Circulation, Silence, and Resistance in English Language Learning: A Comparative Sociolinguistic Lens
Circulation, Silence, and Resistance in English Language Learning: A Comparative Sociolinguistic Lens
By Maria Lisak EdD (How to cite this)
Introduction: Positioning the Research and the Researcher
English language learning is often framed as a neutral and apolitical pursuit—one defined by skill acquisition, linguistic accuracy, and standardized benchmarks. Yet decades of work in critical applied linguistics and sociolinguistics (Pennycook, 1994; Canagarajah, 1999; Street, 1984) have demonstrated that language education is a site of struggle, identity negotiation, and unequal access to power. Within this terrain, the concepts of circulation, silence, and resistance offer a valuable triadic framework for examining the material, ideological, and affective dimensions of how learners engage with English in different contexts.
My own position as an English language educator and researcher in South Korea has made these dynamics impossible to ignore. Over 29 years of working with Korean learners—from elementary students in after-school programs to university students navigating required English courses to adult professionals in corporate training contexts—I have witnessed how English operates not merely as a linguistic system to be mastered, but as a contested space where global forces meet local realities, where institutional demands collide with learner agency, and where what appears as silence may in fact be rich with unspoken meaning.
This paper draws from traditions in critical literacy, postcolonial language studies, and multilingual education to explore how circulation, silence, and resistance shape English language learners' (ELLs') lived experiences. While each concept has its own genealogy, they also interanimate—what circulates affects what is silenced; what is silenced provokes acts of resistance; resistance, in turn, may re-shape circulation. These processes unfold differently depending on learners' positionalities, institutional settings, and geopolitical locations.
Central to my argument is the Korean concept of teum (틈)—the space between spaces. Teum directs our attention not only to circulation, silence, and resistance as discrete phenomena, but to the liminal spaces between and among them: the fertile ground where meaning-making occurs in the movement between languages, the pause before speech, the gap between what is taught and what is learned.
Here I draw on Turner's (1969) anthropological understanding of liminality as a threshold state—a space of being "betwixt and between" established structures. In his study of ritual processes, Turner identified liminal phases as periods when normal hierarchies are suspended and participants exist in a state of creative ambiguity. These interstitial spaces are often dismissed as transitional or deficient in institutional language learning contexts, yet they may be precisely where learners exercise the most profound forms of agency and creativity.
I begin by tracing the concepts of circulation, silence, and resistance as they are treated in the literature, particularly in relation to literacy and language learning. I then apply this lens to the experience of English language learners in South Korea, using it as a comparative case that exemplifies both the global reach of English and the specificity of national education cultures. Finally, I explore how the concept of teum—liminality as productive space—reframes our understanding of these dynamics in ways that serve learners rather than institutions.
Circulation: Language, Texts, and Global Englishes
Circulation refers not only to the physical movement of linguistic resources—books, media, classroom materials—but also to the social and ideological processes by which some forms of language gain mobility, value, and legitimacy (Blommaert, 2005). In the context of English language learning, circulation manifests through transnational curricula, digital platforms, standardized exams, and globalized pop culture. These flows are never neutral. As Canagarajah (2013) notes in his work on translingual practices, circulation is shaped by hierarchies of language ownership and access; who gets to circulate their English, and in what form, is conditioned by race, class, and nation.
The concept of circulation builds on earlier work in linguistic anthropology and new literacy studies that examined how texts move across contexts and what happens to them—and to people—in that movement (Street, 1984; Barton & Hamilton, 1998). Blommaert's (2005) notion of "orders of indexicality" is particularly useful here: certain linguistic forms index particular social identities, and these indexical values shift as language circulates across different scales—from the intimate to the institutional, from the local to the global.
