Kang, Nayoung. 2015. “A sociolinguistic study on the structural properties and sociocultural meaning of pun and speech play in Korean young children’s peer talk”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 23(1). 1~30. This paper examines the use of pun in a Korean preschool classroom from the perspective of sociolinguistic study. The purpose of this research is to describe and analyze how Korean young children learn and speak their peer talk and cultural theme in regard to forms and meaning of pun and speech play. For this study, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork for one year at a Korean preschool, focusing on intensive participant observation of teachers’ and children’s interactions, supplemented by in-depth interviews with teachers and children. Through the analysis of social interactions in classroom, I argue that 1) the structural properties of pun(sound patterns, lexicon, syntax, and pragmatics) and 2) sociocultural and interactional meaning(performance, pun in class, taboo as sexuality and curse) in various forms of everyday talk.

Jeon, Hyeyoung. 2014. A Sociolinguistic Study of Languages in the Medical Community. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 22(3). This study aimed at exploring languages of a medical community from the sociolinguistic perspective. Based on collecting the data of languages in the medical community, the data demonstrated their language use. This study examined ways of word formation and discovered characteristics of languages in the medical community. This study conducted an interview with a medical personnel(intern) working in a hospital affiliated with university. The meanings of categorized expressions were explained and then word formations of the expressions were analyzed. As a result, there were four kinds of abbreviations in the way of word formations that are initialism, acronyms, clipping, and blending. And there were four types of complex words. Abnormal expressions, which are different from daily expressions, were also found in ways of constructing phrases and differences in usage of meaning. Implications of the characteristics unfolding through the meanings that are confined to the medical society and diverse types of word forming were discussed. This study found that three characteristics are economics from effective work performance, professionalism from need of knowledge in medical expertise, and exclusiveness from sharing a sense of belonging to exclude other groups.

Heo Jae-young. 2013. The Trends on the Study of Language Power and the Sociolinguistical Approaches. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 21(3). In order to understand what language power means to sociolinguistics, we will search for the relation between language and power in various academic fields; for example in linguistics, philosophy, history and literature. I searched various theses and works related to language power. But no one has used this term in a technical sense. Many scholars have used ‘language and power’ instead of ‘language power’. This tendency is similar to sociolinguistics. I couldn't find this term in the dictionary of sociolinguistics. But I found ‘language change, language contact, language conflict, language rights and shifts’. We take a broad view that these terms are related to language and power indirectly. The results are as follows: First, language is used for communication, therefore language is related to race, culture and societies. This means language is related to social power elements. Discrimination of language by race, gender and class for example, indicated the problem of language power in the language community. Second, power is essentially related to inner order or intergroup-relationships. In this respect, many linguistic scholars were concerned about the function of language or class. Third, I found many literary researchers were concerned about language power in works. They were concerned about the expression relating to character's status. This theme related to discourse analysis. Fourth, I after researching the history of foreign language power, I reached the conclusion that the study of language power is one of sociolinguistical problems and this problem implied a historical background. (243 words)

Park Eun-ha. 2013. Socio-linguistic study on women's cosmetics' brand names in television advertisements. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 21(3). This study aims to investigate the linguistic perspective and social aspect of women's cosmetics' names. This research focuses on the names of women's cosmetics in TV advertisements from January 2008 to May 2012. From a linguistic perspective, this study analyzes the compounding structure of women's cosmetics' names on the basis of four determinants company name, brand name, product name, and the type of cosmetics. It also classifies brand names of women's cosmetics as Korean, Sino-Korean, English, and foreign language. Results show that brand names and compound words with brand name & product name were used more frequently in 2008-2009, while multi-syllable names such as brand name/company name+product name+types of cosmetics were used more frequently in 2010-2012. Moreover, there is a strong preference for English and foreign language (French) names in women's cosmetics. Four aspects can be found in the social aspect of women's cosmetics' names. In order of frequency of occurrence, “use of medicinal herbs or food”, ranks the highest, followed by “combination of science and medicine” and “emphasis on a nature-friendly environment” as the second and third most frequent in social aspect. Finally, “identification of object of envy” reflects that Korean women wish to be promoted to a higher status and to be seen as beautiful and assertive. In this study, attempts are made to generalize the characteristics of women's cosmetics' names in television advertisements over the past five years from linguistic and social perspectives. The results may contribute to guiding principles related to women's cosmetics' names and provide an insight into future research. (255 words)

