Serious leisure and sociolinguistics: English-speaking homebrewers in South Korea and their leisure speech community

ABSTRACT

Increasing global mobilities bring more non-native speakers into new countries where they face obstacles in establishing successful acculturation and leisure lifestyles. Leisure and acculturation are attracting limited research interest, but serious leisure’s role in assisting new arrivals in overcoming social and language challenges when they establish amateur, hobby or volunteer careers is unknown. This study explores that research gap by examining qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 18 long staying English speaking professional workers who pursue hobbyist homebrewing in South Korea. Analysis revealed they experience creative fulfilment by their sharing of brewing activities with Korean family and friends and they improve social acceptance by their volunteer organising of beer tasting events with interested community members. Usefully, language contact with native speakers through all aspects of their hobby enhances their language acquisition and socialisation. Theorising from further analysis supports these rewards are taking place in a serious leisure speech community featuring brewing activity and volunteer activity spaces combined with English, Korean and blended language contact. Generalising, these findings imply that involvement with continuing leisure activities that offer possible serious leisure pathways within mixed language formats can significantly assist non-native speaking arrivals with acculturation in their new countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Homebrewing
• leisure speech community
• sociolinguistics
• serious leisure
• acculturation

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Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Soonchunhyang University Research Fund [Soonchunhyang University/순천향대학교]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Soonchunhyang University [TBA].

Notes on contributors

Aaron W. Pooley

Aaron W. Pooley (PhD, Linguistics) is an assistant professor in British and American Studies at Soonchunhyang University, South Korea. His research interests include leisure and language contact, leisure and the sociolinguistics of globally mobile populations and digital leisure interactions using mobile devices and applications.

Lawrence J. Bendle

Lawrence J. Bendle (PhD) is an independent researcher in Australia and South Korea. His research interests include serious leisure, network analysis, leisure and tourism systems in Asia, arts and entertainment tourism, and community-based leisure.