For ELLs, their own literacy and language practices exist within and against these circulating norms. Learners might engage with YouTube videos, K-pop lyrics, TED Talks, or online fanfiction communities to supplement their learning. In these spaces, English often circulates not in a purified or standard form, but as part of hybrid, polyphonic, and culturally situated practices (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015). Yet the formal curriculum may devalue these vernacular literacies, preferring instead scripted dialogues and "native-like" pronunciation drills.
What circulates in formal English language education contexts is rarely innocent or accidental. Textbooks privilege certain narratives, certain bodies, certain geographies. English language teaching materials have long been critiqued for their promotion of Western (particularly American and British) cultural norms, their erasure of the histories and realities of the learners who use them, and their implicit ideologies about what constitutes "proper" English (Gray, 2010; Phillipson, 1992). The circulation of these materials—backed by powerful publishing industries and examination boards—establishes what counts as legitimate English knowledge.
Circulation also includes affective economies: the ways in which certain forms of English are associated with aspiration, prestige, or cosmopolitanism (Park & Wee, 2012; Ahmed, 2004). These associations circulate alongside the language itself, shaping how learners orient toward different varieties of English and position themselves as legitimate or illegitimate users of the language. Ahmed's (2004) concept of affective economies helps us understand how emotions like desire, shame, and aspiration "stick" to certain linguistic forms and accumulate value as they circulate. The desire for "native-like" fluency, the shame associated with accented speech, the prestige of studying abroad in English-speaking countries—these are all part of what circulates when English circulates.
Yet circulation is not unidirectional. As Appadurai (1996) argued in his work on global cultural flows, globalization involves multiple, overlapping, disjunctive flows that do not simply emanate from a Western center to a non-Western periphery. Learners and communities actively appropriate, remix, and redistribute English in ways that serve their own purposes (Canagarajah, 1999). The circulation of K-pop globally, with its strategic mixing of Korean and English, is one powerful example of how English can be re-circulated on different terms.
Silence: Censorship, Erasure, and Discursive Discomfort
Silence in language learning is often treated as a problem of confidence or classroom participation—something to be overcome through better teaching methods, more engaging activities, or confidence-building exercises. However, critical scholars (e.g., Norton & Toohey, 2001; Kumaravadivelu, 2003; Li, 2013) have emphasized that silence is not merely absence, but can signal erasure, exclusion, or resistance. Silence may emerge when a learner's identity, accent, or worldview is rendered invisible in the curriculum. It may also reflect a refusal to participate in ideologically loaded forms of English, or a strategy to avoid correction and shame.
The treatment of silence in language learning research reveals deep assumptions about voice, participation, and what counts as evidence of learning. In mainstream communicative language teaching, silence is typically pathologized—the "silent student" becomes a problem to be solved, a deviation from the ideal of the active, vocal, participatory learner (King, 2013). This framing ignores the multiple meanings and functions of silence across different cultural contexts.
In contexts of rigid assessment regimes, silence can also be enforced institutionally. Learners may be discouraged from experimenting with English, especially if their errors are overly corrected or publicly scrutinized. In such environments, the conditions for voice are not evenly distributed; silence becomes a product of pedagogical violence rather than personal choice. The phenomenon of "foreign language anxiety" (Horwitz et al., 1986) acknowledges the affective dimensions of this enforced silence, though it often frames the issue as an individual psychological problem rather than a structural feature of the learning environment.
Moreover, silence can function as a form of epistemic disobedience (Mignolo, 2009). Learners may withhold their voices in contexts where they feel coerced into assimilationist or extractive language ideologies. In such cases, silence becomes a form of dignity, a way to preserve the integrity of one's own cultural-linguistic identity. This resonates with Freire's (1970) notion of the "culture of silence" imposed on oppressed groups, though it's important to distinguish between silence as oppression and silence as chosen resistance.
Silence also operates at the curricular level. What is not said, what is not included, what languages and knowledges are excluded from the classroom—these silences shape learning as powerfully as what is explicitly taught. Giroux and Penna (1979) identified this as the "hidden curriculum"—the implicit messages conveyed through what is absent or marginalized. When learners' home languages are banned from the classroom, when their cultural references are absent from textbooks, when their varieties of English are corrected as "errors," a message is communicated through silence: your language, your culture, your way of being in the world is not legitimate here.
