My Language

I've written before about crazy t-shirts I've seen here and there in Korea. T-shirts that use English, but jumble it so badly that the sense is gone. When I see these t-shirts, I usually am mildly amused or totally baffled. But my amusement has changed in recent weeks. It changed because of a gift bag Joe and I saw at a stationary store. The bag was inoffensive in all the ways a gift bag should be, except for one. Instead of saying "Happy Birthday" or "Congratulations" or something else in Korean, it had what appeared to be an excerpt from an English newspaper article on it. I almost walked right past it when the word "Taliban" caught my eye. Joe and I stopped and read. The excerpt talked about the Taliban and some fighting that has gone on and some measures undertaken to stop them. The article, such as it was, was chopped randomly at the beginning, middle, and end of sentences, so that none of it was intelligible. It was a jumbled mess of words: Taliban, violence, fighting, tanks, etc. It pissed me off. Who would use that as a gift bag? Who's the moron who made it?

Since then I've been thinking a lot about the festishization of English in Korea. This idea that it's cool to wear clothing with English on it or buy gift bags with English on them simply because, and for no other reason, English is emblazoned across it. And I've started to feel slightly offended. My language, English, is not a joke. It's not a toy. It's not a fashion statement. It's what I'm here to teach, correctly. It's my language--a language I respect, a language that I continue to learn and use. Effectively. I don't like to see my language treated like a trend. And while for a time I could stomach most of the mumbled and jumbled t-shirts I saw and the jacket that split the word NEIG-HBOR-HOOD like that across the back of it, I could not tolerate the gift bag. Not to mention another t-shirt that has been talked about on other EPIK teacher's blogs that has every horrible, derogatory term for every race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation scrawled across it. The fool who thought the "N word" or chink was good fashion needs to be shot.

I know that in America, we've done the same thing with Japanese and Chinese, and slapped them all over cheap Forever 21 or Rainbow t-shirts. I'm not saying this idea of language fetishism is a purely Korean thing. I'm not a fan of it anywhere. I think it's cheap, pure and simple. I think it craps all over the importance of language. Amusement gone. Language vigilance engaged.