Park, Eunha. (2023). “Analysis of Language Use and Characteristics of Korean Bestseller Book Titles over the Past Five Years”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 31(4), 175-201. This study analyzed linguistic composition of titles of recent best-selling books in online bookstores over the past five years. Additionally, we sought to understand the characteristics and social aspects of the words appearing in the book. The results of the analysis of the composition of book names show that the number of book titles written in Hangul or with Hangul and numbers was the most common over the past five years. In terms of length, the book titles were most frequently between four and eight syllables long. The most frequent names utilized nouns or noun phrases, followed by full sentences, and the plain-type Haerache ranked third. As a result of analyzing the words in the title of the books, when the title of the book over the past five years was displayed in Wordcloud, the words in the TOEIC test books and the title of the comic books were visualized in large format. As a result of examining the frequency of words in Boyant-tool, the number of numbers(1, 2) that did not appear in Wordcloud was the highest, followed by words from TOEIC test books and comic books.

This article examines the variations found in the use of ‘eung’ and ‘eo’ in TV dramas and their scripts. Five series of TV drama televised during the 2010s were used as the data for this study, and 3,202 tokens of {eung} and {eo} were collected from the data. Statistical analyses were conducted using Goldvarb X and LVS (Language Variation Suite). Nine variants of {eung} and six variants of {eo} were observed in the data. Regression analyses showed that ‘discourse function’ of {eung} and {eo} was the primary constraint influencing the variation examined. Age was analyzed as another statistically significant factor: Older people used {eung} variants more often than younger people. This result may be taken to indicate either age grading or linguistic change in progress; further research based on careful methodology is in order for its accurate interpretation.

Language use is divided into production and understanding in which each component has its own sub-parts, although they s hare core language p art (its f orm) in common. Given memory-based approach, it is claimed, at least five layers of our mind must simultaneously be activated to pass in a retrospective cycle in language use. A surface form, or a flow of sounds or letters, leads to a trigger to find an intention-in-action in any verbal communication that fits the situation of communication. This dramatically opens up a new phase to focus, once we deal with the overall aspect of language use.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the Japanese word, ‘omakase’, is used in Korean newspaper articles and analyze its inflow and settlement in the sociolinguistic background. The word, ‘Omakase’, is frequently used in newspaper articles in the areas of culture, economy, international, and local. It is commonly used in the area of food and beverage, and in some cases, it extends to other areas, such as the economy. The cases of uses in the existing category are sushi omakase, sashimi omakase, and Japanese food omakase. The cases of extensive uses in the food and beverage category are Korean beef omakase, native chicken omakase, seafood omakase, homemade meal omakase, and lamb chops omakase. Examples of use in other categories or creating hybrid w ords include o makase e conomy, omakase n ail, imokase, and Haenyeo-kase. The use of omakase in newspaper articles has gradually increased since 2002, and it has been increasing dramatically since 2013. The reason of its extensive use is considered the influence of various social backgrounds, for instance, the opening of Japanese pop culture or the entryof Japanese franchises into Korea.

The purpose of this study is to explore the language attitude of 20s toward genderlect. This study focused on the representation of genderlects in South Korean dramas, and was based on the media reception theory. In the research, 32 men and women aged between 19 to 24 were interviewed in focus groups. The data were analyzed qualitatively. The research results are as follows. First, the participants partially recognized the characteristics of genderlect which were reported in previous studies, and the opinions among the participants hardly agreed. Second, the way which dramas represent genderlect was shown as breaking away from traditional gender roles and the reestablishment of overturned gender roles. Third, this study categorized the positive and negative responses of the participants toward the use of gender language. Fourth, participants’ attitude toward genderlect was gradually arranged from negotiation to opposition. This study is meaningful in that it comprehensively demonstrated the language attitudes of the younger generation. However, there still remains a margin on further research in consideration of non-binary participants and broader contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the usage of address terms for professors by undergraduate and graduate students by the sociolinguistic methodology. To this end, this paper applied an integrated approach that combines quantitative analysis based on the response results of multiple-choice questions in the survey and qualitative interpretation based on the response results of subjective questions in both the survey and the in-depth interview. First, through quantitative analysis of the variation in the use of address terms, it was confirmed that “professor” occupies an overwhelming proportion and that the academic field of the speaker is the most important factor. The higher the intimacy with professors, the more “teacher” was used. Next, through the qualitative interpretation of the reason and meaning of using their choice of address terms, the most basic and superficial reason was to follow the experiences and customs in the affiliated community. The use of “professor” had some reasons or meanings such as meeting courtesy and expectations, highlighting privileged status, and equal respect for all the faculty members, whereas “teacher” was used as an expression of intimacy.