Yet silence can also be generative. In some cultural and philosophical traditions, silence is valued as a space of reflection, of listening, of allowing meaning to emerge without forcing it into premature articulation (Nakane, 2007). The silence before speech, the pause between turns, the moment of not-knowing—these can be sites of deep cognitive and affective work. When we pathologize silence, we may be missing the very moments when the most significant learning is occurring.
Resistance: Agency, Alternative Literacies, and Linguistic Justice
Resistance in English language learning takes many forms. It may be overt, such as challenging the prioritization of native speaker norms, or subtle, such as code-switching, translanguaging, or remixing classroom assignments into multimodal projects. Resistance is rooted in the recognition that language education is not a level playing field, and that learners can actively push back against hegemonic discourses (Janks, 2010).
Critical pedagogy has long emphasized the role of learner agency in resisting dominant narratives (Freire, 1970; Shor, 1992). In the context of English, this resistance may involve re-centering local knowledges, valuing local varieties of English, or advocating for curriculum that includes students' lived experiences. Resistance can also be spatial: forming alternative learning communities online, seeking out mentors outside institutional settings, or reclaiming public space through multilingual expression.
Resistance must be understood not merely as opposition, but as a form of productive power (Foucault, 1978). When learners code-switch, they are not simply resisting the English-only classroom; they are asserting the legitimacy of their full linguistic repertoire. When they use English to tell stories about their own communities rather than rehearsing scripted dialogues about Western holidays, they are not simply resisting the curriculum; they are producing alternative knowledge about what English can be and do.
In applied linguistic research, resistance is often framed through the concept of "voice"—not as a given, but as something that must be cultivated and protected (Higgins, 2011). For ELLs, voice may mean insisting on one's own definition of fluency, asserting the legitimacy of a hybrid identity, or using English to advocate for social justice in one's own community. Norton's (2000) work on investment and identity has been crucial here, showing how learners' engagement with English is tied to their sense of who they are and who they want to become.
Resistance in language learning can be understood through what Scott (1985) called "weapons of the weak"—the everyday, often invisible forms of resistance available to those without formal power. In the language classroom, these might include: deliberately using one's home language when the teacher isn't listening; writing assignments that technically fulfill requirements but subvert the intended message; strategically performing incompetence to avoid unwanted participation; forming study groups that operate according to different values than the official curriculum.
Digital spaces have opened new possibilities for resistance. Online, learners can curate their own English learning experiences, following creators who represent diverse Englishes, participating in communities where their hybrid language practices are valued, producing content that challenges dominant narratives about who "owns" English (Lam, 2004). The rise of World Englishes scholarship (Kachru, 1985; Jenkins, 2015) has provided intellectual support for these forms of resistance, validating non-native varieties as legitimate in their own right rather than as deficient approximations of a native speaker ideal.
Yet we must be careful not to romanticize resistance or burden learners with the expectation that they should resist. As Canagarajah (1999) notes, learners navigate complex situations where sometimes accommodation to dominant norms is necessary for survival and advancement. The choice to resist—or not—must remain with learners themselves.
Comparative Case: ELLs in South Korea
The South Korean context provides a striking example of how circulation, silence, and resistance play out in a national education system deeply invested in English. English circulates widely through formal schooling, private academies (hagwons), corporate training, standardized testing, and media. It is often positioned as a key to economic mobility and global relevance (Park, 2009). Yet the form of English that circulates most powerfully is typically U.S.-centric, exam-driven, and tethered to neoliberal ideals of competitiveness and individual success.
