This study analyzes the user-generated reviews of Paris-based Michelin three-star restaurants in terms of how they are discursively constructed. Using the reviews posted in Tripadvisor in 2019 as data, it examines how positive reviews (PR) and negative reviews (NR) are framed with distinct discursive practices. While PR and NR a re both characteriz ed by the discursive practice of highlighting professed culinary expertise of the reviewer, this feature is more foregrounded in NR, where the reviewer is generally more oriented to showing themselves as being entitled to write a review. In terms of communicative styles, PR is also characterized by a heavy use of symbolic and metaphoric language, while more ordinary style of language is used in NR, embedded in the context of critiquing specific items of dish or service. While PR and NR both tend to make references to Michelin star status as a basis of their evaluation, they were shown to differ in terms of the tones or keys used in describing chefs, and also in the way the target of evaluation is formulated. The findings shed light on how and why the members of foodie community construct the language the way they do, and have implications for genre analysis.

Kim, Kyu-hyun & Suh, Kyung-Hee. 2018. “Formulation Sequence in Korean TV Talk Shows: Pre-Sequence as Consensual Grounds for Managing Category Work”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 26(2). 85~117. From the perspectives of conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA), this paper analyzes the formulation sequence in Korean television news interviews and celebrity talk-shows. The analysis shows that the host's formulation is normatively oriented to by the guest as a preliminary action, which projects a range of face-impinging actions, such as challenge, assessment, request, etc. The formulation-confirmation sequence furnishes the host with consensual grounds for embarking on affectively-loaded assessment activities vis-à-vis the guest in his/her own terms. The guest, as the formulation-recipient, may block the host's projected action by using disconfirmation, which points to the contingent nature of the power that the host exercises as the agent of morality. The analysis of the formulation sequence is brought to bear upon the examination of the compositional features of the formulation turn (e.g., sentence-ending suffixes, discourse particle, etc.) and their interactional imports.

Suh Kyung-hee. 2015. “‘Sustainable Disagreement’: Well as a Discourse Marker in Crisis Negotiations”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 23(2). 131~160. This study investigates the discourse marker well in two transcripts of the 1993 Waco siege negotiations, paying a special attention to its discursive use as a marker of ‘sustainable disagreement’. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are carried out with a view to presenting the use of well by participant roles and the intensity of negotiations. Three functional categories are proposed, which comprise marking affiliative, disaffiliative and neutral stance. Special attention is given to the disaffiliative stance prefaced by well, which is frequently used when the involved parties are engaged in ‘sustainable disagreement’: situations in which they are confronting each other, yet are nevertheless seeking to maintain the channels of communication and prevent dialogue from breaking down. The distributive and discursive aspects of well are found to be different in the two sets of data; well is widely and variably employed on March 9th, when there is flexibility for negotiation; its use on April 18th is somewhat limited. The findings of this study will go a long way in proving more nuanced guidance to scholars and practitioners of crisis communications, and will improve our understanding of the power relations in intra- and inter-group settings. (193)

Suh Kyung-hee. 2012. Repeating the Interviewer: Repetition Strategies by Chinese EFL Learners in NS-NNS Interview. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 20(2). pp. 269-289. This paper examines the sequential contexts where repetition is observed in NS-NNS interview interactions involving Chinese learners of English. Special reference is made to how repetition practiced by NS and NNS is differently distributed in ways consistent with their identities situated in the institutional setting of interview. The examination of data reveals that Chinese EFL learners frequently use repetition as a discourse strategy. They repeat the topically salient phrases or key words from the prior utterances of native speakers at the utterance initial position in adjacency pairs. Such an allo-repetition (repetition of others) is to index topicality, which helps signal cognitive, textual, and affective participation or involvement in contextualized discourse. Such a repetition also functions to buy time for the speaker to finish planning his/her next move without relinquishing the floor. Here, repetition is deployed as a means of creating joint cognition and as a strategy with which partially competent speakers can find room in interaction, while a competent speaker can provide scaffolded help collaboratively. We can see that repetition is a social activity, part of our everyday behavior and not just a marker of a "disfluency" or "sloppy speaker" (Schegloff 1987). Repetition clearly has the power as a communication and negotiation tool.

