The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical overview of the discourse-analytic studies in Korean sociolinguistics, mainly analyzing articles published in The Sociolingustic Journal of Korea. To achieve this goal, this article discusses definitions of ‘discourse’ and ‘discourse analysis’, and approaches to discourse. The examination of the articles in the journal shows that major studies in Korean sociolinguistics can be summarized as in the following: (i) functional approaches to language and discourse markers, (ii) conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, (iv) media discourse and critical discourse analysis, (v) analysis of public speeches and advertisements, (vi) electronic discourse (internet and SNS discourse), among others. This overview shows that discourse-analytic studies in Korean linguistics have focused on certain specific topics such as discourse markers, conversation-analytic studies, critical discourse studies, and electronic discourse, differing in topics from sociolinguistic studies in American and other societies. This overview suggests that more sociolinguistic studies need to be carried out in the fields such as intercultural communication, electronic discourse, and gender-based discourse as further research topics in Korean sociolinguistics.
This study examined the research on “media language” published in ≪Social Linguistics≫ from the first issue to Volume 27(4) in the viewpoint of research history. First, the media's language was divided into ‘newspaper language’, ‘broadcasting language’ and ‘communication language’ and the published papers were classified by period. Then each paper's achievements were analyzed over time. After analyzing detailed research topics and approaches for each media language and their main flow, individual papers' contents were reviewed. According to analysis results, the communication language research was most actively carried out during the same period. In the media language studies, he discussions were largely concerned with discourse analysis. discourse analysis. The communication language has also changed its aspect according to the change of the hardware and platform on which the communication is based. Media language research so far has focused on individual characteristics according to the unique properties of each medium. However recently, as 3 media such as newspapers, broadcasting and the Internet have been integrated into one, the media language research needs to be discussed from the viewpoint of “language integration.”
The purpose of this paper is to examine the term ‘agassi’ by analyzing the pattern of actual language use of it in the aspect of sociolinguistic perspective. Through this work, it will be possible to figure out the change of meaning of the ‘agassi’, and the causes of conflict situations of using it in modern society. In chapter 2, the difference between ‘agassi’ as an address term and as a reference term is represented. Chapter 3 shows the chronicle change in the use of ‘agassi’ being originated from its etymology, ‘agissi’. It turns out that the use of ‘agassi’ has evolved for in the order of Honorific form, kinship and Non-Honorific form. Chapter 4 investigates the tendency and its cause of the negative interpretation of ‘agassi’ in modern society. The reason why the address term ‘agassi’ causes social displeasure is because it is regarded as ‘sexual objectification’. It can be subdivided into three categories: ‘agassi’ is (1) the expression that emphasis sex in social life, (2) associated with specific occupational groups which is socially unacceptable, and (3) used often in the situation of sexual harassment.
This study outlines the language and gender studies in Korea over the past 30 years and derives some prospect of the future research. Following the epitome of the beginning and development of the studies in the framework of modern sociolinguistics, this article reviews the relevant studies on both Korean and foreign languages. The review shows that the works on this topic can be broadly classified into three main research areas; language variation, utterable genderlect and objective genderlect. Though having entered upon this research area two decades later than those in Amercian and European countries, Korean sociolinguists have produced significant results, especially in the gender-specific utterances in Korean. Works on other languages have been also carried out, often with applied linguistic purposes of cross-linguistic/cultural analysis, foreign language education, translation as well as consciousness raising of gender issues. Emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary approaches both in perspectives and research methods of the future studies, this article expects continuation of variation studies for completing the description of ‘language variation and change’, sociolinguistic efforts and movement against the gender bias and discrimination, and analysis of various types of communication in cyber space. It is also pointed out that language use of sexual minorities is one of the most untapped and subtle sociolinguistic topics in Korea.
This paper analyzes the research progress of language attitudes in the field of sociolinguistics and proposes future research projects. First, the research progress of language attitudes can be categorized into four groups; attitudes to the language itself, attitudes to language variation, attitudes to language use, and attitudes to language identity.
Research about attitudes to the language itself is peculiar in that big scale surveys were conducted by the government for linguistic policies. Quantitative survey method is preferable when providing the results in figures. However, it is unsuitable when analyzing the results in depth. Therefore, qualitative research entailed with various research methods is necessary.
Research on attitudes toward language variation should be promoted considering the fast speed of linguistic change of the Korean language. So far most studies were about umlaut, euphony, grammatical change in stem and ending. Nevertheless, further studies should expand the research horizon to different linguistic units such as intonation, discourse markers, etc.
Research on attitudes toward language use shows the possibility of extending the scope of the field of sociolinguistics. Especially study on anthroponym, commercials, brand names, copies, political slogans should not only be done on language attitudes but also on sociolinguistic respects.
Lastly, research on language attitudes of minority groups focused on Korean migrants to Japan(Korean residents in Japan), former Soviet Union(Russian Koreans), and China(Korean-Chinese). However, at present Korea is a multicultural society which implicates that future studies should pay more attention on minority groups of different mother tongues for example immigrant workers, international students, temporary visitors, overseas Chinese, and foreigners who acquired Korean nationality, as well as North Korean defectors and migrant wives.
There have been numerous refugee-related studies in linguistics following a large inflow of refugees to South Korea over the past several years. However, many studies address refugees in terms of Korean language education, and little has been discussed on the actual language use of refugees or linguistic issues they experience in South Korea. Linguistic research regarding refugees must be conducted not only with regard to Korean language education but also in terms of observing and interpreting the actual language use of and social issues experienced by refugees. In this respect, this study notes the issues faced by refugees moving to South Korea without knowledge of the Korean language. Specifically, it addresses communication issues arising within the limited space of the airport entry and departure port. To this end, two Arabic speakers applying for refugee recognition at the airport entry and departure port were interviewed. As such, procedures that must be taken at the entry and departure port between exiting the airplane and entering South Korea were reconstructed from an insider's perspective, and communication issues occurring throughout each procedure were reviewed. Subsequently, suggestions were made to ensure the language human rights of refugees at airports.
The interest in text mining is recently increasing in the humanities and social sciences. Using a topic-modeling technique, this study analyzed a corpus of study abroad applications to explore a discursive field of study abroad. By doing so, this project finds the ways in which the new text analysis technique can contribute to the methodology of discourse analysis. For this purpose, 4,585 applications for a variety of undergraduate study-abroad programs were collected and sorted out into the corpora of successful and unsuccessful applications. The topic-modeling results show that generated topics generally match the discourses and themes that the existing research of study abroad have considered so far. The comparison of the results between successful and unsuccessful applications reveals that the former tends to exhibit a set of more clearly defined topics and use abstract and generalized words to describe actions engaging with study abroad. This study suggests that the topic-modeling technique can be a useful discourse-analytic tool as it helps understand a broad thematic and discursive terrain in a large size of textual data. This paper also discusses how traditional discourse analysis methods can contribute to addressing methodological limitations in text mining techniques.
English globalization entails the use of English by speakers from mother tongues other than English. Trained and professional non-native speakers of English have reportedly achieved communicative competence owing to bilingual or multilingual experiences. Their pragmatic competence developed through diverse interactions with speakers from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Kecskes 2015). In this study, hedges were explored in international briefings where English was used as a lingua franca by professionals of an organization. Three hedging devices including modal verbs, modal adverbs, and pronouns were analyzed to investigate their pragmatic competence. In addition, the professional non-native English briefings were compared with the U.S. briefings for their similarities and differences. Results showed developmental patterns from learner English while they shared similarities with native data. These findings were accounted for by the varieties of English and the genre differences. Implications for pragmatic competence are discussed as well.