Understanding Korean Film: A Cross-Cultural Perspective breaks this long-awaited ground by explaining the meaning potential of a selection of common Korean verbal and non-verbal expressions in a range of contexts in South Korean film that are often untranslatable for English-speaking Western viewers. Through the selection of expressions provided in the text, readers become familiar with a system that can be extended more generally to understanding expressions in South Korean films. Formal analyses are presented in the form of in-depth discursive deconstructions of verbal and non-verbal expressions within the context of South Korea’s Confucian traditions. Our case studies thus illustrate, in a more systematic way, how various meaning potentials can be inferred in particular narrative contexts.
Jieun Kiaer is professor of Korean Language and Linguistics at the University of Oxford. She publishes widely on East Asian translation, with particular emphasis on Korean translation. Her publications include The Routledge Course in Korean Translation (2018) and Korean Literature through the Korean Wave (with Anna Yates-Lu, 2019). Kiaer is also the series editor for Routledge Studies in East Asian Translation.
Loli Kim is a DPhil researcher in Korean Studies at the University of Oxford. Her work explores multimodal, semantic, and cross-cultural communication, particularly from a Korean perspective. Her current research focuses on the translation of multimodal meaning-making processes in South Korean film that become ‘untranslatable’ for Anglophone European viewers, with special focus on socio-pragmatic verbal and non-verbal behavioural expressions.