From a conversation-analytic perspective, this paper reports on the analysis of incey used as a discourse marker in spontaneous Korean conversations. Systematic attention is given to how it is used as an interactional resource for recalibrating a prior description and engaging the hearer to take the conjoined perspective grounded on the point of "here and now." It is shown that the sequences in which incey is embedded are characterized by a vivid description of an event/state of affairs or reported speech produced in the manner of having the target event/state of affairs reenacted. Such a formulation, often signaling a shift toward an expressive mode of telling, provides a context where the hearer is invited to be involved in the detailed description of the event/state of affairs (i.e., from the shared perspective) and to appreciate its upshot by co-taking the speaker’s vintage point. Such a shift is often observed in terms of managing the boundary-marking as well, e.g., usually practiced in the form of marking contrast or mediating self-repair through which a prior turn component is progressively replaced by another. Some of the crucial implications of these practices are noted in terms of (i) the preliminary nature of incey-prefaced talk, i.e., the tendency of incey to preface materials which are still prefatory to what is to be told further later, and (ii) the ordinary nature of incey-prefaced talk which the co-participants tend to orient to as being empirically grounded and/or commonsensically accessible.

In Korean pedagogical discourse involving young learners, boundaries in pedagogical activities are signaled by the teacher’s style shift that utilizes a range of sentence-ending suffixes that index different degrees of formality and politeness. The shift from the use of the informal polite form -(e)yo to the use of the informal non-polite form -a/e in teacher's talk is contextually motivated by the need to address contingencies associated with a range of classroom management tasks of dealing with individual students, e.g., matters related to disciplining, advising, encouraging, etc. The shift to the formal style characterized by the formal polite forms -(su)pnita/-(su)pnikka takes place in the context where the teacher highlights his/her instructional focus, explicates subject-related knowledge, and/or marks a boundary in pedagogical activities. In young learners' talk in class, the formal style is used when they make a report or presentation related to group activities or produce a response whose upshot draws upon the textbook content, often in the context of reciprocating the formality indexed by the teacher's subject-related questions. Young learners' use of the formal style tends to be limited to a single-shot response, which constrains the extent to which they can sustain participation in subject-related classroom activities. The findings suggest that young learners could benefit from being allowed to use the informal style more freely in dealing with at least some 'formal' aspects of the way subject knowledge is organized in class.

From the perspective of conversation analysis, this study aims to explore the interactional aspects of the Korean wh-words mwe and way with reference to their functions as discourse markers. The examination of conversation data reveals that the discourse markers mwe and way can be used as conversation fillers, filling in a necessary interactional space when the speaker encounters trouble in producing the next item due; way is found to more actively solicit the hearer's involvement or uptake than mwe. The discourse markers mwe and way are also found to be employed as a hedging device and a boosting device respectively often in disaffiliative actions. Mwe helps to mitigate the import of the statement by virtue of its sense of underestimation or downtoning while way helps to increase the force of an utterance while introducing a negative tone. The various interactional functions of mwe and way are claimed to be derived from their distinctive referential meanings; mwe as signifying that ‘something is uncertain to the speaker’, and way as signifying that 'something is questionable, problematic, unexpected, and extraordinary to the speaker'.

Suh, Kyung-Hee. 2004. Interactional Functions of Way in Korean Conversation. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 12(2). This study aims to explore the interactional aspects of the Korean wh-word way and the kinds of action undertaken by this marker from the perspective of conversation analysis. Examination of conversation data reveals that the non-interrogative way is associated less with information and more with emotional expression. In this vein, way in non-interrogative contexts is analyzed as a Discourse Modality Indicator, which is used to index the speaker's cognitive, affective, and interactional stance towards the proposition, the speech acts or the addressee. More specifically, I argue that the functions of way expressing recognition, criticism, challenge and exclamation as well as filling in a necessary interactional space is derived from its referential meaning signifying that 'something is questionable, problematic, unexpected, and extraordinary to the speaker'. Depending on how the speaker handles such doubtful situations, way functions at one of the three levels of communication - cognition, affect and interaction in conversational discourse.