Addressing Translingual Turn and the Knowledge Diaspora Across Disciplines

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 1:45 pm - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Advancing Inclusion and Belonging in Doctoral and Postgraduate Education

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how Korean doctoral students in U.S. universities use translingual practices to build scholarly identities across Korean-U.S. academic spaces. Framing the trio as a diasporic community, the critical ethnographic multiple-case study followed literature, mathematics-education, and economics students for one 2024 semester through interviews, observations, focus groups, and journals. Findings show they fluidly combined Korean, English, and multimodal resources, toggling strategically in response to disciplinary norms, technologies, and advisor feedback. These moves both advanced meaning-making and negotiated power, enabling subtle resistance to Standard Academic English while sustaining agency. The study extends translingualism to doctoral contexts and urges institutions to adopt inclusive pedagogy and policy that value multilingual, transnational scholarship. It highlights students as creative brokers of global academic discourse.

Author

• Suok Kwon, Stetson University