, further calibrates their positioning. The figure of the Korean manager, who has acquired competence in English and technologized communicative skills through his transnational work but continues to struggle with English as an illegitimate speaker, is now inserted into the site where interactional outcomes have consequences for evaluation and promotion in the corporate hierarchy and further transnational movement. Through this figure, the managers are able to rationalize their reasonably successful but limited careers, relying on cultural explanations that build upon multiple other chronotopes that reframe Koreans’ communicative difference as essential and inherent. Instead of questioning a corporate culture that does not seem to truly value diversity, they position themselves as only being good enough for routine tasks of implementation, but not competent enough to take on responsibilities for higher positions in the corporate hierarchy.