This study examines the textual structure and speech acts within the inaugural addresses of the ministers in the Yoon Suk Yeol Government’s first cabinet. These addresses typically follow a three-part structure: introduction, development, and closing. The introduction features an opening greeting, while the development stage outlines the main service and missions, and presents requests to organizational members. The closing stage concludes the address. The introduction and closing are often simple enumerations of contents, whereas the development stage is logically and coherently structured. In terms of speech acts, the introductory stage predominantly features expressive acts. The development stage is marked by announcements and requests, while the closing e ncompasses various acts including statements, promises, and solicitations.

The president's graduation congratulations are not just congratulations, requests, and wishes to the graduates. Those speeches refer a lot to the president's political philosophy and the government's policy stance. Accordingly, this paper compares and analyze the structural and linguistic characteristics of each of the congratulatory speeches the president gave at the graduation ceremony of public and private universities and military academies. First of all, the speech at the public and private universities was freely and variously organized without any formal form, while that of the military academies showed consistent organization. In addition, the two types of congratulatory speeches were compared from three perspectives: topic selection, recognition of relationship with audience, and expression of speech content. In the future, I think more interesting sociolinguistic research results can be obtained if the president's graduation speech is compared with other types of presidential speeches.

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.

Park, Yong-han. 2016. “A Study on the Institutional Characteristics of Military Language”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 24(3). 125~155. The military is a societal device established to systematically address the citizens' needs for assured national security. Thus, the military language used internally shares three common characteristics with institutional languages. The aim of this paper is to examine the institutionality of the military language by marginally introducing the concept of military as an institution, and military language as an institutional language. The military conducts various training to maximize the combat capability of its service members, and such training aims to raise combat abilities as well as to foster steadfast militaristic spirits. As a result, the instructors and their assistants appear to be task-oriented during training. And along with the trainees or recruits, they bear the certain communicational restrictions in accordance with their institutional positions. There are different frames of inference suitable to particular circumstances. The breadth of military rhetoric in such institutional interactions - such as lexical choice, turn design, sequence organization, overall structural organization, and social epistemology and social relations well convey the definitive institutional characteristics well. As an institutional device with the significant societal portion of weight, the military can have considerable effects on the society as a whole. However, a systematic and comprehensive study regarding the military society and its language has yet to be conducted. In recent times, the closed-nature of the military appears to be gradually weakening; more active research regarding the military language correlated to such contemporary trend can be expected in the near future.

Park, Yong-han. 2015. “A Study on the occurrence motives and Socio-cultural Implications of Military-humor Texts”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 23(3). 113~ 145. Humor can be the main subject of sociolinguistic research since it indirectly reflects how people, who actually produce and enjoy humor, think about the main issues of their community. The military employs many forms of humor within its organization to relieve tensions in communication. As humor helps people to resolve the anxieties and rigid thoughts and become more flexible, various contents and forms of humor are produced and circulated within the military. With the subject of military-humor text consisting of contents relating to military society, this research looks into the motivation of humors that were produced and enjoyed as a narrative by current and previous military personnels and also the socio-cultural implication reflected in that humor text. Through this research we were able to verify various traits of the military using linguistical approaches. While military-humor texts do indirectly disclose the negative aspects of society, protects one's self-confidence and resolves repressed desires, it is also produced and enjoyed by a number of people simply for entertainment. These military-humor texts also include socio-cultural implications such as double perceptions towards military service, rank-orientedness, authoritarianism, de-individuation, isolationism, formalism, and thinking rigidity. I hope the results of this research is found useful in analyzing the socio-cultural characteristics of the military.

Park, Yong-han. 2012. A Study on the usage aspects of Korean Honorifics. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 20(1). pp. 57-77. The purpose of this research is to investigate the usage of “contracted honorifics” in Korean language, and to explain the result in relation to socio-cultural property of the military society. Generally, the military society used to focus on vertical relationships which emphasized on social positions and ranks; however, in these days, the society is changing its focus on parallel relationships which stresses freedom and equality. Thus, the usage of “contracted honorifics” in Korean is gradually decreasing. In comparison with the civil society, the military society still uses the “contracted honorifics” very thoroughly. When one talks in a military society, he/she considers the personnel of the highest rank and addresses others without the honorific title. The usage of “contracted honorifics” in the military is closely related to the special property of the military society. The “contracted honorifics" is consistently used in the military with the focus on the relative ranking order rather than the speaker him/herself due to the special features of the ranking system and the conservativeness of the military. Hence, newly enlisted soldiers have difficulty in adapting themselves to the culture and the language in the military. Although the military is a special community executing national defense, it has to recognize the usage of the general honorifics in the civil society, and make efforts to develop an atmosphere which considers the language used in the civil society.

This paper aims to examine the usage of terms of address which are used among navy officers' wives. Military society is a typical 'rank-based' society. Therefare the members abide by the order based entirely on the rank structure. We can find this phenomenon in the usage of terms of address among officers' wives. They consider seniority of their husbands more significant than solidarity and age relationship with one another. Thus, the wives distinguish the term of address 'samonim' for the wives whose husbands are senior to own husbands by more than 3 years and 'seonbaenim' for the wives whose husbands are senior to their husbands by 1 or 2 years. The important thing here is that they have to use these kinds of terms of address even though the other party is of the same age or younger than them. If wives failed to do so, they will be in a big trouble. This phenomenon seems to take place because of military society's rank-based culture and its distinctive residence culture. An adequate plan for the usage of terms of address among navy officers' wives is needed. This study can be used as useful data for such an effort.