I am Korea Foundation Associate Professor in Korean Studies. Prior to joining Monash in January 2018, I worked at University of Oregon, USA (2011-2017). I obtained my MA in Korean Studies and PhD in Korean Language Research from SOAS University of London, UK.

I am an Associate Editor of Journal of Pragmatics, and Editor of Korean Linguistics.

I am a socio-cultural linguist and pragmatician who is interested in the ways in which languages, particularly Korean, mark social and cultural meanings in a multimodal fashion. When we speak, we don’t just use words and sounds, but also gestures and other embodied practices to convey meaning. And language is not something that we use just to communicate information, but also to form relationships, express our emotions, and construct our identities. Focussing on Korean, my research attempts to understand how communication recruits multiple modalities that work as semiotic cues for various social meanings.

I have particular expertise in researching the ways in which languages mark politeness and impoliteness in multimodal ways. I have explored the importance of auditory modalities (i.e. phonetics) and visual modalities (i.e. gestures, embodied practices, etc.) in the communication of politeness and impoliteness. My work also explores the ways in which speakers of Korean understand politeness in their own terms, which are often quite different to descriptions found in previous literature.

I also investigate the influence of identity on the way that second language learners of Korean acquire politeness forms and other social categories. My research shows that learners with advanced competence in Korean and/or who have lived in Korea for extended periods of time use honorifics in characteristic ways that reflect their identities, roles and relationships in Korean society.

It is important for me that my research has practical pedagogical applications. To this end, I have a keen interest in Korean language pedagogy, particularly in developing techniques social functions of language and embedding multimodality in language teaching. 

I am available to supervise HDR students in the following areas:

- Politeness research

- Multimodality and social semiotics

- Socio-cultural language learning, second language pragmatics

- Korean linguistics

Please contact me to discuss your proposed area of study.