The results and tasks of sociolinguistic study of language contact: Based on the papers in The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea
This study aims to categorize research achievements about language contact based on the papers in the Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea for the last thirty years into five sections, which include bilingualism and diglossia, pidgin and creole, various decision making under language contact situations, loan-words, and dialect contact. This study concludes by offering further research questions that need to be answered in the field of language contact. Early years of sociolinguistics has remained at a level of introducing language contact problems of Europe and Africa, Pacific and Atlantic equator region to the domestic academic circles. However, these achievements have turned out to be the foundation of research related to overseas Koreans bilingualism problem and various domestic language contact problems between Korean and foreign language. Until now, Korean sociolinguistics has mostly handled problems of bilingualism. However, since the early 21st century, the population of international marriage immigrants and foreign laborers has increased at a rapid rate, generating various language contact phenomena. Furthermore, with a recent globalization wave, many foreign languages are more widely used in Korea. In such a flow, it is evident that the Korean society will go through various language contact between Korean and foreign languages. Therefore, systematic and aggressive research on multi-culture family bilingualism, code-switching of Korean speakers, loan-words situation, and the problem of contact between standard language and dialect is needed in the Korean sociolinguistic field.