Language and the Locations of Culture

The Linguistics and Applied Linguistics / TESOL Program in the Department of English at ASU presents this talk by linguist Jerry Lee, a professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Irvine. The event will be presented in a hybrid format on Monday, Oct. 16, 2023 from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. in-person in Ross-Blakley Hall room 117, ASU Tempe campus and online via Zoom (registration required). All are welcome.

This event is part of ASU Humanities Week.

In the talk, Lee asks "Where is culture?" Answer: It is still somewhat difficult to refute Homi Bhabha’s enduring claim that culture is located in spaces in-between that are always already hybrid. Two decades now into the twenty-first century, how can we make fuller use of methodologies, technologies, and epistemological vantage points otherwise not available in the 1990s? Lee draws on observations from the case of Global Korea, which includes public language artifacts in the built environment of tourist sites in Korea and of Koreatowns worldwide, in order to offer language as a heuristic by which to locate culture. More specifically, he focuses on instances whereby the very idea of culture is reinvented and relocated across global space, paying attention to varied entanglements among language, semiotic resources, and spatial elements. Though the presentation itself focuses on Korea and its diasporas, it raises the broader question of what such encounters can illuminate about the varied features of cultural distinctiveness that are otherwise difficult to see by approaching culture in its isolated form, but might be seen anew from a global perspective.

About the presenter

Jerry Lee is the founder and co-director of UCI Global Asias. He also serves as director of UCI's Program in Global Languages & Communication, and of the International Center for Writing & Translation. His recent work focuses on the intersections between language and globalization, especially as they emerge in various realms such as in global Englishes, multilingualism, ethnic/national identification, language education, and world literature. Lee is the author of "Locating Translingualism" (2022) and the forthcoming "Language as Hope" with Daniel Silva (2024).