3 - Encountering the Unfamiliar: Languaging Culture

Summary

This chapter focuses on locating the nation via language, in particular written language. It focuses on written language in part due to the fact that the script of the Korean language, known as Han-geul, is frequently referenced as a distinguishing aspect of Korean national identity. More generally, code choice on signage is perhaps the most obvious and simplest way to see cultural difference in the linguistic/semiotic landscape. However, this chapter is not merely an effort to enumerate or catalog instantiations of Koreanness via written language. Instead, it looks at moments of what can be described as “weird language,” or instances of translation, transliteration, and translingualization that are “unfamiliar,” which through their unfamiliarity render intelligible cultural distinctiveness. Examining “weird language” across spaces in Beijing, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Oakland, São Paulo, Shanghai, and Tokyo, the chapter explores what such encounters tell us about our assumptions about the familiar: the taken-for-granted aspects of culture that in a given moment may be expected to stand in for a culture and differentiate it from another.