This chapter attempts to inspire readers to pursue complementary inquiry into considerations of global Korea and analogous research into global iterations of other cultural imaginaries. This chapter also attempts to answer the broader question of why the interdisciplinary study of language remains important in today’s global era. On the one hand, contact across cultures and the realities of transculturation are increasingly the norm. However, more importantly, approaching language in this manner enables us to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of the complex dynamics by which cultures can be rendered distinguishable across global space. It further enables us to attend to the reality that questions of what it means to belong to a given cultural entity to begin with are undergoing radical and unprecedented permutations. Therefore, this chapter suggests that perhaps the question is not so much how today the study of language is more important than ever, but how we can continue to adapt it and be flexible enough so that we can continue to try and make sense of the role of language in relation to the ever-changing contours of cultural belonging today and into the future.

The Introduction describes citizen sociolinguistics as an offshoot of the broader category of citizen science and exemplifies types of expertise that everyday people bring to the study of language in context. Instead of looking to experts in the field of linguistics for definitive diagnoses of language issues, I lay out the perspective that these institutionally centered voices are just one of many different interesting and personally invested views on language. In this way, I illustrate citizen sociolinguistics as a means to explore social norms, not a statement of top-down language standards to be adhered to in all cases, or a studied expertise that provides a definitive description of language works. The Introduction concludes with an overview of the chapters to come.

This chapter concludes the book with a call for language awareness for all: a roundup of approaches to exploring how we talk about language and an explanation for why we must. Any student, from pre-school through graduate school, and any human, of any age, can embark on this type of citizen sociolinguistic inquiry. This chapter calls readers to listen to their students, colleagues, children, and peers: What word, turn-of-phrase, or way of speaking has led to wonderment and sparked conversation? Hoagie? Lightening bug? Creaky voice? Eyebrows on fleek? Chinese? What sorts of citizen sociolinguistic arrests have you (or people you know) experienced? These experiences – good and bad – can be springboards to important citizen sociolinguistic inquiry. Over the years, I’ve developed the ideas in this book as a loose guide to push high-school, college and graduate students, and myself to explore language questions – whether sparked by wonderment, arrest, or something else, and to dwell with multiple possible answers to any of them. I provide examples of my own and encourage readers to build flexible and thoughtful habits with language, as citizen sociolinguists, and to share their discoveries through more acts of citizen sociolinguistics.