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 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.