Kim Jeong-yeon. 2012. Intimacy and Gender in Expressing Gratitude in L2. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 20(2). pp. 115-147. This study examines how Korean learners of English perform the speech act of ‘gratitude’ according to the variables of intimacy and gender. In a contrastive analytic framework, their behaviors are cross-examined against Korean native and English native speakers in terms of their choice of strategies and uses of politeness markers. The data have been obtained from 43 Americans and 91 Koreans assigned to three groups: English native speakers, Korean learners of English, and Korean native speakers. A discourse completion test and a subsequent interview revealed Korean learners of English showed a similar pattern as Korean native speakers in the uses of politeness markers to emphasize their thanking by intimacy levels. However, the way in which they deal with gender in English was divergent not only from American but also from Korean. They depended on the strategy of compliment while performing the speech act of gratitude, and were inclined to use negative politeness strategies, similar to the Korean language group. Korean EFL textbooks and classrooms, therefore, need to include not only more diverse contexts in which ‘gratitude’ is necessary, but also the ways in which the English speech act is performed in a culturally appropriate manner. (195 words) Keywords: gender, gratitude, intimacy, politeness, speech act

This study aimstoexaminetheinterplay between on-linetalk irrelevanttoatask, i.e., gossip talk, and participant alignment during task processing. Specifically, this study examines qualitatively how the gossip talk contributes to L2 interactants' configuration of participant alignment during on-lineproblem-solving activities.Thedataconsistofthescripts ofmorethansixty hoursofL2on-linechatting ofcollegelevelEnglish learners. The qualitative, empirical analysis has shown that the participants'knowledgeofextra-taskworldisdisclosedduringthegossip talk eitherbetween problems to solve oratthe beginning ofthe chat. The task-embedded gossip occurring between problems to solve has generatedfewerturnsthan thechat-opening gossip.Thetask-embedded gossip wasalsolimited in itseffectson reconfiguration ofparticipatory structure and functioned only to reconfirm the predefined participant framework. Chat-opening gossip, by contrast, made significant contributions to emergent participant alignment, which was reflected during thetaskprocessinginthesubsequentturns.Thefindingsindicate thattheunfocusedaction,i.e.,thegossiptalk, contributestothefocused action, i.e, task processing, in terms of construction of participant alignment

This paper examines two English discourse markers, "yeah" and "kin'of," in two nonnative speakers' turns of voluntary corrective actions. From a conversation analytic perspective, the two items are examined in terms of their functional properties during the nonnative speakers' turns. Two nonnative English speaking graduate students, working as teaching assistants in an engineering lab of an American university, participated in the study. The analysis of the dyadic interaction between the nonnative speakers and the native English speaking undergraduate students revealed that the nonnative speakers used "yeah" and "kin'of" in a significantly different manner from the target language norms. In their endeavor to create a shared meaning with their students they often engaged in word- and structure searches, during which they used the discourse markers as the fillers to a possible void in talk. An examination of the spatial location and functional properties of the items also revealed that the markers were more rule-governed in the nonnative speakers’ talk than other hesitation markers. The findings indicate the importance of examining the discourse functions of the markers in the discussion of nonnativeness.

In this paper, we consider the problem of regrouping a number of service sites into a smaller number of service sites called centers. Each service site is represented as a point in the plane and has an associated value of service demand. We aim to group the sites so that each group has the balanced service demand and the sum of distances from the sites in the group to their corresponding center is minimized. To solve this problem, we propose a hybrid genetic algorithm that is combined with Voronoi diagrams. We provide a variety of experimental results by changing the weights of the two factors: service demands and distances. Our hybrid algorithm finds good approximate solutions in a shorter computation time in comparison with optimal solution by integer programming.