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There have been various discussions as to women's images and roles depicted in mass media. I would like to show in this paper how men's and women's roles are presented in the programs and what sorts of the words are used for women as well. The target subjects in this research were news programs, educational programs, and entertainment programs dealing with current affairs broadcasted in the 3 broadcasting stations(KBS, MBC and SBS) during 2 weeks from May 1st through 14th, 2006. I am sure that this research clearly illustrates women's social status in mass media through specific data. I also hope that it helps us to know how our ideas of women in society have changed.

This study examines the background, motivation and purpose of the creation of Hunminjeongeum, which previous research has not poured much attention. The study makes multiple categorization with regard to the motivation and purposes revealed in the preface written by King Sejong. It divides the intention of Hunminjeongeum into two parts: politics-society (p-s) and language-culture(l-c). As for the background fact of p-s, I mentioned the needs of edification and, for the l-c part, I mentioned contradictory relation between the spoken language and the written language through Chinese writing and Idu(吏讀). Motivation and purposes are again divided into a main part and a secondary part. For the main side of p-s factor, I dealt with the efficiency of edification policy and edification purpose. This part also embraces the laws and ordinances regarding agricultural knowledge. And for the l-c factor, I mentioned the problems in the distribution of documents and in the communication with lower classes through Chinese writing and Idu. The secondary part is also divided into p-s and l-c factors. The minor section regarding the motivation and purposes of p-s factor is the disorder of the earlier period of the Joseon dynasty and the justification of the dynasty. For the minor section regarding the motivation and purposes of l-c factor is the confusion of the Chinese pronunciation. Through this classification, this study aims to help to grasp the true meaning and process of the creation of Hunminjeongeum.

The purpose of this paper is to cross-culturally analyze the meaning of 'love' in Korean and American pop lyrics of 1980's. Pointing out that the information provided by dictionaries is not sufficient to understand the cultural meaning of 'love', the corpus analytic method of semantic prosody is introduced as it is explicated by Hunston (2002). Using this semantic prosody technique, three different sets of pop lyrics are analyzed with WordSmith Tools software. The three data sets, one Korean and two American, represent 150 pop lyrics. Specifically, these texts are analyzed in terms of distribution patterns of 'love' in the lyrics. First, the modification pattern of 'love' is investigated. It is found that the Korean data is significantly skewed toward negative expressions, producing negative semantic prosody of 'love', while the American data which reflect American culture is overwhelmingly skewed toward positive expressions, producing positive semantic prosody. That is, Koreans experience 'love' in a fairly negative terms in their pop music, while Americans basically treat it positively. Interestingly, the American pop lyrics popular with the Korean public show in-between characteristics. Next, the predication patterns of 'love' are investigated when it plays the role of subject NP. The result again shows that these two cultures define 'love' drastically differently in their pop music. In sum, the semantic prosody technique proved to be useful as an analytic method for cross-cultural studies.

From the perspective of conversation analysis, this study aims to explore the interactional aspects of the Korean wh-words mwe and way with reference to their functions as discourse markers. The examination of conversation data reveals that the discourse markers mwe and way can be used as conversation fillers, filling in a necessary interactional space when the speaker encounters trouble in producing the next item due; way is found to more actively solicit the hearer's involvement or uptake than mwe. The discourse markers mwe and way are also found to be employed as a hedging device and a boosting device respectively often in disaffiliative actions. Mwe helps to mitigate the import of the statement by virtue of its sense of underestimation or downtoning while way helps to increase the force of an utterance while introducing a negative tone. The various interactional functions of mwe and way are claimed to be derived from their distinctive referential meanings; mwe as signifying that ‘something is uncertain to the speaker’, and way as signifying that 'something is questionable, problematic, unexpected, and extraordinary to the speaker'.

This study aims to see the change of language attitude in Korea by comparing research done in 1988 and research done in 2005. The research in 1988 and the research in 2005 have in common four domains of language attitude questions. The four themes are the standard language and dialect, honorific, loan words, the use of Chinese letters and the Roman alphabet. Koreans have changed their attitude toward standard language and dialect. They acknowledge the need of a standard language and many people(84.6%) agreed that people on television programs have to use a standard language. Koreans still have a positive attitude toward the use of the honorific. Analyzing the attitude of the honorific revealed that the status of husbands and wives have changed for the better(the status of wife is up). In business the age of speakers has more influence on the use of honorific more than the status of the speakers. Koreans have also changed their attitude towards the loan words. They had a negative attitude about the loan words but this attitude has changed. The attitude towards the use of Chinese letters and the Roman alphabet have changed as well. Koreans have a more positive attitude toward the Roman alphabet and the need of learning Chinese letters has increased. On the basis of these results, we will predict the change in language and implement a language policy.

