Park Eun-hee & Yang Jin-suk. 2015. “A Sociolinguistic Analysis of a Commercial District in Seoul: A Linguistic Landscape Approach”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 23(2). 37~63. This paper investigates current sociolinguistic status of English and Korean by analyzing public signs at a shopping-centered district in Seoul, Korea. It is grounded on the idea that looking into a linguistic landscape (LL) of shopping districts in Seoul can address differential social values and meanings upon which the languages hinge in contemporary Korean society. For this study, a total of 140 public signs were analyzed according to language choice, linguistic features of English signs, and the relationship between language choice and commercial domain. The results indicate that 1) English signs outnumbered those of Korean, Chinese, and French, 2) English signs were mainly produced through juxtaposition, meaning that English (or Anglicized) words were displayed in parallel, and 3) while youth-populated domains such as coffee shops and cosmetic stores mobilized English to index a sense of modernity, language choice diverged in the food industry diverged depending on the types of food. This study shows how public signs on the street can be a useful analytical tool to investigate contemporary language ideologies in the society. (174)

1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Overview: Linguistic Landscape
3. Methods
4. Findings and Discussion
5. Summary and Future Research Directions
References

• Park Eun-hee(University of Toronto) The first author
• Yang Jin-suk(University of Toronto) The corresponding author