KJC Korea
Journal Central

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea. Language purification, as a matter of language policy, should be handled very carefully, since it could be taken as a kind of conspiracy for exclusive nationalism or totalitarianism. In order to avoid these unexpected misunderstandings, we need to make every effort to seek morally and ideologically acceptable policies. From this point of view, I addressed the issue of Korean language purification/refinement(Gugeo Sunhwa) and discussed a new direction of 'Gugeo Sunhwa.' I suggest, as a corollary, that Korean language purification/refinement be replaced by 'Urimal Dadeumgi' (Korean language elutriation), so that it can attract interests of the community as a whole. We also need to make sure that Urimal Dadeumgi will help to enhance human right, effective communication, and the recognition of the current social attitude to language.

Today, use of the word ‘Gugeo(국어)’ is natural and taken as a matter of course. However, ‘Gugeo’ has actually only been in general use for about 100 years. To clarify the meaning and circumstances in which ‘Gugeo’ was first used, we examine the writings of Ju Si-gyeong, who is credited with being first person to actively use it. Although Ju Si-gyeong published a number of works related to language and script beginning from 1897, he did not start to regularly use ‘Gugeo’ in his writing until after 1906. However, it was around this time when he began to emphasize the relationship between language and nation; specifically, he argued that a nation’s independence and autonomy was closely related to language. Moreover, Ju Si-gyeong also proposed his own unique notation system, strongly stressing the need to transcribe ‘Gugeo’ in its basic, ‘as is’ form. Specifically, in this case ‘Gugeo’ did not refer to the actual pronunciations of words, but rather the abstract basic principles that made each utterance possible. To him letters must reflect not their actual pronunciation, but rather something abstract that makes that pronunciation possible.

This paper investigates the variation observed in the use of 'ye' and 'ne' in Korean, especially focusing on the suggestions of J. W. Kim(1985) and H. S. Kim(1998) that women use 'ne' in a higher frequency than men. This study is conducted on the basis of two types of data: 12 relatively recently released movies and 7 TV talkshows (baegbuntoron) produced by MBC. In the preliminary analysis of this lexical sociolinguistic variable two additional variants, 'e' and 'nye', were observed (besides 'ye' and 'ne'), especially the former accounting for as many as 9 percent of the tokens. Results of logistic regression analyses provide support to the genderlectal difference suggested by previous research, and also show that discourse functions of 'ye' and 'ne' and speaker-hearer age relationship can influence their usage as well. A significant idiolectal variation within two gender groups was also observed. Overall 'ye', not 'ne', was a more dominant variant of the two.

This study examines Korean proverbs about men and women. To be specific, those proverbs are analysed by the characters and subjects (including the perspectives or tones) of the expressions. The results show that Korean sayings cover various characters and subjects. When examined by the characters first, the expressions contain (general) 'men', 'monks', 'thieves' and others (in the order of frequency in occurrence) in male-related proverbs. In female-related expressions, on the other hand, (general) 'women', 'daughters-in-law' and 'wives' are the major characters. Some proverbs cover both genders and (general) 'human being', 'sons and daughters', 'sons- and daughters-in-law', and 'widows and widowers' are the most frequently depicted characters. The results also illustrate that 'act' is the most frequently adopted subject in all types of proverbs. The subjects of 'person' and 'work', ''mind' and 'talk', and 'treatment' and 'mind' follow as the second and third most frequent subjects in the male-/female-/both gender-related proverbs respectively. Finally, regarding the perspective of the sayings or the tone of the statements, it was revealed that the number of negative expressions override that of positive ones in all types of proverbs, which seems to be due to the nature of those sayings used for some lessons, alertness, satire or persuasion.

This study investigates the utterable genderlect found in the Korean language used in Yeonbeon area, China. It is regrettable that we find hardly any work on this gender-preferential language in Yeonbeon Korean when the researches on the subject of language and gender overflow in foreign literature. Analysing the men's and women's genderlect appearing in the novels written by women writers in Yeonbyeon, I will specify the linguistics features of those genderlect on three dimensions; phonology, grammar, and glossary.