이 글은 싱가포르 화교 언어공동체에서 최근 ‘구어 싱가포르 영어’, 즉 싱글리시(Si nglish)와 ‘표준 싱가포르 영어’의 우세 속에서 중국어가 경험하고 있는 위상의 변화를 사회언어학적 관점에서 서술하는 것이 목적이다. 싱가포르의 화교 언어공동체에서는 표준중국어와 기타 중국계 언어들, 싱다린(Singdarin) 등 다양한 중국어가 사용 되고 있다. 싱가포르, 특히 싱가포르의 화교 언어공동체의 다중언어사용은 세계 시민이자 싱가포르인, 화인(華人)으로서의 하이브리드 정체성과 관련을 맺고, 각각의 언어들은 다층적인 정체성 위계를 나타내는 정체성 표지이다. ‘2020년 인구센서스’가 보여주듯이, 최근 싱가포르에서 영어의 확산과 중국어의 위축 추이는 명확하다. 싱가 포르에서 이민자들의 언어인 중국어는 더 이상 지배적인 언어가 아니고, 화교 언어 공동체의 대부분의 아이들은 지배적인 언어인 영어와 함께 성장하면서 영어를 능통하게 구사하지만 중국어를 유창하게 구사하는 이들은 일부에 불과하다. 싱가포르에서 중국어는 점점 유산어의 성격을 띠고 있다.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the term ‘agassi’ by analyzing the pattern of actual language use of it in the aspect of sociolinguistic perspective. Through this work, it will be possible to figure out the change of meaning of the ‘agassi’, and the causes of conflict situations of using it in modern society. In chapter 2, the difference between ‘agassi’ as an address term and as a reference term is represented. Chapter 3 shows the chronicle change in the use of ‘agassi’ being originated from its etymology, ‘agissi’. It turns out that the use of ‘agassi’ has evolved for in the order of Honorific form, kinship and Non-Honorific form. Chapter 4 investigates the tendency and its cause of the negative interpretation of ‘agassi’ in modern society. The reason why the address term ‘agassi’ causes social displeasure is because it is regarded as ‘sexual objectification’. It can be subdivided into three categories: ‘agassi’ is (1) the expression that emphasis sex in social life, (2) associated with specific occupational groups which is socially unacceptable, and (3) used often in the situation of sexual harassment.

This study is about meta-language used for teaching the Korean language in Serbia, where it is not a native language. This study examined meta-language for teaching preferred by Korean language learners of Serbia and explored efficient methods of meta-language use for teaching. First, meta-language and meta-language for teaching were discussed, and meta-language for Korean language teaching was defined. After setting up the research question and hypothesis, a survey was conducted on Korean language learners at the University of Niš in Serbia to determine their preferred meta-language for teaching. According to the survey, many learners wanted to take classes in ‘Korean-Serbian languages.’ Beginner and intermediate learners of vocabulary, grammar, and conversation preferred ‘Korean-Serbian’ meta-language for teaching, and advanced learners preferred ‘Korean’ meta-language for teaching. Based on such grounds and existing theories, this paper proposed a usage model of meta-language for teaching in beginner, intermediate, and advanced Korean language classes in Serbia and presented the necessity for fostering professional Korean language instructors overseas.

The purpose of this study is to examine a corpus regarding the use of discriminatory language and its perceptions. First, we examined informal job titles that indicate social views regarding the respective workers, and then we analyzed expressions indicating negative perceptions as well as negative expressions about occupations and tasks to determine negative views or attitudes toward the workers. Summarizing the results of the analysis, ganhowon(nurse) and cheongsobu(cleaner) as inappropriate titles, nogada(physical labor) and gongdori/gongsuni(factory boy/girl) as expressions of negative perception, and nogada and wunjeonsu(driver) in negative expressions related to occupations and work occur with high frequency. Ganhowon is used with titles for women like eonni(older sister), agassi(lady), and Miss ○, cheongsobu and pachulbu(day maids) with the titles ajumma(tannie) and ajeossi(older man), wunjeonsu and gongsuni with the epithets nom(jerk) and nyeon(bitch), and nogada with the titles ilggun(workers) and inbu(laborers), and such terms as jjapsae(the fuss) with a epithet saeggi(jerk/bleeder) are used mainly as inappropriate titles. Bad behavior, deprecatory social treatment, and negligent discrimination are conveyed in these expressions of negative perception. The expressions related to occupation and work were mainly used for professionals doing less respected or socially lower work or who do not work well, and there were many expressions indicative of low status or lower rank in the job hierarchy. Lastly, references to appearance and sexuality were those most frequently used in expressions conveying other occupational discrimination, and were found to be used mainly for ganhowon and gongsuni who are young women.