The Circulation of English in Korea: Institutional and Popular Flows
English in South Korea circulates through multiple, sometimes contradictory channels. At the institutional level, English is a required subject from elementary school through university, with high-stakes examinations (including the CSAT/수능) shaping much of what happens in classrooms. The Korean government has invested heavily in English education, including hiring native English-speaking teachers through programs like EPIK (English Program in Korea) and funding initiatives to improve communicative competence.
Beyond formal education, English circulates through the massive private education industry. Hagwons specializing in English proliferate in urban areas, and families invest enormous resources—financial and temporal—in their children's English education. This circulation is driven by what Park (2009) calls "English fever"—an intense social pressure and desire for English proficiency tied to perceptions of economic opportunity and social mobility.
Yet English also circulates through popular culture in ways that complicate this instrumental framing. K-pop groups strategically incorporate English phrases into their songs, creating a hybrid linguistic product that circulates globally. This phenomenon extends beyond music—Korean variety shows subtitle English conversations, making the language visible and learnable in entertainment contexts. The circulation of K-pop and Korean cultural products globally represents what Klein (2020) calls a form of "Cold War cosmopolitanism" reconfigured for contemporary contexts, where cultural flows and linguistic hybridity challenge older center-periphery models.
The mediation of these cultural flows through digital platforms creates new forms of intimacy and identification. Sauz et al. (2025) examine how K-pop's commercialization of parasocial relationships through apps like Weverse demonstrates the affective dimensions of English circulation—fans engage with English not only as a language to learn but as a medium of emotional connection. Online, Korean learners create and consume vast amounts of English learning content on platforms like YouTube, often featuring translingual practices that blend Korean and English fluidly.
In my own teaching contexts, I have observed how these different circulations collide. Students arrive in university English classes having spent years in test-prep environments where the goal was to select correct answers on multiple-choice exams. They have been exposed to highly formal, literary English through reading passages designed to test comprehension rather than engage interest. Yet many of these same students are fluent consumers of English-language media—they watch American Netflix series, follow English-speaking YouTubers, and participate in online communities where English is used for genuine communicative purposes.
The disjuncture between these forms of circulation creates pedagogical challenges and opportunities. When I have assigned students to analyze English as it appears in Korean contexts—K-pop lyrics, Korean company slogans, English words borrowed into Korean—many initially resist or hesitate, defecting with "is this real English" or "teacher, is this OK?" The institutional circulation of English as a formal, standard, examinable object has shaped their sense of what counts as legitimate language learning.
Silence in Korean English Language Classrooms: Cultural, Pedagogical, and Affective Dimensions
Silence in Korean English language classrooms is often attributed to cultural factors—Confucian values of respect for teachers, collectivism over individualism, concern for face and group harmony (Li, 2013; King, 2013). While these cultural dimensions are real and important, this framing can become essentialist, treating Korean learners as culturally determined subjects rather than individuals navigating complex situations.
In my experience, silence in Korean English classrooms has multiple sources and meanings. There is certainly a culturally informed discomfort with speaking up in ways that might draw individual attention or risk embarrassment. But there is also the silence that comes from years of test-focused instruction where speaking was never required or valued. There is the silence that comes from uncertainty about whether one's English will be "good enough" when measured against idealized native speaker norms. There is the silence that comes from exhaustion—many students arrive at university English classes after hours of other classes and hagwon sessions, with little energy left for participation.
I have also encountered what I interpret as resistant silence. When I have asked students to discuss or engage with culturally distant content, some students simply opt out—not because they can't understand the English, but because they have no investment in the topic. This silence communicates something important: not all learning materials circulate equally well across cultural contexts.
The silence around Konglish—Korean-English hybrid words that permeate everyday Korean language—is particularly instructive. Most textbooks and teachers (including, initially, myself) treated Konglish as error or interference to be corrected. Students learned to be silent about their actual linguistic practices, maintaining a fiction that they were learning a "pure" English untouched by their Korean linguistic identity. Yet Konglish is a creative, functional linguistic innovation that serves real communicative purposes in Korean contexts. The curricular silence around Konglish silences learners' linguistic agency and creativity.
