The definitive guide to understanding Korea - from home to work and those cultural destinations in between. Kohls shares a feast of Korean culture: a ricebowl of history and tradition complemented by an array of spicy tidbits that capture the reader's attention like a mouthful of kimchi. Based on personal experience, he provides critical incidents that explore the more puzzling aspects of Korean culture. Kohls explores Korean values - traditional values, value changes over the past forty years and projected values for the early decades of the twenty-first century. He is equally insightful when it comes to discussing the cultural patterns and practices of the workplace. He takes on management style, personal issues, networking and "pull" negotiating style, persistence, key Korean business relations and more. To a greater extent than most other Asian countries, Korea adheres to the traditional collectivist and Confucian traits of harmony, hierarchy, ingroups/outgroups, status, and proper behavior. According to Kohls, these traits plus the more Westernized values of the younger generations and the veneer of modern urban savvy surface in surprising combinations in personal and workplace relationships - often where they are least expected.

This book investigates the ways that advanced speakers of Korean as a second language perceive, use and learn the complexities of the Korean honorifics system. Despite their advanced proficiency in Korean, the study shows that the honorifics use of these speakers diverges in crucial ways from native speaker norms. It is argued that, rather than reflecting the language competence of these speakers as such, this usage is linked to questions of the identity of “language learners” and “foreigners” in Korean society. In addition, it shows the influence of conflicting ideologies regarding the “meaning” of “politeness”. This argument is backed up by rich data collected through mixed methods (discourse completion tests, role-plays, natural interactions, introspective interviews), allowing for a detailed picture of how the honorifics use of second language speakers emerges in context. The book concludes by discussing the implications of the study for politeness research, interlanguage pragmatics and language pedagogy.

Today's world is shaped by an obsession with cultural difference that penetrates everyday life and matters of state in unprecedented ways. Culture and cultural difference are commonly used to explain everything that's in the news - from wars to economic development and consumer behavior. This fuels the belief that our world is shaped by clashing cultures, a view that is counterproductive when it assumes falsely that culture is a timeless container that traps nations and ethnic groups. Seeing Culture Everywhere challenges the misguided and dangerous global obsession with cultural difference and directly critiques the popular notion that world affairs are determined by essential civilizations with immutable and conflicting cultures. The book offers an alternative view of a world in which cultural mixing, not isolation, is the norm, but where several historical trends have come together at the beginning of the twenty-first century to produce the current wave of "culture think." Brimming with concrete examples that move from genocide in Rwanda to schools in Berlin, from the Chrysler boardroom to the war in Iraq, it contemplates how ethnic identity can be mobilized in the service of all kinds of goals - violent or nonviolent, laudable or despicable - and the unintended effects such mobilization invariably produces. The authors suggest ways to remain sensitive to the cultural impacts of policies and decisions without falling into the traps of determinism, essentialism, and misrepresentation. Seeing Culture Everywhere will be useful in the fields of anthropology, law, intercultural communication, and international relations, as well as for general readers interested in ethnicity and travel.

This edited volume focuses on the experiences of individuals learning languages other than English (LOTEs) in a range of Asian contexts that have traditionally been under-represented in the literature. Aligning with the ‘multilingual turn’ in SLA, it views learners as individuals of a multilingual society with unique, complex, heterogenous and dynamic identities. The chapters explore the learners’ motivational trajectories, multilingual identities and their conceptualisations of the ‘ideal multilingual self’. This volume enhances our critical understanding of language learning motivation through empirical findings and conceptual insights from studies of motivation in specific regions in Asia, including Greater China, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Pakistan and Syria. Providing insight into the multilingual identities of individuals learning LOTEs, it will appeal to students and scholars in second language acquisition, researchers in language learning motivation and policymakers in language education.

Chinese, Japanese, South (and North) Koreans in East Asia have a long, intertwined and distinguished cultural history and have achieved, or are in the process of achieving, spectacular economic success. Together, these three peoples make up one quarter of the world population. They use a variety of unique and fascinating writing systems: logographic Chinese characters of ancient origin, as well as phonetic systems of syllabaries and alphabets. The book describes, often in comparison with English, how the Chinese, Korean and Japanese writing systems originated and developed; how each relates to its spoken language; how it is learned or taught; how it can be computerized; and how it relates to the past and present literacy, education, and culture of its users. Intimately familiar with the three East Asian cultures, Insup Taylor with the assistance of Martin Taylor, has written an accessible and highly readable book. Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese is intended for academic readers (students in East Asian Studies, linguistics, education, psychology) as well as for the general public (parents, business, government). Readers of the book will learn about the interrelated cultural histories of China, Korea and Japan, but mainly about the various writing systems, some exotic, some familar, some simple, some complex, but all fascinating.

How can you use the latest digital technology to create an environment in which people can learn European languages while performing a meaningful real-world task and experiencing the cultural aspect of learning to cook European dishes? This book explains how to do this from A to Z, covering how a real-world digital environment for language learning was designed, built and researched. The project makes language learning motivational and fun by tapping into people's interest in both cooking and technology – you can learn a language while cooking and interacting with a speaking digital kitchen. The kitchens provide spoken instructions in the foreign language on how to prepare European cuisine. Digital sensors are inserted in or attached to all the kitchen equipment and ingredients, so the digital kitchen detects what learners are doing and gives them feedback. Learners are also able to communicate with the kitchens and can ask for help via photos and videos if they don't understand any foreign language words. Based on two research grants, the book provides five research studies showing the learning experiences of users in five European countries. The book explains the principles and procedures involved in the project, enabling others to design and implement a real-world digital learning environment in the same way. It includes numerous photographs of the system in use and evidence of how and what 250 users actually learnt.