KRC Seminar Series

"Australian-Korean multicultural family members' emotions about their family language policy" by Dr Nicola Fraschini and Dr Adrian Lundberg (Malmo University, Sweden)

April 8, 2022

This presentation investigates the emotional reactions of members of multilingual families in relation to their family language policy (FLP) using Q methodology. The purpose is to foreground possible emotional differences that family members experience regarding FLPs, and to show the complexity of the web of emotions triggered by the adoption of these policies. Research in the field of language acquisition demonstrated the relevance of emotions in the process of learning an additional language. Therefore, it is important to understand how different emotions are interconnected and represent individual reactions to FLPs, as emotions ultimately affect the wellbeing of multilingual families. In this project, a pictorial Q set using seventeen face emojis to represent emotions is used to meet existing methodological challenges in research with children with limited literacy. Fifteen participants, parents and children of six Australian-Korean multicultural families, sorted the set of emojis depending on their feeling about their FLP. Results provide insights into the variety of emotional reactions to FLPs, and the different emotional reactions that members of the same family have regarding their family language practices.

To join click: https://uwa.zoom.us/j/82664120194?pwd=cy9jZFR3bEVIR2xzL2g4enpHMTRGQT09

Password: 573495

No registrations necessary.

"Brilliant are the Flowers: Envoy Poetry and the Rhetoric of Empire" by Dr Sixiang Wang (UCLA)

Friday 22 April 2022

In the two centuries of peace, the Chosŏn dynasty of Korea (1392–1910) enjoyed with the Ming empire in China (1368–1644), it exercised enormous agency in shaping the very terms of imperial rule. This agency, however, has often been obscured by the very rhetoric adopted by Chosŏn's own diplomats in the process. This talk explores the rhetorical strategies of Korean diplomacy, in particular in its envoy poetry, to argue that Chosŏn Korea crafted with Ming envoys central aspects of Ming imperial ideology. These included a shared insistence on Korea's membership in a civilized ecumene, recognition of independent Korean links to the classical past, and a repudiation of the specter of imperial irredentism. Chosŏn-Ming relations, far from a ready-made system derived from timeless Confucian principles or a coherent Ming vision of world order, emerged in part from these rhetorical negotiations in diplomatic poetry.