Stephen van Vlack

Sookmyung Women`s University

Division of English Language and Literature

English in the Era of Globalization

Fall 2007

Week 9, Day 2 - Answers

Sonntag (2003) Chapter 1

Here we just want to review some of the main terms which Sonntag (2003) goes over in this first introductory chapter of her book. It is important for us to have good understanding of these words because we are going to find them appearing again and again throughout the course of the book.

Hegemony

Hegemony is basically a situation where in one country, culture, or group not only has power over other groups but also chooses to exercise that power for various purposes. So we really talking about is an unequal power base.

           International relations sense

In its international relations sense hegemony relates to how different countries might actually engage with each other on the international front. We can put different countries into a hierarchy based on power and of course this power comes from different sources. Certainly it is the relative power that a country might have in its dealings with other countries which will affect how it goes about dealing. More powerful countries will of course have a tendency to push around less powerful countries and this affects their international relations. As we will see as we read this book the United States is an extremely powerful country which does indeed use its power to get what it wants and other countries react to this hegemony in different ways.

           Gramscian sense

The Gramscian sense of hegemony basically revolves around the different linguistic/cultural/linguistic groups in a given society and their differing levels of power. In a given society one group will generally eclipse other groups in their power and like countries will use this power to their own advantage. Often, in multilingual and multicultural societies such groups will also have their own language and/or culture which they can use as a way of marking themselves or differentiating themselves form others.

Another important part of this Gramscian sense of hegemony as he idea that it is highly likely that within the society people will not resist the status quo. They will not rise up against the more powerful group or even laments necessarily their situation as the least powerful group of because this is the way it has always been. Societal structures change often not from the bottom but from the top.

Resistance

Resistance is the way that different groups or different countries will react to hegemony. This kind of resistance can take a lot of different forms depending on whether this is at the international level or the societal level. Here in Korea we have witnessed this happening all the late both in Korea's relations with the United States, a partner, and in Korea's relations with Japan a former competitor. While the surface of these two issues might seem quite different they both boil down to the same thing, resistance to a hegemony in which Korea has been viewed as a less powerful country by others. South Korea is obviously no longer to accept his position and wants to move up in ranks to be more equal to both its partners and its former enemies.

Elites and subalterns

The idea behind elites and subalterns is quite clear. Every society is made up of people who are at the top and people who are at the bottom. There are the people who write the history books and the people who experience history in a more real sense and this is maybe an interesting way of thinking that the difference between the elites and subalterns. In relation to language of and subalterns will not only have a different language but they will not have access to education not only in their own language but to the global language, which we know at this point is English. In his hope we will look at how subalterns have used this global lingua franca as a way of trying to win more power in their own country. There are interesting cases all of appropriation of English, a typically elitist tool, from subalterns, who end up using English in their own way in for their own purposes.

Liberalization and democratization

Sonntag puts the terms liberalization in democratization together here with a warning that though they are sometimes equated or at least linked to each other by some researchers they are not necessarily partners. Liberalization does not always lead to democratization and certainly democratization does not always lead to liberalization, but it sometimes does. What liberalization really is is simply opening up and simplifying systems so that they are more useful to outsiders. Simple example would be relaxing import taxes which Korea is possibly being pressured to to do. Liberalization simply means less control from above. Now, it has been noticed that some countries going through a liberalization process are also at the same time going through democratization process. The clearest examples of this are both the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies. As these economies and liberalize the countries also are experiencing democratization at the same time. This doesn't always occur. Since the recent Asian economic crisis many Asian countries have been forced to liberalize their economies but this has not led to further democratization in countries like Singapore, China, or Malaysia, for example.