There are also institutional silences. The CSAT English exam, which shapes much of secondary English education, tests primarily reading comprehension with some listening. Speaking receives no assessment, writing receives minimal assessment. This institutional silence about productive skills—particularly speaking—communicates what really matters: the ability to decode and select correct answers, not the ability to use English for authentic communication.
Yet I have also witnessed silence as a valued practice. Some of my most engaged students are quiet in whole-class discussion but deeply thoughtful in written reflections and small-group work. They use silence strategically, observing and processing before committing to speech. When I have created space for silence—for example, providing several minutes of silent thinking time before discussion—participation often increases. This suggests that some silence is not refusal or inability, but a different rhythm of engagement that institutional structures often fail to accommodate.
Resistance in Korean English Language Learning: From Konglish to Translingual Creativity
Resistance in Korean English language learning manifests in ways both subtle and overt. At the most visible level, there is growing scholarly and pedagogical advocacy for plurilingual approaches that validate Korean learners' full linguistic repertoires (Lee & Lee, 2019). This includes resistance to English-only classroom policies and to the devaluation of Korean varieties of English.
Konglish itself can be understood as a form of resistance—not necessarily intentional or political, but a practical adaptation that resists the imposition of "standard" English norms. When Koreans use "hand phone" for mobile phone, "sign pen" for marker, or "fighting!" as an expression of encouragement, they are not failing to speak proper English; they are speaking a Korean variety of English that serves their communicative needs. The persistence of these forms despite decades of error correction represents a kind of grassroots resistance to linguistic imperialism.
In classroom contexts, I have observed more intentional forms of resistance. When given open-ended assignments, some students choose to write about Korean experiences and perspectives rather than the Western topics that dominate textbooks. They incorporate Korean words and concepts when English equivalents feel inadequate. They don’t necessarily challenge the idea that “good” English means American English, but they take pride in uniquely Korean forms of English—valuing local coinages, creative adaptations, and expressions that reflect their own linguistic identity.
Digital spaces enable new forms of resistance and creativity. Korean English learners produce bilingual content on YouTube and Instagram, deliberately mixing languages in ways that challenge monolingual ideals. They participate in international online communities where their Korean-accented English is unmarked and accepted. They translate Korean cultural products (webtoons, variety show clips, K-pop content) into English, positioning themselves as cultural mediators rather than perpetual learners.
There is also resistance to the instrumentalization of English. While dominant discourse frames English as a tool for economic advancement and global competitiveness, many learners I have worked with express different motivations. They want to use English to make international friends, to understand foreign music and films, to travel, to access information not available in Korean. This represents a quiet resistance to the neoliberal framing of English education, insisting that language learning can be about connection, pleasure, and curiosity rather than only economic utility.
However, resistance is constrained by structural realities. The high-stakes nature of English exams means that even learners and teachers who resist test-focused pedagogy must accommodate to institutional demands. The economic premium placed on English proficiency creates pressure to conform to standard language ideologies even when one might philosophically resist them. Resistance, in the Korean context, often takes the form of finding small spaces of autonomy within a larger structure of constraint.
Teum: Liminality as Productive Space
The Korean concept of teum or tuem (í…€)—meaning the space between spaces, the gap, the interval—offers a powerful lens for reframing how we understand circulation, silence, and resistance in English language learning. Teum directs our attention to liminality not as a deficient transitional state, but as a site of possibility and meaning-making.
In English language learning contexts, teum manifests in multiple ways. There is the cognitive and affective space between languages—the moment when a learner reaches for a word, finding neither the Korean term nor the English one immediately adequate, and in that gap discovers a new way of expressing meaning. There is the temporal space between hearing and responding—the pause that institutional contexts often rush to fill but which may be where the most important processing occurs. There is the social space between identities—the learner who is neither fully positioned as Korean speaker nor English speaker, but inhabits a liminal identity that draws on both.
