{"id":207,"date":"2019-06-27T22:32:04","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T22:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/?p=207"},"modified":"2019-06-27T22:32:04","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T22:32:04","slug":"elizabeth-beling-linguistic-landscape-in-new-york-citys-koreatown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/2019\/06\/27\/elizabeth-beling-linguistic-landscape-in-new-york-citys-koreatown\/","title":{"rendered":"(Elizabeth Beling) Linguistic Landscape in New York City\u2019s Koreatown:\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linguistic Landscape in New York City\u2019s Koreatown:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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For my project on linguistic landscapes, I choose to analyze Manhattan\u2019s Koreatown.\u00a0Koreatown is a small area comprised of just a few blocks, compared to the city\u2019s more well-known and large ethnic enclaves such as Chinatown and Little Italy. Centered in Midtown, Koreatown is located right beside the Empire State Building and a few blocks away from Penn Station. According to the Asian American Federation Census Information Center, New York City is home to a large and growing Korean population. Currently, New York City is home to over 100,000 ethnically Korean residents, 67% of which reside in Queens and 19% of which reside in Manhattan. Although Manhattan\u2019s Koreatown has a significant concentration of Korean residents within Manhattan and compared to Staten Island, Brooklyn and the Bronx, Koreatown is a misnomer when considering the actual demographics of New York City.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although Koreatown is small, it is very dense with businesses. Many of the businesses that I observed while walking around in the area appeared to be small and Korean-owned. Although there were a few large multinational corporations such as CVS and Panera Bread, many of the large businesses with a presence in Koreatown such as Pinkberry and H Mart were either founded in Korea or founded by ethnically Korean people living in other countries. Compared to the example of DC\u2019s Chinatown, highlighted by Leeman and Modan, which dealt with a wave of gentrification aiming to make the area appealing towards English-speaking tourists seeking a commodified brand of exoticism, Manhattan\u2019s Koreatown seems to be more of an established center for Korean-owned businesses and services targeted towards Korean people. Although the area is very easy to navigate as an English-speaking person, Koreatown has a large amount of Korean signage and advertisements. Many of the signs that I observed while walking through the area featured Korean writing either exclusively or more prominently than its English counterpart.\u00a0 While walking through Koreatown, I passed a newspaper box with \u201cThe Korea Daily\u201d. Although the sign labeling the newspaper was in English, the paper itself was written exclusively in Korean. Like the rest of New York City, Koreatown has a blend of cultural and linguistic representation. While walking the streets of Koreatown, you hear many different languages. Additionally, although Korean and English appear to be the most dominant languages represented in the area, there are many signs written in Japanese as well. Much of the advertising for food in the area markets itself as broadly Asian food or Asian fusion cuisine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly to most of Manhattan, Koreatown is dense with businesses that experience significant tourist traffic. However, unlike Leeman and Modan\u2019s example of Washington DC\u2019s Chinatown, Koreatown seems to have less of an emphasis on commodifying Korean language and culture to market it towards an outside audience. Although Koreatown is not the largest center of Korean residents in the New York City metro area, the prominence of Korean-owned businesses at both the small and large scale and the robust presence of Korean language in the linguistic landscape is evident of how Koreatown functions as a cultural center for Korean people in Manhattan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Wor<\/span>ks Cited:<\/p>\n

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Asian American Federation Census Information Center. \u201cProfile of New York City\u2019s Korean\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Americans: 2013 Edition.\u201d Asian American Federation Census Information Center, 2013,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0www.aafny.org\/cic\/briefs\/korean2013.pdf.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Leeman, J & Modan, G. (2009), Commodified language in Chinatown: a contextualized<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0approach to a linguistic landscape. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13(3), 332-362.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linguistic Landscape in New York City\u2019s Koreatown:\u00a0   For my project on linguistic landscapes, I choose to analyze Manhattan\u2019s Koreatown.\u00a0Koreatown is a small area comprised of just a few blocks, compared to the city\u2019s more well-known and large ethnic enclaves such as Chinatown and Little Italy. Centered in Midtown, Koreatown is located right beside the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/interculturaldiscourse19s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}