This paper examines the public perception of the language discriminating the disabled/handicapped and the state of linguistic consideration of the media for those people in Korean society. The investigation reveals following facts; most of all, able-bodied people declined to recognize any internal injury as disability or handicap. Secondly, in spite of all the terms prescribed or recommended to refer to those handicapped people, discriminatory language is still frequently used. The public is using undesirable expressions even when they are well aware of the wrong to use them and agree to purify the language as well as to elevate their linguistic consideration for the handicapped. While the media is making various efforts to refine those discriminatory language, the internet service providers or users are far less concerned in linguistic consideration for the handicapped. From the analysis, it is strongly suggested that we should be more concerned and try harder to refine the handicapped-related language.

This study aims to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the function of vocative postpositions in middle Korean. This work is based on the recognition of the fact that the existing binary interpretation of the functions of those postpositions as honorific (the case of 'ha') vs. non-honorific (the cases of 'ah' and 'yeo') discloses too many exceptional occasions. Partly adopting the classification in Ko (2005), which divided the function of modern vocative words into 'relative status denoting' and 'expressive' function, the present article reexamines the vocative postpositions in middle Korean. The analysis shows that all of the postpositions, namely, 'ha', 'ah' and 'yeo' fulfilled the 'relative status denoting' function,; 'ha' co-occurred with 'hashowshyeo' style and 'ah' and 'yeo', with 'hara' style. Regarding the 'expressive' function, on the other hand, 'ha' and 'yeo' were employed to show formality while the form 'ah' was used to show intimacy toward the addressee. And when the form 'ha' was used for formality, it co-occurred with 'hara' style.

This study is intended to describe the history of studies concerning the newspaper media language. The importance of language education has increased since the revised Curriculum was proclaimed in 2007. It was since The Independent(Newspaper) in 1890 that Koreans have shown an interest in the language in newspaper sentences. But the full-scale interest in the characteristic and writing of newspaper sentences found expression in the journal of journalism such as Cheolpil, Hooei, Journalism, in 1930. Full-scale research has been conducted in the newspaper language since the 1960s with the birth of 'Editing Journalism Group' and 'Proofreading Journalism Group'. Especially, the Mal-Geul (Language and Writing) published by the 'Proofreading Journalism Group made a great contribution to this field. Especially, studies have been conducted on the characteristics and influence of the electronic newspaper, unlike those of printed newspapers. It is difficult to see the findings of this study, as fully transformed educational state. In this respect, it can be said that the problems such as the construction of contents of the subject <Media and Language>, and the development of the teaching method, which occurred as a result of the execution of the revised curriculum in 2007, is a field in which much effort should be devoted in the process of textbook development.

This study examines the functions of the English utterance, fighting!, in Korean discourse, with special attention to how and when this expression is employed by Korean native speakers. To this end, this study collected data from naturally occurring situations and the scripts of some TV programs. The results showed that the expression, fighting!, fulfills the primary function of encouraging the addressee, and that this pivotal function is extended to such functions as wishing, congratulating, thanking, promising, consoling, begging, and leave-taking, but not to as filling a pause. The findings of the study corroborated the widely-held claim that an utterance can fulfill plurivalent functions. The study also manifested other features: fighting! can be verbalized; it can or cannot be responded; it can be employed reciprocally; and it can be used to highly value a thing as well as a person. These results will surely shed light on the study of discourse functional perspective of English loan-words in Korean discourse, thus, leading to a better understanding of the nativization of English into another language.

The study examines how high-functioning children with autism organize their actions in the spontaneous participation during social activities at mainstream schools and how they reveal their awareness of social rules and moral positioning through their actions. In particular, the analysis focuses on the instances when an autistic child fails to participate in the on-going or newly beginning activities and becomes a focus of public dialogue because of violation of social rules set by a situated activity. For this purpose, the study employs the ethnographic, discourse analytic framework of social interaction which uses video data collected in naturalistic environments. The analysis suggests that children with high functioning autism may be able to adapt themselves to the ongoing stream of social interaction and perform as a competent member of social institutes. The findings of the study illuminate the importance of taking temporally emerging contextual information of on-going social activity into account when we attempt to understand how autistic children participate in situated social activities.