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Kim, Sang-Joon. 2003. A Study on the Stylistic Characteristics of Broadcasting News of South and North Korea. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 11(1). The summit between South and North Korea in June 15, 2000 was an epoch-making event in the historical relationship of South and North Korea. One of the most remarkable things in the broadcastings related to the summit conference was the language use of North Korea, i.e., linguistic expressions and stylistic characteristics in the broadcasting. The broadcasting of North Korea follows a thorough principle, i.e., deification of the absolute monarch, and uses deific metaphors. This research compares and investigates stylistic characteristics in South and North Korea broadcasting examining the broadcasting contents during the summit. The foci of this research lie in the style of language, especially the use of modifiers and metaphors in the broadcasting of South and North Korea.Remarkable results were found in the comparison of the stylistic characteristics of report-broadcastings in South and North Korea. Investigating changes in stylistic characteristics, I find the change from a literary to colloquial style, and from subjective to objective expressions in South Korea, while no major changes were observed in North Korea.

Kim, Yong-Jin. 2003. A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Newspaper Editorial Titles. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 11(1). This paper examines newspaper editorial titles from a sociolinguistic perspective. From the period of 1979-1999, five maximally different years (1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999) were selected to see how the use of editorial titles changed. These five years represent different administrations and different socio-political situations in Korea.For the study, the Chosun Ilbo was chosen as a representative newspaper of contemporary Korea. First, the ratio of domestic coverage was examined for these five periods to see how the newspaper gained freedom to speak about national affairs. Second, the ratio of political coverage was analyzed to see how the newspaper came to acquire freedom to talk about political situations of the nation. Third, the question as to how often the government became the target of editorials was addressed and how different presidents from different periods were referred to to see the power relations between the presidents and the press. And finally, the linguistic forms of the editorial titles were analyzed. It was found that while the noun phrase type has decreased dramatically, other linguistic forms, most notably the question forms, have come to be used more as these new forms seem to allow the editorial writers more powerful discourse frames. This study illustrates the validity of newspaper editorial titles as a legitimate object of a sociolinguistic inquiry. Editorial titles are found to reveal discourse frames that newspapers take in editorials.

Kim, HeeSook. 2003. A Paradoxical Usage of Kinship Address Terms in Modern Korean. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 11(1). Nobody can doubt that South Korea has been rapidly modernizing not only economically but also socially. It is not too much to say that almost all facets of the South Korean society have been under what modernization is supposed to bring about such as openness, simplification, etc. Language is not an exception. However, curiously, the address terms used in modern Korean seems to get complicated rather than simplified; simply put, people tend to apply much more address terms than before. For this phenomenon, South Koreans' widespread adoption of those terms which were used among the family members in the pre-modern period or their derivatives outside their families appears greatly responsible. In this paper, I try to tackle this puzzle. I suggest that we can attribute it to the Korean linguistic characteristic of not revealing subjects explicitly, the proliferation of small businesses, the still influential highly complex honorific system and the general tendency to pursue gender-neutral address terms in modern society. With this model, we could also forecast that at least in the short run, the seemingly contradictory trend of complicating address terms in Korean under ever-simplifying social hierarchy would continue.

Hyung-nam Noh. 2003. Liminoid in a Play of Words in Digital Communitas. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 11(1). This paper, from a sociolinguistic point of view, criticizes the serious phenomenon and behavior performed by Korean youngsters which are even observed in Korean wordplay expressions used in various kinds of communication media in digital communitas. The grave concern is caused by the general Korean youths of nowadays. During a play of words Korean youngsters take great fun in liminoid according to circumstances as much as they are familiar with, while communicating with each other on internet or computer network the degree of capability of the wordplay having access to digitopia or dystopia i.e. liminoid is also proved as the expression of attention and the feeling of intimacy and solidarity of the users' group because of its essential property evaluated from jesting language for the purpose of linguistic exuberance with humor and wit deriving a true gratification from liminoid of the wordplay.

Son, Chunseop, Lee, Geonhwan & Jo, Gyeongsun. 2003. A Study of the Aspects of Honorifics Usage by College Professors. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 11(1). This research aims to explore how honorifics usage is used by the faculty society based on sociolinguistic observations, and analyzes linguistic strategies of honorifics usage by the faculty society. The investigated group is professors who are working at the humanities college of a local national university. It was found that faculty members decide an honorific speech level according to age rather than status, but that professors usually preserve the use of honorifics for mutual respect. Although the most decisive factor in the honorific usage is age, seniority at the college, formality and intimacy also play important roles. Linguistic strategies adopted by the faculty society are for the following purposes: to show respect to the hearer, to receive compensation or inducement from the hearer, to mediate the mental distance between speaker and hearer, to dissolve disagreements of honorifics-deciding factors, to expose the speaker's authority, and to mediate situational changes. Through this study, we have reached the conclusion that the faculty society is influenced by various social factors and make many efforts to dissolve social distances and disagreements through linguistic strategies.

Hong, Mi-Ju. 2003. A Sociolinguistic Analysis on the Use of Substantive Stem-final Consonants (ch) and (th). The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 11(1). The aim of this study is to explain the direction of the phonological variations and changes in Korean through analyzing the co-variation of sociolinguistic parameters with phonological material appearing in the speech community of Daegu. The 33 imformants were classified by age and degree of education for sociolinguistic analysis. The phonological variables analyzed in this study are the substantive stem-final consonants: ch, th. It was found that variations in the everyday pronunciation of ch→s, th→s and th→ch(nominative form and objective form) increased by generations, appearing especially in the younger generation. These same variations were also more prevalent in those with a higher degree of education. However, the use of ch→th increased in those with a lower degree of education. Therefore from a synchronical view, these realizations are contemporary changes in Daegu. If these same changes continue, the future will see their use in a greater proportion of each subsequent generation. Especially ch→s and th→s realization may be an infancy step in those progress.