“Multilingual islands in the monolingual sea”: Foreign languages in the South Korean linguistic landscape

Abstract The article aims at analyzing data on the South Korean linguistic landscape, with a focus multilingual practices and different dimensions of language use, sets norms, ideological constructs underling particular choices. It is based analysis set over 800 digital photos various signs advertisements as well necessary metadata gathered in 2018–2020 four urban contexts. data, one hand, reflect recent changes favoring multilingualism; other they demonstrate pragmatic inequality languages than public use. This inequality, however, represented differently certain spatial contexts; while commodified English tends to function substitution for foreign an emblem “foreignness,” agentivity new ethnically diverse speakers creates “multilingual islands,” that process can some point challenge dominance monolingual ideology.