Discourses of fusion and crossing: Pop culture in Korea and Japan

This study investigates forms, functions, and discursive strategies in English crossing in Korean and Japanese pop culture. The corpus consists of (1) music: 752 songs (395 K-Pop songs and 357 J-pop songs); (2) 20 hours of TV shows: 12 episodes of 6 dramas, 3 shows of 1 comedy, and 5 episodes of 1 entertaining English instructional variety show; (3) 6 movies: 3 Korean movies and 3 Japanese movies; and (4) advertising: 720 Korean TV commercials and 506 Japanese TV commercials, 413 print ads, and 50 Internet accessed TV commercials.;This study argues that Expanding Circle Englishes (ECEs) in Korean and Japanese popular culture exemplify glocalized hybrid language performativity. The findings of this study suggest that English is a creative force in Korean and Japanese entertainment media and is associated with modern, young, liberal, and defiant identities. English in Korean and Japanese pop culture is localized at different linguistic levels including lexical, phonological, syntactic, morphological, and discursive features. English is often remade for domestic use in local contexts no matter how deviant it may appear to inheritors and source populations of Inner Circle Englishes (ICEs).;English crossing serves as the entry point for young Koreans and Japanese into a global economic order and is positioned as a positively valued strategy of individuals. In particular, bilingualism and linguistic versatility in the form of crossing into languages other than one's own can be viewed as empowering, insofar as it creates opportunities for Koreans and Japanese to participate in the global economy, and not as mindless capitulation to domination by the U.S.