Turner's (1969) anthropological concept of liminality—the state of being "betwixt and between" during transitions—helps theorize why teum spaces might be particularly productive. In liminal states, the normal structures and hierarchies are temporarily suspended, creating space for creativity, experimentation, and transformation. When learners exist in the teum between languages, they are freed from the normative demands of both. They can play, combine, invent.
Bhabha's (1994) notion of the "third space" resonates here as well. In postcolonial theory, the third space is where hybrid identities emerge—not as mixtures of pure originals, but as something genuinely new. When Korean learners of English occupy the teum between Korean and English, they are not simply acquiring a second language; they are creating new possibilities for meaning, identity, and belonging that don't exist in either language alone.
Teum Between Circulation and Silence
The space between what circulates and what is silenced is where learners do crucial work of selection and agency. Not everything that circulates reaches every learner equally, and not everything that is silenced remains unheard. In the gaps—the teum—learners actively sort through what circulates, deciding what to take up and what to ignore. They navigate what they are told not to say while finding ways to mean what they need to mean.
In Korean contexts, this might look like students who outwardly conform to exam-focused learning while privately pursuing their own English learning goals through media consumption and online communities. They occupy the teum between institutional circulation and personal silence about their real linguistic practices. This liminal space is where authentic investment in English learning often lives—not in the official curriculum but in the gap between what is required and what is desired.
Teum Between Silence and Resistance
The boundary between silence and resistance is often porous and ambiguous. Is a student's refusal to speak an act of resistance or simply an effect of anxiety and constraint? Often, it is both—and the teum between them is where we must look carefully at what is happening. A student might remain silent not out of pure resistance or pure anxiety, but in a complex affective state that includes both, along with strategic calculation, fatigue, disinterest, and more.
Understanding this liminal space requires what Schultz (2009) calls "listening to silence"—attending carefully to what silence might mean rather than rushing to fill it or fix it. In my teaching practice, creating space for this kind of listening has meant slowing down, not treating every moment of silence as a problem to be solved, and providing multiple modes of participation that don't all require immediate verbal response.
Teum Between Resistance and Circulation
Finally, there is the productive space between resistance and circulation—where learners negotiate what circulates on their own terms. This is where translingual practices emerge, where Konglish persists despite correction, where Korean learners of English produce hybrid content that circulates back into global English learning communities.
This teum is also where pedagogical innovation happens. Teachers who work in this liminal space—validating both the institutional demands of the curriculum and learners' resistant practices—create conditions for deeper learning. They allow the tension between what should circulate (according to official standards) and what actually circulates (in learners' lived language practices) to become a generative site of critical engagement.
Serving Learners, Not Institutions
The concept of teum ultimately points toward a different orientation in English language education—one that serves learners rather than institutions. Institutions prefer clarity, measurability, standardization. They want to know exactly what circulates, to eliminate silence as inefficiency, to manage resistance as disruption. But learners live in the teum—in the messy, ambiguous, creative spaces between languages, between identities, between what is demanded and what is desired.
To serve learners is to validate these liminal spaces as sites of legitimate learning. It means creating pedagogical structures that allow for silence without pathologizing it, that create space for resistance without punishing it, that acknowledge how English circulates in learners' actual lives rather than only how institutions want it to circulate. It means recognizing that the most significant learning may occur not in the moments of clear performance that institutions can measure, but in the teum—the pauses, the hesitations, the hybrid utterances, the private experiments with language that never appear on any exam.
Conclusion: Toward a Critical Sociolinguistics of Learning
To view English language learners solely through their test scores or pronunciation is to miss the rich, fraught, and often courageous ways they engage with language. Circulation, silence, and resistance provide a conceptual vocabulary for understanding the sociopolitical contours of their learning. These dynamics are not unique to South Korea, but the Korean case makes visible the ways global Englishes are entangled with national policy, cultural identity, and individual aspiration.
