This study examines the types and usage of abbreviations of foreign proper nouns used in media articles based on a basic understanding of Korean abbreviations, and seeks to identify the effects of their use. Abbreviations of foreign proper nouns are widely used for reasons of economy, ease of identification, and to facilitate the provision of information. There are two types of abbreviations. Romanized abbreviations are characterized by strong economy and identifiability but have difficulty conveying meaning, and they also distinguish the social classes of speakers by their knowledge of loan words or understanding of foreign languages, thereby threatening to undermine social integration. In contrast, abbreviations translated into Korean have the advantage of easily conveying meaning and not hindering language accessibility, but they are weak in identifiability and their number remains exceedingly small. The reason for the excessive use of Romanized abbreviations by the government and media seems to be that no provision for Korean translation abbreviations was made earlier. It is necessary to create and publicize Korean abbreviations widely, as well as create good Korean translation terms with the introduction of foreign proper nouns into Korean.

숫자는 객관적 수치를 나타내는 수량 전달의 기본적인 기능 외에도 다양한 함축적인 의미를 전달하는 역할을 할 수 있다. 특히 중국어에는 종종 숫자와 조합된 줄임 말을 활용하여 어떤 대상을 대신하여 지칭하거나, 주요 내용을 포괄하여 명시하기도 한다. 그중 가장 익숙한 예시로 ‘两会’는 ‘全国人民代表大会’(전국 인민 대표 대회)와 ‘政治协商会议’(정치 협상 회의)를 통칭하는 말이며, ‘一国两制는 “하나의 국가 내에 두 체제를 허용 한다”는 의미이다. 이와 같은 단어 구성을 숫자 줄임말이라 부른다. 숫자 줄임말은 특히 사회 정책이나 주요 사안을 제시하는 정부 공문서에서 자주 볼 수 있는데, 각각 상이한 숫자가 다양한 형태로 조합되어 나타난다. 또 일부 숫자는 표면적으로는 같은 숫자라 하더라도 상황에 따라 각기 다른 의미나 기능을 나타낼 수 있으며, 숫자를 제외한 부분 또한 간단한 단어에서부터 구, 비교적 긴 문장까지 다양한 형식을 띠고 있다. 본고는 중국 정부 공문서에서 나타나는 숫자 줄임말의 내부 형식을 언어학적으로 분석하고, 그것에 함축된 의미도 살펴보고자 한다.

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.