By adopting conversation analysis, this study examines how action formation and understanding displays construct a socially inept and humorous character in the TV sitcom, The Office. The analysis revealed two recurrent patterns in the main character’s interactions—improper action formation and insufficient understanding displays. Specifically, the findings showed that the main character, Michael, was construed as one that is unaware of his uncanny actions and unable to understand the interlocuter’s inferential and sarcastic remarks. The inserted interview scenes also highlighted that a conversational norm has been violated and contribute to the characterization of Michael as a quirky, socially incompetent worker. As a result, the collective sender is not only able to establish common ground with the audience but also dramatize the humorous potential of the episode. These analytic findings demonstrate that CA can be a rigorous tool for revealing the specific interactional devices that are exploited by scriptwriters to configure characters and infuse comical elements into TV sitcoms.
This paper aims to investigate Korean EFL learners’ pragmatic performance in request speech acts in comparison with native speakers of English. Written discourse completion tasks (WDCT) are used to examine how native and non-native speakers request in terms of request strategies, internal modifications, and external modifications. The results show that first, Korean learners had a higher frequency of inappropriate strategies than native speakers. Second, they lacked the quantity and variety of internal modifications both lexically and syntactically. However, regarding external modifications, their use of supportive moves was similar to that of natives in frequency and order. In addition, this study identified newly emergent supportive moves that are Korean-specific and detrimental to communication goals. The findings shed light on pragmatic instruction in the Korean EFL situation by providing research-informed data. Several pedagogical implications are suggested for application in teaching.
This study examines the relationship between the Korean Language Institute (KLI), established at Yonsei University after 1959, and the Korea Inter-Mission Language Committee (KIMLC), which represented the Protestant missions in Korea at the time. The existence of the KIMLC and its relationship with the KLI had not been reported until now. The evidence for this study is primarily found in records collected from the archives of the Presbyterian Historical Society. These records indicate that the KIMLC was the successor to the Yonsei Language School Consultation Committee, which was responsible for establishment of the Korean Language Institute at Yonsei University and qualified as the official agent for Korean language learning for missionaries. Futhermore, I discovered that KIMLC was actively involved with KLI through the mid-1960s, advising, participating in, and auditing KLI's Korean language programs. Moreover, from the late 1960s onward, as KLI expanded its language education programs, the KIMLC's role in teaching Korean to missionaries diminished, thus allowing KLI to develop into a more independent institution.
Chinese as a foreign language education is one of China's crucial national and governmental strategy. Over the past 70 years of development, Chinese as a foreign language education has made remarkable achievements, but it faces great challenges. In China, the term Chinese as a Foreign Language Education is the last in a series of terms from Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language to Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages and then to International Chinese Language Education, and in its development has passed from the 1.0 era to the 4.0 era. This article aims to present new goals by examining the achievements and characteristics of Chinese as a foreign language education step by step from the perspective of governance and drawing out their implications, identifying the causes of its development, and forecasting future tasks
This study examines the types and usage of abbreviations of foreign proper nouns used in media articles based on a basic understanding of Korean abbreviations, and seeks to identify the effects of their use. Abbreviations of foreign proper nouns are widely used for reasons of economy, ease of identification, and to facilitate the provision of information. There are two types of abbreviations. Romanized abbreviations are characterized by strong economy and identifiability but have difficulty conveying meaning, and they also distinguish the social classes of speakers by their knowledge of loan words or understanding of foreign languages, thereby threatening to undermine social integration. In contrast, abbreviations translated into Korean have the advantage of easily conveying meaning and not hindering language accessibility, but they are weak in identifiability and their number remains exceedingly small. The reason for the excessive use of Romanized abbreviations by the government and media seems to be that no provision for Korean translation abbreviations was made earlier. It is necessary to create and publicize Korean abbreviations widely, as well as create good Korean translation terms with the introduction of foreign proper nouns into Korean.
Data commentary is an important text type in research articles; however, its discourse model is often challenging to access because it is embedded in the upper genres such as textbook, weather forecast, and journal article. This study aims to establish a discourse model of data commentary, with a focus on academic research papers in Economics and Business administration journals. To accomplish this, this study employs Move analysis and SF-MDA(Systemic Functional-Multimodal Discourse Analysis) to investigate the moves of data commentaries and the metafunctional meanings of each step. The results indicate that the data commentary discourse model consists of three moves: (1) summarizing the topic and methodology, (2) representing figure and numbers, and (3) analyzing and commenting on results. Additionally, 22 steps are identified for each move that creates metafunctional meaning: ideational, interpersonal, and textual.
This article examines the current views and pedagogical approaches of Korean school grammar from the perspectives of usage-based theory, and suggests future directions for Korean Grammar Pedagogy that reflect authentic usage of Korean and facilitate meaningful learning. To this end, the basic assumptions of the usage-based theory were reviewed and its applicability to Korean explored. As a result, it is shown that usage-based theory provides us with alternative explanations that overcome the limitations of traditional school grammar and enable meaningful inquiry activities. At the phonological level, while school grammar has ignored the various CVCC syllable configurations actually observed, from the point of view of usage-based theory, syllable-final consonant clusters such as [rp], [rt], and [rk] are appropriately described. At the morphological level, construction-based morphology sheds light on various schema and patterns of word formation that school grammars have overlooked. Finally, usage-based theory provides an alternative explanation of the complement category defined by school grammar.