Heo Jae-young. 2012. Remarks on the Areal Linguistics from the Sociolinguistic Viewpoint. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 20(2). pp. 465-479. This report aims to survey and describe remarks on areal linguistics from the sociolinguistic viewpoint. It has an important bearing on the relations of language to society. Many dialectologists paid attention to these traditional areal languages. But sociolinguilism was only established in the 1960's. This science was introduced to Korea in the 1980's and the Sociolinguistic Society of Korea(SSK) was established in 1993. So I focused on the graduate theses, dissertations and books after 1990's. The results are as follow: First, the trend of sociolinguistic areal language studies was interested in special area communities( for example administrative districts) rather than divisions of dialect in Korea. In particular, some scholars were concerned with YEONBYEON(China's Far East) community after established diplomatic relations in 1992. Second, these studies focused on the factors of language change and attitudes to language. Third, some books and reports treated the phenomena of language use, and dialect in literature works and in national daily-life language.

Kim Ha-soo, Ju Hyang-a, Son Hyun-jung, Kong Nah-yung. 2012. Geographic Information System(GIS) and sociolinguistic factors- study on the information of Korean language education. The sociolinguistic Journal of Korean 20(2). pp. 185-211. In sociolinguistic research, it has been found that linguistic phenomena are influenced more by extralinguistic factors than intralinguistic ones. In particular, issues such as language policy, language contact, langage extinction and language variation are strongly affected by geographical characteristics of the region where a language is being used and taught. In order to analyze linguistic phenomena and geographical characteristics synthetically, we introduce linguistic typological methods using Geographic Information System (GIS), an automated system for the capture, storage, retrieval, analysis and display of spacial data. Using GIS, we present some maps of the geographical distribution of foreigners living in Korea and the educational institutions of Korean language for foreigners in order to discuss the regional conditions for Korean language education in these areas. We also examine married immigrant women's accessibility to multi-cultural support centers with GIS.

Kang Hui-suk. 2012. A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Fetus Naming and Its Diffusion. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 20(2). pp. 33-61 . This study attempted a socilinguistic analysis on the fetus naming and its diffusion as a new custom. The subjects of the study were 248 first-graders of elementary schools, 175 young children from nurseries and 423 parents who are living in Gwangju and Damyang in Jeonnam. The results are summarized as follows: First of all, the types of fetus naming and naming principles were analysed and it was discovered that most of fetus names were Korean, not Chinese, such as bokdeongi, teunteuni or ttolttori while real names were usually Chinese. Real names were made by parents or name experts in consideration of Saju or meanings of names after babies were born. However, fetus names were given by their parents in the early or middle periods of pregnancy. As a result of examining how many children had fetus names in each class, it was discovered that 43.5% of the first graders had fetus names and 76.9% of young children in nurseries had them. It shows that the custom of fetus naming is expanding very fast and such expansion was found both in urban and rural areas. When motives to give fetus names were analysed, it was discovered that parents intended to talk to their babies calling their names every day, thinking the fetus are lives with personality. They believed that when names are called frequently, the meanings of the names can be achieved. 66.5% responded that fetus names are necessary. Also, parents felt babies exist through fetus names. The names weremeans of conversation and worked to enhance friendliness and rapport between parents and their babies. The names gave helps to prenatal care as well as delivered what parents expect to the babies, enhanced rapport between parents and babies, removed anxiety of pregnancy and added happiness to their life.

Kang Hyeon-seok. 2012. A Comparative Sociolinguistic Study of Protestant and Buddhist Prayer Texts with a Focus on Sentence Type, Speech Act, and Hearer Honorifics. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 20(2). pp. 1-31. This paper analyzes 180 prayer texts of Protestantism and Buddhism (90 per each), and investigates differences in sentence types, speech acts, and hearer honorifics. More various sentence types were observed in Buddhist prayers than in Protestant prayers. In addition. more declaratives were used in the former, while more imperatives were found in the latter. In Buddhist prayers, speech acts of stating and promising were performed more often, whereas in Protestant prayers petitioning and thanking speech acts were found in a higher proportion. An attempt was made to explain these differences on the basis of different doctrinal and philosophical background of the two religions. Two kinds of analysis of hearer honorifics were conducted in this study: The first was based on the speech levels of different sentence ending styles; the second, a comprehensive analysis, was performed incorporating all the relevant factors in hearer honorification: sentence ending styles, politeness markers ‘-op-’ & ‘-si-’, and the auxiliary verb ‘juda’. The latter analysis proved to be more accurate and could reveal inter-religion differences that the former was not able to disclose. Different patterns of hearer honorifics used in the two religions’ prayer texts were attributed to two distinctly transmitted linguistic subcultures. Two additional phenomena of synchronic and diachronic variation observed in the prayers are also introduced and examined: 1) speech accommodation phenomena (Giles & Ogay 2007) found in the prayers of teachers teaching children in churches and Buddhist temples, 2) ongoing language change in prayer language.

