This article examines representations of the Modern English Speaker of Korean (MESK) in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), as lexicographers listened to and documented the language of this figure over the past century. I show that, until the early twenty-first century, the most salient type of MESK was the Koreanist, a white, masculine expert on and translator of Korean, the language of a racial other. By contrast, more recent Korean entries, influenced by the global spread of hallyu, have invoked the Korea Fan, a figure that potentially unsettles longstanding ideologies of language, race, and gender. I argue, however, that the dictionary’s techniques of linguistic regimentation continue to represent the MESK, even when expressing Korean fandom, as fundamentally aligned with the Koreanist.

This paper presents the theory of improvisational emergence, an account of how social phenomena emerge from improvisational processes. I build outward from the small-group improvisational encounter to provide an account of the relationship between individuals, groups, and societies. Social entities, including groups and societies, emerge from people engaged in group improvisation. But even though social entities emerge from individuals in interaction, their study cannot be reduced to the study of individuals, because once having emerged, social entities have causal power over individuals. The theory of improvisational emergence addresses the structure-agency relationship and the micro-macro debate in sociological theory. It moves beyond practice and structuration theories in positing an ontological separation between people and society. Improvisational emergence allows us to explain the relationship between the improvisational creativity of each participating individual and the collective improvisationality of the group. A complete understanding of social phenomena, including social structures, norms, and cultures, must be grounded in the theoretical and empirical study of creative improvisation.

In this study, we build on our previous work that examines the creative dancemaking collaboration between choreographers and arborist-dancers as they work together in rehearsals to create a performance featuring the workaday skillfulness of urban foresters. They face unique challenges and contingencies because to step into each other’s professional worlds requires a provisionally shared way of thinking that cuts across their diverse experiences; therefore, the two groups create external representations with their bodies (i.e., marking) to bridge epistemic divides. We extend our previous analysis of this microethnographic context—analyzing a routine where an arborist drives a loader truck to distribute mulch—by further demonstrating the semiotic purchase of Charles Goodwin’s interactional semiotics. Goodwin’s notion of “situated improvisation” is especially helpful for making sense of the embodied diagrams that emerge in marking together—a jointly crafted conceptual world makes perceptual experiences of both groups readable and deployable for dance creation.

This is the first multimodal analysis of a real—not mock or hypothetical—jury deliberation and consists of two parts. The first part investigates the interactive contours of laughter and how it integrates with co-speech gesture to provide an authoritative stance to the juror’s narrative. The second part examines the multimodal interplay among poetics, gesture, and stance in pursuit of justice during deliberation. Rather than consider justice as an abstract or theoretical concept I demonstrate how it circulates in and through embodied conduct.

This article explores the semiotic and embodied dynamics of improvisation by focusing on tactile interaction, risk, and the temporal conditions under which meaning must emerge. Drawing on ethnographic examples from competitive and free solo rock climbing, as well as greeting practices among Swahili women in Lamu (Kenya) and Toronto (Canada), I explore how improvisation operates not as a deviation from routinized behavior, but as a generative force. Through an examination of these disparate tactile encounters, I argue that under high-stakes temporal pressure, improvisation becomes a form of semiotic labor: an interpretive responsiveness to emergent signs that are not only felt in the moment but are also anticipated and evaluated against embodied memory. Rock surfaces and handshakes are treated as communicative environments that elicit the anticipation of qualia and require semiotic attunement when such anticipation fails. In such moments, I argue, improvisation does not simply fill a gap but constitutes a recalibration of meaning through the body.

A particular fashion and lifestyle aesthetic called kankokuppo (Koreaish) has gained popularity among young Japanese women in the early 2020s, who increasingly admire what they perceive to embody the “atmosphere (fun’iki)” of South Korea. This article examines the semiotic rendering of a sensuous perception of Korea identified as “Koreaish” through aesthetically embodied practices and mediatized discourses. The analysis reveals the centrality of what I call a “soft unity”: softness that arises from ambiguated boundaries, taken up across discrete objects, practices, and social value regimes. Alongside growing calls to change Japanese society from a divisive to a borderless one, this softness is valorized as the quality of idealized sociality despite its association with highly normative femininity. The emergent “Koreaish” is emblematic of the postfeminist reformulation of the feminine ideal in neoliberal Japan, which manifests as a nexus of the demanifestation of differences and the reversion to conservative feminine values.

In this article, we investigate the semiotic practices of Filipino K-pop fans (KpopStans) who supported the 2022 presidential bid of former Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo. Through digital ethnography, we analyze the ways in which fans entextualized and resemiotized signifiers of K-pop (e.g., lyrics, imagery, fancams) to create hybrid political messages that translated familiar fandom aesthetics into forms of electoral participation. We argue these practices constitute “civic stanning”—enactments of fan-based citizenship that leverage the cultural resonance of K-pop to build solidarities around Robredo, exercise political agency, promote values of conviviality and progress, and navigate the restrictive political climate of the Philippines. The study highlights the role of popular culture in mediating transnational flows and shaping emergent modes of political activism.