Kang, Yoojin. (2023). “Exploring Intertextuality in Mother-in-Law and Daughter-in-Law Discourse”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 31(4), 99-120. This study explores the intricacies of intertextuality within the conflict dynamics between a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law. By adopting an intertextual perspective that draws upon the analytical frameworks presented by van Langenhove and Harre (1999) on positioning and Tannen’s (2006) insights regarding recycling, reframing, and rekeying, this study sheds light on a significant social and cultural phenomenon. Through the application of these theoretical concepts, this study aims to unravel the ways in which a Korean mother-in-law engages in the recycling, reframing, and rekeying of arguments related to the expectations of being a good daughter-in-law. Additionally, it examines the distinct positioning of both the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law in two conflict themes. The primary focus is on understanding the interconnection between these conflict themes and analyzing whether the positions of the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law in one conflict undergo changes when navigating the other conflict.

This study investigates how native Korean speakers, who moved from Kyungsang province to Seoul, acquire /w/ retainment in Seoul Korean (SK). The specific objective is to examine how mobile speakers adopt the SK-like /w/ retainment and evaluate how linguistic and non-linguistic factors influence this acquisition. Furthermore, the study aims to establish whether having explicit awareness of the SK-like /w/ retainment is a prerequisite for acquiring it. The overall results suggest that most speakers have successfully adopted the SK-like /w/ retention, but there is noticeable diversity among speakers in terms of the extent to which they retain /w/. This variability can be linked to linguistic and non-linguistic factors, such as where /w/ appears in speech and individual attitudes towards SK. This research sheds light on the acquisition of /w/ retainment among native Korean speakers who have relocated from Kyungsang province to Seoul, highlighting the impact of linguistic and non-linguistic factors. It underscores the role of explicit awareness and reveals significant interspeaker variation in the adoption of SK-like /w/ retainment, contributing to our understanding of dialect acquisition dynamics.

This study examines the word-initial stop variation in the speech of speakers who were born in North Kyungsang province and moved to Seoul after the age of 20 and that of speakers who were born in Seoul and moved to North Kyungsang province after the age of 20. Specifically, this study investigates whether Seoul Koreans moving to North Kyungsang have acquired the NKK-like word-initial tensification in any of the two contexts - wordlist and reading passage. Moreover, this study explores whether North Kyungsang Korean moving to Seoul have lost the NKK-like word-initial tensification in the two contexts. Finally, this study examines whether social factors, including gender, length of stay in a new region, attitude toward the first and second dialects, and awareness of the word-initial tensification affect the acquisition or loss of the second dialect feature. A major finding is that both mobile groups do not show the NKK-like word-initial tensification in wordlist and reading passage speech. With respect to the effect of the social factors, male Kyungsang Koreans in Seoul produce tensified stops more than female counterparts. Meanwhile, none of the social factors are significant in the speech of Seoul Koreans in North Kyungsang.

This study examines whether the lexical pitch accent of the Kyungsang dialect and /wɑ/ monophthongization are imitated by Seoul dialect speakers in an auditory naming task. The goal of the study relates to what is imitated in the phonetic signal. To answer this question, the study examines how relative salience between two linguistic features affects phonetic accommodation. Fifty words as produced by a speaker of the Kyungsang dialect served as stimuli for a shadowing task. The first and second formants of disyllabic words containing the diphthong /wɑ/ and the F0 of disyllabic words with the HL tone were acoustically analyzed for phonetic accommodation. Overall, the results suggest that in terms of the diphthong /wɑ/, participants were more likely to converge toward the Kyungsang model talker, producing their vowel as more monothongized. With respect to the lexical pitch accent, participants were less likely to converge to the model talker, producing the target words with the same tone.