This paper aims to explore how Korean-Chinese bilingual speakers process Korean final ending -ko. Korean-Chinese bilingual speakers from Yanbian participated in the masked priming experiments through a word judgment task. The masked priming experiments were designed to compare the subjects’ response under three different prime-target conditions: Identical Condition, Unrelated Condition, and Test Condition. The participants’ response time in the experiments was statistically analyzed in two different ways: i.e., subject (F1) analyses and item (F2) analyses. The results of both the subject analyses and the item analyses revealed full priming effects, as is usually found in native speakers’ morphological processing. These findings indicate that Chinese-Korean bilingual speakers are sensitive to each combining morpheme of morphologically complex words including Korean final ending -ko and their processing of the words are not dependent upon the lexical storage of the full form.

This article aims to examine what kinds of non-linguistic parameters correlate with the variations of the sentence-ending styles used in television news. Specifically, we focus on shifting between Hapsyo-style and Haeyo-style, two dominant kinds uttered in the register, and the variations in Haeyo, based on the results from the analysis of a news corpus. It turned out that whereas the two styles are both used, Haeyo is used much less than Hapsyo in the news. In the use of Haeyo as opposed to Hapsyo, the three different parameters such as the gender of the speaker, the role of the speaker, and the type of the news item are shown to have significant correlations. That is, the values of women, anchors, and the type of news items for specific hearers, have positive correlation to the use of Haeyo, contrary to the values of men, reporters, and the type of news items for abstract hearers. The parameter which have the strongest correlation to the use of Haeyo turned out to be the types of news items, followed by the role of speaker, and the gender of the speaker are shown to be the weakest one. Regarding the variations among the different forms belonging to Haeyo, we examined the diversity of the endings used, with special attention to the proportion of the endings originated from clause-linkers, and it turned out that the role of speaker and the type of news items are significant parameters, among which the former is relatively more relevant.

Reform and opening-up in China brought rapid changes in the society of ethnic Koreans in China. And those changes caused following changes in language identity and language attitude of those ethnic Koreans that eventually led to change in their language use. The present study investigates relation between changes in language identity and language attitude and their language use. The rates that Ethnic Koreans living in Jilin, China consider their mother language to be Korean(Joseon language, South Korean language and North Korean language) are different by their generations. Middle aged and older people tend more to consider Korean as their mother language compared to younger generation. Those two generations, however, showed opposed opinions about the future language they will use. More of older generation predicted that Korean will be rarely used among ethnic Koreans living in China in the future compared to younger generation. The difference of language identity and the attitude to the language across generations was reflected in their actual language use. Older generations use Korean in general.They may borrow Chinese words when they can’t come up with appropriate Korean words or sometimes show code mixing by using Chinese words and sentences while speaking in Korean. In generations younger than middle age, code mixing and code switching are more frequently observed when their conversation topics are Chinese politics and Chinese cultures. The youngest generation mainly uses Chinese and showed code switching most frequently among all generations. The language use observed differently among the generations is reflection of changes in language identity and language attitude.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the usage of address terms between professors in a Korean university upon the methodology of sociolinguistic variation studies. This study was conducted based on on-line questionnaire survey targeting 100 professors in an university situated in the metropolitan area. Address terms observed in this study are Gyosu(=professor)(+honorific ‘-nim), Seonsaeng(=teacher)(+’-nim’), Baksa(=doctor)(+‘-nim’), Saem/Ssaem(intimate abbreviation of Seonsaeng), etc. which are ordered by frequency. Factor groups considered in this study are addressor, addressee, and situation. The main results of this study are as in the following. (1) Addresser’s academic field, degree of intimacy relation with addressee, and addressee’s administrative position are main factors having influence on the usage of address terms between professors. (2) Addresser’s sex and age factors and addressee’s sex and academic field factors have little or no influence on the usage of address terms.

