English Literacy and the American Family: A Korean Immigrant's Perspective

Introduction: Beyond Mechanics — Cultural Barriers to English Literacy

Coming from South Korea, becoming fully literate and fluent in English has not been easy. To some degree, this has to do simply with the sounds and mechanics of the language — learning new ways to move my mouth to produce sounds that do not exist in Korean, and learning new rules for putting sentences and thoughts together in a way that can be very different from Korean, presented many challenges along my road to English literacy. Instruction and practice, of course, helped me to eventually overcome most of these difficulties, to the point that I can be more confident in my use of English and in my communicative powers in the language. But the issues of mechanics and the alien nature of many aspects of the language itself were not the sole reasons for my struggle with becoming literate in English — there are other reasons, as well.

Specifically, there were several distinct cultural barriers that made my approach to English more difficult. It is not something one thinks of before being explicitly and directly confronted with it, but there are certain concepts that are virtually unthinkable in a given culture due to that culture's language — or at least that culture's perception and use of that language. This can make learning a language very difficult in certain contexts, and with regard to certain concepts. It is not that foreign concepts simply cannot be understood, but rather that it takes an extra conscious effort to change the complete framework or way in which one thinks about something in order to incorporate ideas that are antithetical to one's own linguistic belief system. For me, the American family was such a concept.

Family as a Cultural and Linguistic Concept

Coming to understand the American family and the wide array of formations, roles, and responsibilities it encompasses provided a large barrier to my understanding of English, though my struggles to understand the family also ultimately led me to a greater appreciation of the language and the way it operates. Both the American family and the English language have a great deal of fluidity and flexibility, and can be both highly formalized and rule-bound or completely casual and non-consequential. This is very different from my experiences with both language and family growing up in South Korea, and was not something I easily adjusted to. There is a great deal of evidence, however, that I am not alone in this struggle, nor in identifying the very different ways in which families operate as a major obstacle to both linguistic and cultural literacy in English.

Assimilation, Ethnic Identity, and the American Family

Learning a new language, especially in the midst of a new culture, is at least somewhat a matter of assimilation — of growing to become somewhat like the new culture. This is a necessity for understanding the cultural import of the language, as explained above. In such scenarios of cultural assimilation, "distinctive ethnic traits such as old cultural ways, native languages, or ethnic enclaves are sources of disadvantages that negatively affect assimilation" (Zhou 1997). The much more rigid notions of family that I grew up with, and still hold as my primary understanding of the concept of "family," made it harder for me to truly assimilate into American culture and to come to understand the English language in the terms and from the perspective of that culture — which is necessarily the truest possible understanding of that language.

Literary Reflections: Amy Tan and the Immigrant Family Experience

The difficulty that different understandings of family can have on assimilation, and even on the learning of language, is well illustrated in English fiction. In the story "Four Directions" from Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, the protagonist keeps trying to find a way to let her mother know that she will be marrying her live-in boyfriend. She brings her mother over to her apartment, where Rich's presence is obvious from all of his belongings, but her mother only comments, "You are busy. You want to live like mess what can I say?" (Tan 125). The mother's concept of family will not allow her to acknowledge her daughter's familial situation, and when she lashes out it is in the broken English of an immigrant, despite the fact that her mother has lived in the United States for decades. Her unwillingness to assimilate and the difficulties she has accepting her daughter's American concept of family are matched by her continued lack of fluency in English.

Conclusion: Difference in Vantage Point, Not in Quality

When making cultural comparisons, it is important to refrain from qualitative judgments, and I do not mean to imply any here. The Korean concept of the family and its responsibilities is more concrete than the American cultural and linguistic definitions, but this does not necessarily make it better. The American ideals of freedom and self-determination lie at the root of the American family, and lead to very different cultural and linguistic perspectives. It is the difference in vantage point, and not any perceived difference in quality, that proves a barrier.

Works Cited

Graff, E.J. "What Makes a Family?" Frame Work. Ed. Gary Columbo, Bonnie Lisle, Sandra Mno. Boston: Bedford, 1997, 26–38.

New York Daily News. "American Role Models." 6 November 2008. Editorial: pg. 32.

Tan, Amy. "Four Directions." Frame Work. Ed. Gary Columbo, Bonnie Lisle, Sandra Mno. Boston: Bedford, 1997, 124–127.

Wetzstein, Cheryl. "American Family Needs Some Help." Washington Times, 8 March 2009, M15.

Zhou, Min. "Growing Up American: The Challenge Confronting Immigrant Children and Children of Immigrants." Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 23 (1997), pp. 63–95.