About Me
I was born in Jochiwon, a small village in South Korea. My paternal grandmother ran a pottery shop. She was a fantastic cook; we made kimchi together using her pots, adding live octopus to a cherished family recipe. We would bury them in the garden to ferment and eat over the winter. My mother’s family were known in our community for brewing makgeolli, so I feel like I was born into a world of food.
Later, I moved to Seoul and studied Child Studies, Consumerism, and Linguistics at Seoul National University. Possibly this was a strange combination, but over time, these interests have all come together. My motive for studying Child Studies and Linguistics was to learn how all human babies acquire language, which to me seemed so amazing at the time – 20 years later, I published a book which follows my own children’s experience growing up as bilingual. After that, I became interested in the logical apparatus of human language. I majored in formal semantics, hoping to codify linguistic attributes mathematically. After meeting my husband, I moved to the UK for my doctorate, under the supervision of Professor Ruth Kempson.
I researched Dynamic Syntax, which was a new framework aimed at solving some of the issues of Chomskian contemporary linguistics. By that point, I had become sceptical about theoretical linguistics, which often assumes language exists in a vacuum. As such, I wanted to bridge the gap between theory and experiment. My PhD combined my theoretical findings with psycho-linguistic experiments and big data. Whilst doing my PhD, I also taught the Korean language at SOAS, University of London. There, I came across some of the earliest fans of Hallyu and never imagined that K-culture would become such an internationally popular phenomenon.
In 2007, I was appointed Young Bin Min-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Language and Linguistics at the University of Oxford. Originally, my interests lay in the syntax/prosody interface—how sound impacts structure and the role of pragmatics at the core of syntactic variation. However, I started to look beyond sounds to consider gestures and non-verbal behaviour, increasingly finding that the field of traditional linguistics should expand its focus to become multimodal. Since then, I have moved beyond the scope of traditional linguistics to include work on translation, literature and film.
Currently, my research is focussed on Hallyu (the Korean wave), which has become a cultural and linguistic phenomenon.
I am currently working on a project to establish a Hallyu hub at the University of Oxford (you can read more about this on my research interests page). Whilst studying Hallyu, I became interested in the mechanism of social media and its digital influence on translingual/ transcultural/ trans-media generation.
As a Korean who has studied and taught in the UK for more than twenty years, I am in a position to bring Asian perspectives to the cultural and linguistic paradigms that are currently Euro-centric. The foundation of modern language studies and linguistics has largely been developed through an Anglo and Eurocentric lens, and so many language groups in Asia have been left marginalised. Hence, I work to give a platform to their voices. I am currently returning to my origins, engaging with food dialogue, to look at how it builds solidarity. You can read about my research in more detail on the ‘My Research’ page.
Employment
2021-present
YBM-KF Professor in Korean Language and Linguistics
2007-2020
YBM-KF Associate Professor in Korean Language and Linguistics
2007-
Senior Research Fellow in Oriental Studies Hertford College
2019-2020
2019-2020 Pro-Proctorship, University of Oxford
Education
2002-2006
King’s College London, UK.
PhD in Linguistics
Oversees Research Scholarship and King’s College Bursary
1999-2001
Seoul National University, Korea
MA in Linguistics with distinction, valedictorian
1995-1999
Seoul National University, Korea
BA in Child Studies and Linguistics