The Meaning of Sociolinguistics about the Composition's Order Rules of Complex Word-Focus on the Textbooks in Modern Enlightenment Periods. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 19(2). This study aims to describe the change of word order in the modern enlightenment times in Korean language. The composition's order was dominated by several elements, for example preception and recognition. Chang (2008) concluded the word placement of coordinate word order is determined by the elements of lexical hierarchy, basic vocabulary, word frequency and sociocultural meaning. These elements are the fundamental factors. But, the word order is changed by the language family and sociolinguistic environment. The word order has rapidly changed in the modern enlightenment times. I divided the change into two types: lexicalization and sociocultural change. The former means the increase in quantity of lexical items through the competition of two types: in the right order and reverse order. The latter means the social concerns have changed. But the results of change are not uniform. Some reverse words gain special meaning or nuance. The Korean word 'SEONGJANG(成長)' means 'growth' or 'development', but 'JANGSEONG(長成)' means 'come of age' or 'grown up' for example.

This study, using the variationist framework, investigates Korean speakers' usage of haeyo and hapsyo styles on the basis of movie and TV drama scripts. One linguistic constraint (sentence type) and six extra-linguistic constraints (gender, formulaicness, age group, intimacy, dialogue scene, hierarchical relationship) were chosen as potential factors influencing variation between haeyo and hapsyo styles. The seven potential constraints were all analyzed by a multivariate analysis using Goldvarb as affecting the variation examined. Gender was among the top four factors constraining the variation along with formulaicness, dialogue scene, and sentence type. The percentages of the hapsyo and haeyo usage of male characters were 16.1 and 83.9, respectively, while those of females were 6.3 and 93.7. Some (but not significant) degree of group-internal variation was observed in both gender groups. A quantitative analysis was also conducted of eight haeyo-style expressions proposed by previous research as occurring especially often in women's speech. In the data examined, five of them were found to occur significantly more often in female characters' data; one was observed more in men's, while the remaining two were rarely found in both gender groups' data. An attempt is also made to explain the gender difference in the usage of haeyo and hapsyo styles using the (sub-culture) difference approach.

This paper contrasts different of usages of honorifics in Korean and Japanese based on the actual use of honorifics Japanese and Korean high school students. Based upon such contrast this paper elucidates the following points: First, in case of direct honorifics, the differences of ages or statuses become the first standard to determine the usage of honorifics in Korean. However, in Japanese, in addition to differences of ages or statuses, the degree of closeness/ familiarity between the speaker and the listener is an important determinant. Therefore, Korean children use honorific to their parents in Korea, while Japanese children don't. Second, in case of indirect honorifics, it is widely believed that Koreans use honorific by the rule of unconditional honorific and Japaneses use it by the rule of conditional honorific. However, various factors such as the degree of familiarity or closeness between the speaker and the listener, etc. influence the usage of indirect honorifics in Korean. Therefore, the rule of honorifics for Korean and Japaneses languages is quite ambiguous. Third, in Korean honorifics, we can find conditional honorific which is also called as restrained honorific. However, it is generally not used except for in a hierarchical society such as the military.

Sociolinguistics explores the relationship between language and/in society, dealing with topics such as (regional and social) dialects, bilingualism, multi-lingualism, language contact, ethnography of speaking, ethnomethodology/conversation analysis, language planning, and so on. This research provides a comprehensive overview of sociolinguistic studies in Korea, analyzing papers which have appeared in Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea. Analysis shows that a variety of topics has been dealt with in the Korean Sociolinguistic Society, covering topics on variation analysis of regional/social dialects, honorifics/politeness and address terms, gender studies, interactional sociolinguistics and discourse/conversation analysis, intercultural communication, language planning/policies, computer communication language, language learning and teaching and so on. This general overview shows the development of sociolinguistic studies in Korea, in terms of the topics, methods, objects of analysis and so on, and it will be a guide for future research in the field of Korean linguistics.

