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

Abstract

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.