The concept of teum adds crucial depth to this framework, directing our attention to the liminal spaces where much of the real work of language learning occurs. These are spaces that institutions often cannot see or value, yet they are where learners exercise agency, creativity, and resistance in ways that exceed and complicate what any curriculum intends. When we attend to the teum, we begin to notice the extraordinary ordinary—the small acts of creativity, the quiet negotiations, the hybrid utterances that represent not failure but innovation.
What becomes visible when we adopt this lens is not a deficit to be remedied but a richness to be recognized. Park, Lee, and Park (2025) describe this kind of scholarly attention as a practice of "becoming"—a collaborative, reflexive process of noticing how meaning emerges in the spaces between established categories. Similarly, Hawkins (2014) calls for "ontologies of place" in education that honor the creative meaning-making occurring in specific, localized contexts rather than imposing universal standards. These perspectives invite us to see language learning not as a linear progression toward a fixed target, but as an ongoing process of creative adaptation and identity work.
As educators and researchers, our work might be understood less as intervention and more as witnessing. Graue and Hawkins (2005) write about research with children as a practice of "relations, refractions, and reflections"—attending carefully to how meaning refracts across different perspectives and contexts. When we bring this sensibility to English language learning, we become attuned to what circulates in learners' actual lives, not only what we wish would circulate. We learn to read silence not as absence or failure, but as potentially meaningful—a space of processing, resistance, or strategic withdrawal. We recognize resistance not as disruption but as evidence of learners' critical engagement with the ideological dimensions of language learning.
The liminal spaces—the teum—invite us into a different relationship with uncertainty. Rather than rushing to fill every silence or correct every deviation, we might linger in these threshold moments, curious about what is emerging. This doesn't mean abandoning our responsibilities as educators, but rather expanding what we consider our responsibility to include. It means creating conditions where multiple rhythms of participation are welcomed, where learners' full linguistic repertoires are recognized as resources rather than problems, where assessment practices acknowledge forms of competence beyond standardized measures.
Critical cosmopolitan education, as Hawkins (2014) articulates it, involves engaging with difference and multiplicity in ways that don't flatten or homogenize. Applied to English language learning, this might mean celebrating the many ways learners make English their own—through Konglish, through translingual digital practices, through accents that carry the history of their linguistic journeys—through their own cosmopolitanism-on-the-ground. It means understanding that when a Korean learner of English occupies the teum between languages, they are not in transit between two fixed points but are inhabiting a space of genuine possibility.
The Korean case reminds us that English language learning is never just about language. It is about who gets to speak and be heard, whose knowledge counts, how language intersects with power and identity. But it also reminds us that learners are not passive recipients of whatever circulates to them. They resist, they create, they inhabit liminal spaces where new possibilities emerge. They find ways to mean what they need to mean, even when the structures around them seem designed to constrain their meaning-making.
Perhaps what is needed, then, is not so much new pedagogies or better curricula—though these matter—but a shift in how we attend to what is already happening in the spaces we share with learners. The teum is already there. The creative work of navigating between languages and identities is already occurring. Our task may be simply to make space for it, to protect it from institutional pressures that would measure and standardize it out of existence, to honor it as the valuable work it is.
This kind of attention requires patience, humility, and a willingness to be surprised by what we find. It asks us to question what counts as successful learning, who gets to decide, and what other possibilities might exist if we expanded our definitions. It invites us to see the pauses, the hesitations, the hybrid moments not as failures of fluency but as evidence of the complex cognitive and affective work involved in navigating multiple linguistic worlds.
In celebrating the teum, we celebrate learners' capacity for creativity, adaptation, and resistance. We acknowledge that they are not empty vessels to be filled with standardized English, but active agents engaged in the profound work of making meaning across linguistic and cultural boundaries. And we recognize that in their navigation of these liminal spaces, they may be teaching us as much as we teach them—about flexibility, about resourcefulness, about what it means to live in a multilingual world.
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