Heo Jae-young. 2013. The Trends on the Study of Language Power and the Sociolinguistical Approaches. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 21(3). In order to understand what language power means to sociolinguistics, we will search for the relation between language and power in various academic fields; for example in linguistics, philosophy, history and literature.
I searched various theses and works related to language power. But no one has used this term in a technical sense. Many scholars have used ‘language and power’ instead of ‘language power’. This tendency is similar to sociolinguistics. I couldn't find this term in the dictionary of sociolinguistics. But I found ‘language change, language contact, language conflict, language rights and shifts’. We take a broad view that these terms are related to language and power indirectly. The results are as follows:
First, language is used for communication, therefore language is related to race, culture and societies. This means language is related to social power elements. Discrimination of language by race, gender and class for example, indicated the problem of language power in the language community.
Second, power is essentially related to inner order or intergroup-relationships. In this respect, many linguistic scholars were concerned about the function of language or class.
Third, I found many literary researchers were concerned about language power in works. They were concerned about the expression relating to character's status. This theme related to discourse analysis.
Fourth, I after researching the history of foreign language power, I reached the conclusion that the study of language power is one of sociolinguistical problems and this problem implied a historical background. (243 words)

• 허재영(단국대학교 교육대학원) | Heo Jae-young