This study aimed to investigate the language usage of outdoor advertisements and find ways to improve it from the perspective of public language. Anyone is exposed to signboards without limitations, and it allows the public to learn fixed language forms for a long time. Therefore, it has both direct and indirect effects on the public’s language lives. This study focuses on sign language as a public language. Here, signboards from four districts in Gyeonggi-do were collected and analyzed in three ways. Signboards marked only in Korean accounted for a relatively large proportion of the main words, whereas mixed types of characters were used together in the subwords. In addition, there were cases of intentional violation of the language norm and listed only the initial consonants, those conscious of ambiguity. Results show that follow-up studies, such as conducting an additional survey, designating a demonstration area for the practical maintenance of sign language, and preparing guidelines for the production of outdoor advertisements, are expected to continue.

This study aims to to identify specific terms used in the documents of public organizations in order to assess the need to replace them for general comprehension by the public and to gain an understanding of how public organization officials and the public (those who visit the organizations) perceive those words. With their cooperation, the terms (used in press releases), guidance practices, notices, and website posting of Siheung Urban Corporation were collected, and 64 terms were selected through word segmentation of 300,000 words and morphological analysis. Next, a survey was conducted to determine the need for improvement of specific terms and the appropriateness of the alternative terms. The survey results showed an average v alue o f 3.04 (out of 4) f or t he n eed to r efinement of terms. The alternative terms received an average appropriateness value of 3.21 (out of 4). As a result of examining terms that require replacement by vocabulary type, it was found that E nglish a crony ms s uch as VOC, CS, AED, B L scored an a verage o f 3.23 points, indicating that replacement was most necessary. This survey of public organization officials and the public suggests that acronyms urgently need to be replaced in public documents.

This study examines the concept of Korean ethnicity by looking into how the Choseonjok, ethnic return migrants from China, are perceived in online news comments. Data were collected from 3,109 comments, which were written in response to 28 news articles regarding the Choseonjok, and analyzed using a Python-based text-mining technique and critical discourse analysis. The findings show that the commenters perceived the Choseonjok negatively, including as potential criminals or social vice. They not only placed the Choseonjok in an inferior position to pure Koreans but also excluded them from the category of compatriots, arguing that speaking the same language and sharing a similar appearance were not enough to make the ethnic return migrants Korean compatriots. This study critically demonstrates how a group of ethnic return migrants is depicted in online public discourses and how this portrayal can shed light on the conceptualization of Korean ethnicity in this era of multiculturalism.

The following study analyzes the linguistic landscape of governmental public signs with focus on whether language rights are being fulfilled, in Garibong-Dong, Seoul, which has a high proportion of people with Chinese citizenship in Korea, most of whom are Korean-Chinese, utilizing “Language Rights of Linguistic Minorities: A Practical Guide for Implementation” (Izsák-Ndiaye, 2013) published by the UN OHCHR (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) as a framework to see whether language rights are being fulfilled by governmental public signs. The study includes interviews with two workers of Korea Support Center for Foreign Workers about whether language rights of Garibong-dong's residents could be affected by the linguistic landscape and what efforts could the governments make for residents.

The purpose of this study is to define the problems that the public faces in regard to the public language and try to propose measures to solve them. For the objective study, we have set up the genres of the public language and its requirements. The genres of the public language includes the legal writing, press release, public notice, articles, public address and instruction. We have set up 'intelligibility' as a crucial category for the public language, the requirements to achieve that have 'politeness', 'coercive & authoritarian expression', 'discriminating expression', 'content completion', 'logicality', 'the quantity of information', 'conveying the message', 'length of sentences', 'use of terms' and 'visual convenience'. The result reveals the most dissatisfaction of requirements has been shown about the 'easy and friendly terms', followed by the 'visual convenience'. The highest dissatisfaction of genres has found on the legal writing, followed by the public notice, articles and press release. Along with these findings, the relevant studies and discussions must be continued to reduce the level of dissatisfaction on pubic language.