Cho, Yongjoon. 2017. “On the social indexicality of Korean plain-style interrogative markers -nya and -ni”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 25(3). 259~297. This paper investigates the sociolingustic variation of Korean plain-style interrogative markers -nya and -ni among the younger generation, from the viewpoint of indexicality. We adopted an experimental and a corpus-based analyses for this purpose. The experiment was a context-based acceptability judgement task with a 7-point Likert scale, and the corpus was collected from a synchronous computer-mediated communication, particularly from Kakao Talk, the most popular mobile instant messaging application in Korea. The experimental results show that women use -ni more than men, and the frequency of -nya forms increases when the addressee is male. The corpus results show that the females speak more politely to the females than to the males. We posit that the direct indexical meaning of -nya is ’intimacy’ and ’authoritativeness’, but -ni has the affective stance. In general, women are concerned abocut affective aspects of interaction. Because of these factors, -nya and -ni are gendered indirectly.

Okamura, Kana. 2017. “Korean Native Speakers’ Perception of and Responses to Interrogative Greetings”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 25(1). 143~165. This research examines (1) if native speakers of Korean perceive phrases such as “어디 가 (Where are you going)?” and “밥 먹었어 (Have you eaten)?” as questions or as greetings, and (2) how speakers respond to these phrases. Various expressions are used as greetings in Korean, but interrogative greetings in particular are considered to be widely favored because they express personal interest in the interlocutor. Previous studies claim that because the phrases function more as greetings than questions, it is enough to respond with a general answer rather than an honest or detailed answer. To verify this claim, a questionnaire was distributed to 144 native Korean speakers in their 20s. The degree of intimacy between the speakers and the circumstances of the interaction were used to investigate the perception of and responses to interrogative greetings. The statistical analysis of the questionnaire results found that while the phrases do function as greetings, they still retain their interrogative function, and as such, many native speakers give honest answers such as “응, 먹었어 (Yes, I ate).” Additionally, interlocutor intimacy and situation did indeed influence how the phrases are perceived and answered.

본고에서는 한국어교육에서 지역어 교육의 필요성에 대해 언급하고 경남지역어 해라체 의문형 종결어미 ‘-가/-고’와 ‘-나/노’를 실제 한국어교육 현장에서 사용할 수 있는 지도안을 제시한다. 이를 위해 해라체 의문형 종결 어미 ‘-가/-고’와 ‘-나/노’의 제약조건과 지리적 분포를 확인한다. 한국어 학습자들이 지역어를 학습하는 방법으로 탐구학습을 선택한다. 탐구학습은 가설을 세우고 결과를 도출하는 과정을 모두 학습자가 하기 때문에 학습자들이 학습 과정에 적극적으로 참여하게 된다. 지역어 규칙을 스스로 도출한 학습자들은 한국어 문법에 대한 자신감과 더불어 일상생활에서 흔히 접하는 지역어 사용 오류를 줄일 수 있게 될 것이다.