How do Korean children learn to say no to adults? A Hallidayan sequel to Vygotsky's unfinished theory of emotions

Abstract

The present paper is a study of three different kinds of text—an unfinished text on the emotions by the Soviet developmentalist L.S. Vygotsky, an unsuccessful sex education textbook by the Korean department of education, and a series of conversations about sexual predation with Korean children of different ages. The research question to which we devote our analysis of text is the key dilemma presented in the department of education texts: Korean children are taught to be friendly and helpful to strangers, and at the same time wary and careful of possible predators. At what age—and to what extent—do children master this delicate balance in their thinking and in their speech? First we use Vygotsky's unfinished theory of emotions to critique the extant sex education programme in Korea. Then we propose rewriting Spinoza's definition of affect as changes in meaning potential, i.e. language, and thus applying it not merely to the human body but also to cultural and historical bodies of humans. Finally, we use a linguistic approach based on the work of M.A.K. Halliday to show how meaning potential develops in Korean children from four to eighteen years old.