Unspeakability in Doctoral Supervision: Exploring Academic Taboos Through Metaphors in South Korea

Abstract

Although doctoral supervision is central to doctoral students' academic development and well-being, students' candid perspectives on advisory relationships often remain unspoken due to academic taboos surrounding critique of advisors. This study examines how doctoral students in South Korea perceive and navigate advisory relationships under conditions of academic unspeakability shaped by Confucian cultural norms and neoliberal academic pressures. Employing metaphor analysis, the study conceptualises metaphors as both a methodological tool and empirical data that enable indirect articulation of emotionally and politically sensitive experiences. Data were collected from an online survey of 406 doctoral students and four focus group interviews with 24 participants at a research-intensive Korean university. The findings show that doctoral students use metaphors to express a wide range of emotions toward their advisors, including admiration, disappointment, fear, neglect and ambivalence, with the same metaphors often carrying contradictory meanings. The study further reveals that doctoral students actively manage unspeakability through emotional reframing, relational calibration via nunchi (reading the room) and pragmatic compliance or instrumentalization. These strategies sustain advisory relationships while simultaneously reproducing conditions of silence. The study highlights unspeakability as a governing condition shaping doctoral subjectivity and emotional labour.