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Designing new Korean mothers, daughters-in-law, and wives: an analysis of Korean textbooks for newly arrived marriage migrants in South Korea

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Published/Copyright: May 5, 2022

Abstract

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.


Corresponding author: Bong-Gi Sohn, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada, E-mail:

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Received: 2020-10-18
Revised: 2021-09-21
Accepted: 2021-09-23
Published Online: 2022-05-05
Published in Print: 2023-11-27

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Special Issue 1: EMI in Chinese higher education; Guest Editor: McKinley, Rose and Curdt-Christiansen
  3. Editorial
  4. EMI in Chinese higher education: the Muddy water of ‘Englishisation’
  5. Review Article
  6. English medium of instruction in Chinese higher education: a systematic mapping review of empirical research
  7. Research Articles
  8. How to kill two birds with one stone: EMI teachers’ needs in higher education in China
  9. The incentivisation of English medium instruction in Chinese universities: policy misfires and misalignments
  10. Motivations to enrol in EMI programmes in China: an exploratory study
  11. A translanguaging and trans-semiotizing perspective on subject teachers’ linguistic and pedagogical practices in EMI programme
  12. Commentary
  13. English as a medium of instruction in Chinese higher education: looking back and looking forward
  14. Special Issue 2: The dynamics of Korean transnational families, language practices, and social belongings; Guest Editor: Hakyoon Lee
  15. Editorial
  16. Editorial: The dynamics of Korean transnational families, language practices, and social belongings
  17. Articles
  18. National belonging and citizenship in an era of globalization and transnational migration: Korean migrant youth in the United States
  19. Korean immigrant teenagers’ literacy practices and identity negotiation through smartphone use
  20. Language and identity of a Korean transnational youth in the U.S.
  21. Adolescent Korean returnees’ perceptions of the change of language learning contexts as bilingual learners
  22. From trilingualism to triliteracy: a trilingual child learning to write simultaneously in Korean, Farsi, and English
  23. Migrant mothers’ heritage language education in South Korea: complex and agentive navigation of capital and language ideologies
  24. Designing new Korean mothers, daughters-in-law, and wives: an analysis of Korean textbooks for newly arrived marriage migrants in South Korea
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