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‘BTS, PSY, BLACKPINK’

The English naming of South Korean music entertainers – its prevalence and motives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2022

Hyeon-Seok Kang Open the ORCID record for Hyeon-Seok Kang [Opens in a new window]
Hyeon-Seok Kang*
Affiliation:
Dankook University - Cheonan Campus, English Dandae-ro 119 Dongnam-gu Cheonan, Korea (the Republic of, KR), Chungnam, 31116
*
Email: hskang1@dankook.ac.kr
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Extract

Personal names are an important part of people's social identity, and they function socially as labels that both identify and distinguish an individual from others (Watzlawik et al., 2012). Cheang (2008) suggests that personal names can be a vehicle of self-presentation/self-promotion (cf. Goffman, 1980), not just a passive label, if the names are selected by the name bearers themselves. Although self-naming is also observed with a small minority of people who have changed their names given by their parents or close relations, the most common cases of self-presentation/self-promotion seem to be entertainers’ adopted stage names.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , December 2023 , pp. 264 - 274
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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