This paper is a modest attempt to present a rather simplistic pedigree of sociolinguistics. It first describes the rise of sociolinguistics in the mid-1960s as an established academic discipline. The subsequent sections briefly survey the historial background of sociolinguistics in general, and the historical antecedents of the three main strands/orientations of modern sociolingujistics: the variation study, the ethnography of communication, and the sociology of language. The variation study, being primarily concerned with language variation and language change, finds its ancestry in the early studies in dialectology and historical linguistics. The ethnography of communication derives from anthropological linguistics and the language philosophy of 18th- and 19th-century German thinkers. The history of the sociology of language, which is rather short, stretches back to the earlier studies of language contact, bilingualism, and language policy.

The purpose of this paper is to look into theoretical features of the three leading sociolinguists, Dell Hymes, William Labov, and John Gumperz.On the basis of meta-theoretical terms, which help one to see the differences and similarities of given theoretical viewpoints, this study attempts to delineate main characteristics of the sociolinguistic approaches of the scholars.They are discussed by getting answers to questions such as how they see language or language use, how they perceive sociolinguistics as a discipline in relation to linguistics,to what extent they differ regarding their sociolinguistic approaches and where they can be positioned in the tradition of the philosophy of science as well as that of language study.Dell Hymes' approach, along with his view on the ethnography of speaking, is characterized as featuring sociolinguistic relativism. His major concern is to understand and describe socioculturally-bound ways ofspeaking or communication.In contrast, William Labov's approach,along with his study of sound change at social and regionallevel,is characterized as featuring sociolinguistic realism. This means that he is concerned with scientific description of language shifts as they happen as a whole in the context of actual language use. In addition,John Gumperz's approach is characterized as sociolinguistic interactionism. Unlike the previous two scholars, his sociolinguistic approach is uniquely microscopic in thathis main focus is placed on communicative interactions at the level of individual encounter, like interviewsorface-to-faceconversation.

Abbreviation is one of the typical examples of using language. Traditionally, abbreviations are classified into the following four major categories in English morphology: (i) initialism, (ii) acronyms, (iii) clipping and (iv) blending. This research examines types of abbreviatory expressions in Korean from a sociolinguistic perspective. This study first provides a brief analysis of types of abbreviations in Korean, mainly in terms of morphology. The examination shows that in Korean the distinction between initialism and acronym does not hold because of the nature of the syllable-based writing system of Korean, and that acronym is the most widely used types of abbreviation. Second, the study discusses linguistic motivations which are at work in the formation of abbreviations mainly in terms of economic motivation and motivation of distinctiveness. Third, this research explores conditions on the use of abbreviations in terms of sharedness of the information about the referent being talked about. It also shows the property of exclusiveness in the sense that members of a certain speech community share the meanings of the abbreviations. In addition, it explores functions of abbreviations in the following terms: maintaining solidarity, excluding outsiders, novelty, temporariness, and so on. Finally, this paper shows that not only a morphological approach but also a sociolinguistic perspective is necessary in order to fully account for the formation and use of abbreviations in language.

This study conducts a sociolinguistic analysis of coordinate word order in Korean. The results can be summarized as follows: (i) Word placement (P1, P2) of coordinate word order is determined by the elements of lexical hierarchy, basic vocabulary, word frequency and sociocultural meaning. The elements of lexical hierarchy, basic vocabulary, and word frequency designate the status along the familiar-estranged and superior-inferior axes. (ii) The primary types of coordinate word order are divided into right order (pattern A) types and counter order (pattern B) types. Further, these are based on the arrangement of affirmative meaning (Af) and negative meaning (Ne), which are in accordance with word placement and the sociolinguistic rules of the alternative rule and co-occurrence rule. (iii) The environment types of coordinate word order include natural word order, social word order, and belief word order. The types of word order use include freezing word order and situational order. Therefore freezing word order and situational order, combined with right order and counter order, constitute the formation rule of word order. Based on our saram/horaŋi (man and tiger) example, we describe the input and output of word order. (iv) Coordinate word order comprises different types of word order use, which are influenced by gender variety. Further, the pooling of word order types forms a sociolinguistic pattern and a V-shaped curve. There is also generation variety, which also allows for sociolinguistic patterns to be formed through pooling. The criteria for a W-shaped curve are bi-order, right word order, and counter word order, which combine to form an age-grading and undulating pattern. Finally, there is class variety. In rural dialects class references are used. High classes use the right word order of new types, while low classes use the right word order of old types.