It is very natural to assume that almost all languages of the world have the kinship terms for the siblings of the same blood. Generally sex and age are the main factors to determine the terms for the siblings. It is possible to classify eight types of the sibling terms on the basis of sex and age of the alter. Among the eight types, however, only three are very common and the other five types are logically possible but rare in reality. In this paper, the author tries to postulate two universal principles to determine the types of sibling terms : (a) Sex has priority over age. (b) Less terms are used for the younger alters than the elders. Though the Korean kinship system of the siblings acts up to the principles, it shows some peculiarities compared to the systems of other languages. While most languages use the factors of sex and age of the alters to divide the relations of siblings, Korean adds the sex of the ego to these factors. If the ego and the alter are of the same sex, two terms on the basis of age are necessary to refer to the younger and the elder alters in the Middle Korean. On the contrary, if the ego and the alter are of the different sex, the heterosexuality functions as a distinctive factor and only one term is used to the alters, for whom the factor of age doesn't work. The factors affecting the system of sibling terms have changed from the Middle Korean and the homosexuality of ego and alter doesn't work any longer in the contemporary Korean. In addition to this change, the semantic shifts of dongsaeng(sibling), nui(sister) and orabi(brother) also contribute to build the new sibling system of Korean.

In Korean, there are many words which have the identical or similar meaning but different honorific usages. The words 'gamsahada' and 'gomapda' (thank) are used differently though they have the similar meaning. Korean speakers think that 'gamsahada', a loanword from Chinese, sounds far more polite than the pure Korean counterpart 'gomapda'. In this regard, for the most time, we use 'gamsahada' for a person with a higher rank than us, instead of using 'gomapda'. By contrast, we can say 'gomapda' to a person who has a lower rank than us. The two words have no difference in the propositional meaning. Nonetheless, the facts that they are used differently in connection with the relation of speaker and hearer imply that they have different functions in the use of honorifics. In this paper, we aim to analyze 'gamsahada' and 'gomapda' from the sociolinguistic perspective. We will use the data of modern Korean corpus of KAIST to understand how the two words are used differently in connection with the relationship between the speakers and the hearers. Furthermore, we identify the difference of usages by means of analyzing that they have what distribution or relative importance at the speech levels of hearer honorifics. This study is not only useful attempt for clarifying the detailed features of Korean honorifics, but also an essential task for understanding the Korean language profoundly.

The purpose of this study is to explore communicative tasks carried out in global financial organizations in Korea. In particular, we attempt to find out some of the communicative tasks that employees are required to perform in their daily work settings. Interviews were conducted with twenty nine employees at the global financial firms such as Citibank, Goldman Sach, ABN AMBRO, and Credit Sussise. Interviewees were asked about (1) daily communicative tasks they carry out in English and in Korean at work, (2) the difficulty they encounter communicating in English and in Korean for tasks at work, and (3) the perceived needs to improve communication skills for tasks at work. The responses of the interviewees were categorized, coded, and analyzed qualitatively. Based on the findings, several preliminary conclusions are made along with suggestions on communication education for employees in financial sectors.

This study is an attempt to make a detailed description of the pronunciation features of an African American speaker from Cleveland, Ohio in the U.S.A. Most of the description is devoted to the pronunciation features of the subject's speech even though some lexical and grammatical aspects will also be noted. The present study shows that despite some apparent pronunciation differences, the subject's speech and the Standard American English share essentially the same underlying phonemic inventories. Even though no systematic attempt to associate it with any given social or regional dialect is made, the subject's speech is assumed to belong to the Great Lakes Dialects. The subject's speech was observed to exhibit some influence of the Northern Cities Shift, a chain vowel shift observed in the Great Lakes Dialects, yet, the influence was sporadic lexically: the vowel shift was not complete enough to posit an altered phonemic system for his speech. Granting this, even the limited findings of the present study imply that the subject's speech does indeed exhibit influence of the on-going sound change in the region and makes an excellent material for further study of the gradual sociolinguistic sound change.

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 15(1). The purpose of this study is to examine the types of functional features of English language use in Korea's EFL contexts, and to find out the attitude toward and possibilities for organizing English speaking communities to be designed for more communicative situations. The social contexts of English language use in Korea are rather limited in terms of their scope, the number of English speakers, situational needs in daily life, i.e., there is no immediate sense of practical needs. The social settings for the Korean L1 run the whole gamut of education, business, and general life, yet international demands are so great that they require additional English needs regardless of local values in practice. This paper selected two groups, college students and company workers whose expectations of English use may be representative of Koreans in general. The results showed a dichotomy between language functional issues and the symbolic, imaginative status of English in Korea. In addition, the subjects' responses to the need for an English speaking community were contradictory to their attitude towards getting involved in creating that community. The needs are there, but they do not have a clear idea how to comply with these needs.

Hong, Mi-ju. 2007. A Study on the aspect of language attitude. The Sociolinguistics Journal of Korea 15(1). The objective is to investigate the aspect of language attitude, people's knowledge about standard form, and attitude toward standard form. Important findings from the questionnaire survey results can be summarized as follows. With an exception of 25% who are not really concerned about a norm, most of the participants think that they should defend a norm of language. However, when they realized their everyday language is not a norm, they show tendency to defend their use and think, there is no need to change it. Changing this two-fold language attitude seems to be the priority in leading people to use a standard form of language