KOTESOL National Conference 2018
Research Report (20 minutes)
Eric Lawrence Shewack, Tohoku University Graduate School of International Studies
Eastern versus Western Thought and ESL
Abstract
The research in this study sheds light on a fundamental difference between the way Confucian-rooted languages such as Korean view group relationships versus the way their Western counterparts choose between singular and plural pronouns. In Korean, this is primarily found in the “Wuli” and “Nae” dichotomy. Though these two words roughly translate to “our” and “my” respectively, the research conducted in this study finds that a clear English equivalent does not exist and there is a fuzzy line between plural and singular pronoun choice regardless of number count in Korean. Therefore, this often results in Korean ESL students to produce seemingly plural utterances in English such as “our mother” while the student is fully aware of the literal singular number count. This differing cultural perspective can lead to unintentional semantic errors in English language production. This study tested the boundaries and extremities of pronoun choice on sixty-three native Korean speakers when asked to describe relationships with both human entities and institutions. The findings reveal that some relationships are extremely collocational with a particular pronoun while others are completely up to the speaker. Furthermore, many pronoun choices made by Koreans vary greatly compared to how English speakers would respond if the same question were posed in English. Through this research, key cultural differences in the perspective of self in Eastern and Western societies are revealed. These findings provide valuable insight as to how ESL teachers can understand and manage cultural interference in language-learning in the classroom.
Biographicals
Eric Shewack is currently an English lecturer at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan where he earned his Master’s Degree in Linguistics. Prior to arriving in Japan, Eric taught ESL in South Korea for five years in private and public schools.
See the list of Presentations at the KOTESOL 2018 National Conference