The purpose of this article is to examine the necessity and the possibility of sociolinguistic approach to minority in Korea. Firstly, this article defines the concept of ‘minority’ and looks around its socio-historical background and implication. And then, several types of minority can be divided on the basis of its formative period and birthplace. As the next step, two forms of sociolinguistic approach to minority, that is, ‘linguistic human right approach’ and ‘linguistic citizenship approach’ are presented. This article cannot provide a detailed analysis and an alternative, but affords an opportunity to point out the significance and the limit of these two approaches. Finally, this article is concluded by proposing the cultural restructurization of the diversity and the uniformity in Korean society which includes its minority, and by presenting some sociolinguistic tasks related to the abolition of discrimination against minority and guarantee of its linguistic right.

In Korean, there are many words which have the identical or similar meaning but different honorific usages. The words 'gamsahada' and 'gomapda' (thank) are used differently though they have the similar meaning. Korean speakers think that 'gamsahada', a loanword from Chinese, sounds far more polite than the pure Korean counterpart 'gomapda'. In this regard, for the most time, we use 'gamsahada' for a person with a higher rank than us, instead of using 'gomapda'. By contrast, we can say 'gomapda' to a person who has a lower rank than us. The two words have no difference in the propositional meaning. Nonetheless, the facts that they are used differently in connection with the relation of speaker and hearer imply that they have different functions in the use of honorifics. In this paper, we aim to analyze 'gamsahada' and 'gomapda' from the sociolinguistic perspective. We will use the data of modern Korean corpus of KAIST to understand how the two words are used differently in connection with the relationship between the speakers and the hearers. Furthermore, we identify the difference of usages by means of analyzing that they have what distribution or relative importance at the speech levels of hearer honorifics. This study is not only useful attempt for clarifying the detailed features of Korean honorifics, but also an essential task for understanding the Korean language profoundly.

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 14(2). This paper explores the characteristics of feminine and masculine language use through an examination of word frequency in modern Korean novels. Through several blind tests of sample paragraphs from sixteen novels by Kong Seon-ok, Kim So-jin, Shin Kyeong-suk, and Yun Dae-nyeong, subjects were required to identify the gender of the author. The most striking result of the blind tests involved the unanimous identification of two paragraphs from the same novel as feminine. Applying the monoconc program to this novel by Shin Kyeong-suk, an analysis was conducted on word frequency. The result showed that there was a high frequency of words that functioned as hedges, mitigators, and positive back-channel cues. Taking these words that apparently led the blind test subjects to deem the author of Shin's novel to be feminine, a word search was conducted for the other fifteen novels. Though certain words in Shin's novels showed a similar rate of frequency, it was discovered that they involved different collocations. Hence, it may be speculated that this brought about a more mixed response from the blind test subjects. Such explorations show that the perception of feminine/masculine language use involves not only individual words but more importantly, their collocation within sentences.

Cho, Tae-rin. 2006. Positions on the Status and the Signification of Sociolinguistics. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 14(1). The purpose of this article is to examine the status and the signification of sociolinguistics by providing a comparative analysis of the various positions on this issue. Numerous positions have been distinguished too simply by denominations such as ‘OO sociolinguistics’ but have to be classified by criteria which show their essential difference (i.e., sphere of the object of study, relation with neighboring fields, autonomy as a field of science, epistemological viewpoint, consideration for the language user, viewpoint of the society, relation with real problems, etc.). After a brief examination of the logic, persuasiveness and limits of each position, this article clarifies its own position by offering a conceptual definition of sociolinguistics as a ‘study of the dynamic interaction between language, language user and social structure from a trans-disciplinary, hermeneutic and participatory point of view’. This discussion will contribute to elucidating the nature and the actual reality of sociolinguistics and exploring ideal ways toward its future development.