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.

This study attempts to analyze the honorific system in Middle Age Korean through a sociolinguistic approach. Although this area has been researched from many viewpoints so that mentioning the status or necessity of the honorary hierarchy in Korean is unnecessary, it is not an exaggeration to state that there has not been any previous research to explain it from a sociolinguistic perspective. The reason is that it is difficult to explain the speaking environment and the relationship to listeners dearly because the language data in the fifteenth century exist in the form of literature. Considering the aspects of use or characteristics of the honor hierarchy, in roost cases a sociolinguistic perspective is necessary and should be applied to Middle Age Korean. This study defines the honorific system in Middle Age Korean as an 'absolute honor hierarchy' as opposed to a 'relative honor hierarchy' and aims to show the reason why there was a 'language step change' at that time. Furthermore, the importance of the 'solidarity' relationship in the real situation of society where the principle of 'power' dominated was explored.

The purpose of this research is to examine features of addressee honorifics by observing sentence endings used by the Jeongam village that consists of major speech group speakers from Chungcheongbuk-do and minor speech group speakers from Hamgyeongbuk-do. Addressee honorifics in the Jeongam dialect are distinct with respect to social status or social conditions such as social positional relationships between speaker and listener, the listener's native region, the occupation of the listener, intimacy between speaker and listener, and so on. The speakers of the Jeongam dialect recognize different levels of addressee honorifics such as 'Yeye, Yaya, Eungeung' and like the Hamgyeongbuk-do dialect it is possible to divide them into sub-levels. It is also observed that imperative and request sentence endings, which are used in the Jeongam dialect are a mixture of the Chungbuk cJjalect and the Hamgyeongbuk-do dialect. This is understood as an overlapping phenomena of the two dialects due to the fact that Hamgyeongbuk-do dialect speakers outnumber Jeongam speakers where Chungbuk dialect speakers live. This indicates that features of the Chungbuk dialect and the Hamgyeongbuk-do dialect coexist in the Jeongam dialect through borrowing.

Kim, Haeyeon. 2004. Discourse Studies in Sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 12(2). Among many topics in sociolinguistics, many discourse studies have been carried out to explore how social factors are related to the use of language. The purpose of this research is examine assumptions, methods, and major topics/issues of the following discourse approaches to sociolinguistics: (i) interactional sociolinguistics, (ii) ethnography of speaking/communication, (iii) variation analysis, (iv) conversation analysis, and (v) critical discourse analysis, among others. In doing so, this paper first examines the developmental history of sociolinguistic research in discourse, discussing researchers' interest in discourse in exploring social activities and practices. After that, it starts with the interactional sociolinguistic approach to discourse analysis, discussing the notion such as Gumperz's contextualization cues. It also discusses Hymes' theory of ethnograpy of speaking/communication in exploring the relationship between communication and social contexts. In addition, it discusses Labov's variation analysis, particularly focusing on his analysis of narrative discourse. After that, this paper shows major topics and methods of conversation analysis, which deals with social actions reflected in talk-in-interaction. It also deals with critical discourse analysis which deals with many social issues, viewing language as a reality-creating social practice. Finally, this paper shows that many approaches to discourse in sociolinguistics have contributed to a better understanding of the roles of social factors reflected in the use of language.

Lee, Gil-Jae. 2004. A Sociolinguistic Research on the Restructuring of Declension and Inflection Stems in Naju Dialect. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 12(1). This research investigates, by examining the synchronic distribution of linguistic variants across social classes, the directions and the social implications of the restructuring of the declension and inflection stems in Naju dialect. Past research of the restructuring of the stems has been focused only on the synchronic variation which reflects the last phase of linguistic change. For example, the conclusion of past research that ‘the ᄃ-irregular inflected words’ have been restructured to ‘Xㄹㆆ’ or ‘X’ has not shown restructuring processes but only the results of linguistic change. In other words, the restructured ‘Xㄹㆆ’ or ‘X ’ only shows linguistic variation, but it does not explain what it means in the linguistic society and its social meaning. Furthermore, even if the simplification is a general tendency of restructuring, the results of past research cannot prove what variants would survive at the next phase. This study, accordingly, examines the stem restructuring processes and the directions of transformation concentrating on the nouns with stem endings ‘ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅌ’ and the inflected words with stem endings ‘ㅅ, ㄷ’ in Naju dialect.

Park, Youngsoon. 2004. Current Trends and Future Prospects of Sociolinguitics Research in Korea. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 12(1). This study aims to review the sociolinguistic research currently going on and to find out the key issues and theoretical arguments in sociolinguistics. Especially studies in socio-historical linguistics by Labov (2001), Trudgill (2002), Eckert (2000), and Milroy and Gorden (2003) are reviewed. These studies deal with gender and social class as the main social variables which lead linguistic changes in progress. They, in particular, suggest that women tend to be the leader of linguistic changes. That is, at the beginning of change, women's favored linguistic form tends to be local and non-standard, but later it becomes the superlocal norm which is different from the standard norm. Several scholars in this field conducted studies examining Korean data; they also found that gender and social class play a central role in linguistic changes. But more in-depth Korean sociolinguistic research is in demand to find out whether linguistic changes in progress in Korean also follow the general pattern proposed by Labov and others.

Kim, Hyesouk. 2004. Theories and Developments of Sociolinguistics. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 12(1). The purpose of this article is to understand a current status of sociolinguistics by reviewing previous studies and attempting to see the future of the discipline as linguistics. As Milroy and Milroy (1990:485) have defined, sociolinguistics is "the study of language as it is used by real speakers in social and situational contexts of use." It has four characteristics. (1)Those who study sociolinguistics are linguists but they have great interests in adding social variables to pure linguistics. Sociolinguists believe that criteria of correct language usage be based upon not only pure grammatical standards but also societal norms in terms of its relevance and general acceptance. (2)The goal of sociolinguistics is to identify a co-variance between language and society and to establish a theory of language performance. (3)Sociolinguistics regards synchronical and diachronical traits as an identical frame. (4)Sociolingustics pays attention to language usage in societal contexts and extends language competence, which is the main subject of pure linguistics, to communicative competence. D. Hymes predicts that the core areas of linguistics is actually sociolinguistics and, thus, the prefix 'socio' will not be necessary. Although we still have that prefix, it is true that sociolingusitics has already had its own identity and is growing rapidly as an independent discipline. In conclusion, this paper argues that sociolinguistics will receive more attention from linguists and play a key role in linguistics by explaining variation in language more systematically, and by interpreting and eliminating language conflict in everyday life.