Liang, Bin. 2018. “A Study on the Language Attitude through the Use of Head Copies in Yanbian Area”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 26(1). 135~158. The purpose of this article is to study the language attitudes toward Yanbian, Korean, and Chinese through the use of head - copy language in the Yanbian area. The Yanbian bilingual speaker mixes the dialects of North Hamgyong, Korean, and Chinese. In order to analyze the use of language in the Yanbian area, it is necessary to accurately understand the language attitudes of Yanbian, Korean, and Chinese. ‘Language attitude’ is not only the evaluation and response of a speaker to a specific language, but a concrete action. The research on the language use patterns of the bilingual speakers in the Yanbian area can analyze the language attitudes for each language. Advertising language includes not only the function of information transmission but also cultural awareness of society. The attitude of language, which is one of the human consciousness forms, is also included in the advertising language and the attitude of language can be analyzed through the use of advertising language. In this paper, I will proceed with the SPSS chi-square test based on the usage of the head copy in the Yanbian area. If there is statistical significance, I will describe what kind of language attitude is displayed for each language.

Jeon, Hye-Young & Oh, Seon-Hye. 2017. “A Sociolinguistic Perspective on the Language of Journalism”. The sociolinguistics Jouranl of Korea 25(3). 231~258. This research aims to collect the social dialects used in the press society, to describe its meaning, and to analyze the morphemes of lexical forms and phrases. As a result of this work, we can document unrecorded lexical forms and phrases from a linguistic point of view, and answer the question on characteristics of journalism language. Most prior research on social disalects focused on the language of hierarchies, generations and races. However further research should be conducted on lexical forms and phrases per the occupation. We collected data by conducting personal interviews from November 2016 to March 2017. We had one hours interviews with 10 respondents who were working as reporters at Chosun Biz, Joongang Ilbo, Hankook Ilbo, JTBC, MBC, and Yonhap News. The collected variants were divided into three categories according to the usage method and described lexical meaning. Then, later we found lexical and pragmatic peculiarities of a social dialect such as abbreviations, loan words, compounds, duplicity, metaphoric expression and high context. This information will likely impact linguistics and journalism. It will be possible to purify Korean language and to unify the meanings of commonly used terms.

Lee, Jeongbok. 2016. “Unintentional Use of Discriminatory Expressions by Netizens”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 24(3). 345~377. The purpose of this study is to analyze the usages of discriminatory expressions used unintentionally by netizens on social network services (SNS), from a critical perspective, and to think about the problems and countermeasures of them. In chapter 2, we first review the previous studies related to the unintentional use of discriminatory expressions. Then we present three types of unintentional use of discriminatory expressions as ‘use discriminatory expressions in condition of changing the functions of them’, ‘use discriminatory expressions in condition of changing the target of discrimination’, ‘use discriminatory expressions in condition of not recognizing them’. In chapter 3, the unintentional usages of discriminatory expressions are analyzed upon the types of discriminatory expressions. In chapter 4, we present the problems of unintentional discriminatory expressions, and look for measures to prevent the use of them. Throughout all these discussions, we identified that netizens unintentionally use diverse expressions of discrimination on SNS, and the parties of discrimination are deeply hurt by the use of such expressions. The awareness and empathy of individual speakers are utmost important to prevent or eliminate the unintended use of discriminatory expressions. Along with them, efforts are needed urgently in fields of language education and language policy for reducing the use of these expressions and its negative impact.

Park Eun-ha. 2016. “Comparative Study of Linguistic Aspects Expressed in Cosmetic TV Commercials: With a Special Focus from 1960 to 1989 and from 2013 to 2015”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 24(1). 149~174. This study examines and compares characteristics of sentences, vocabularies, textual structures, and types of persuasion in cosmetics TV commercials that have aired before the 1980s (1960~1989) and in the last three years (2013~2015). The study consists of four parts, and the findings are as follows: First, in order of frequency of occurrences, “declarative sentences” ranks the first, followed by “imperative sentences” before the 1980s and “interrogative sentences” in the last three years. Word final endings reveal that nouns have been the most frequent in both periods, followed by haera style before the 1980s and haeyo style in the last three years. Second, this study examines the main topic and characteristics of vocabulary in cosmetics TV commercials. The results show that “skin” is the most frequent main topic in both periods. Remarkable topics in use indicate: “color” and “scent” before the 1980s, “moisture” and “anti-aging” in the last three years. In the use of foreign languages, alphabets have been in use for the written caption in the last 3 years, while Hangeul (Korean alphabet) were used for the written caption before the 1980s. Third, with regard to the textual structure, it is noted that the structural factors of the advertising texts were observed similarly. In the two periods under study, caption and female narrators texts have been the most frequently or mainly. Compared from 1960 to 1989 with from 2013 to 2015, male characters have appeared somewhat in the last three years while there have been no male characters before the 1980s. Finally, for the type of persuasion, “straightforward type” ranks the highest, followed by “economical type”, and “CM song type” before the 1980s, and “mixed type” among various types in the last three years.