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The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 18(1). The purpose of this research is to analyze the terms of address assigned to visitors of some of the internet sites that are administered by Korean government agencies. We focus especially on the use of the designated forms of address that have been established by the operators of these sites. The data for this study was collected from what are considered to be the 24 major government internet sites based on the amounts of site traffic or their importance in setting standards for the proper usage of the Korean language. In section 2, we describe the general characteristics that underlie the expression of site specific terms of address. In section 3, we observe the relationship of the identity of 9 prototypical individual sites to the specific terms of address that are employed on these sites. In this approach, we treat the genre of visitors and the goals of the internet sites as discrete analytical variables that are then analyzed in terms of forms of address as related to site identities. In so doing, we note how the internet site operators establish and maintain the identities and terms of relationship that exist between the visitors and the government agencies that sponsor the web sites. In the process of this analysis, we will observe that the terms of address for visitors are not necessarily identical in the similar types of internet sites. Rather, the terms of address vary according to the intentions and attitudes of the operators of the internet sites.

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 18(1). This large-scale corpus study examined the gender differences in the use of tag questions in terms of three different social variables: age, education and private/public situations. Seven hundred and fifty-three tag questions were extracted from the British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), where social variables were parsed and tagged. Overall, women used a slightly higher number of tag questions: Out of the weighted 550 tag questions, men used 237 tag questions (43.1%) and women used 313 tag questions (56.9%). Among men, the number of tag questions increased with age while the number of tag questions decreased with age among women. The women in the 18-25 and 26-45 age brackets used more tag questions than the men in the same age brackets. But the women older than 45 used fewer tag questions than the men older than 45. Women with a secondary education used more tag questions than men with the same education. But both women and men with a tertiary education had about the same frequency of use of tag questions. In the private situations women used more tag questions than men while in the public situations men used more tag questions than women.

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 18(1). This paper explores whether the English reading texts of College Scholastic Ability Tests are factually accurate. The tests which were administered over the fifteen-year period since 1996 are investigated with regard to whether the information in the texts which deal with historical events or figures and real life situations is factually accurate. The results show that there are 12 test items which are not factually accurate. Some of the items which use the original texts intact or have a minor modification to them contain information which is not true when their original texts are cross checked with various sources of materials. Others have inaccurate information resulted from the revisions of the original texts such as modifying them in order to lower the difficulty of the items. In conclusion, it is suggested that every effort should be made to confirm whether the information in the reading texts is factually accurate or to sustain the information as it is as much as possible if it is accurate.

A Case Study of the Use of Democracy as Binomials in US and South Korean Newspaper Corpora. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 18(1). This paper presents findings of a comparative analysis of the use of the word democracy as binomials (e.g., democracy and freedom) in the US and South Korean newspaper corpora. The US corpus is 42 million words comprising foreign news reports taken from the New York Times and the Washington Post from 1999 to 2003. The South Korean corpus consists of news articles from the Dong-A Ilbo and the Hankyoreh. The corpus covers the same period between the year 1999 and 2003 and is of a relatively modest size of 200 thousand words. The analysis has shown differences in the frequency of the noun phrases occurring as binomials with democracy. While human rights-related noun phrases are found to occur most frequently with democracy in the US corpus, it is observed that capitalism-related noun phrases occur most frequently in the South Korean corpus. It is also found that a number of evaluative and rhetorical functions are performed by the binomials of democracy such as evaluating other countries on their political, social, and economic problems; criticizing actions taken by the government and political oppositions; or stressing partnership with other countries.

In this case study, we have focused on the disempowerment of a Korean English teacher (KET) in English-only classrooms. Six English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms in a Korean high school were observed and analyzed by using interpretive discourse analysis. Out of the six classes, three representative classrooms were both video- and audio-taped. The results show that the English-only classes could weaken the KETs’ power via three mechanisms: (a) calling the KETs’ last name for choral greetings at the beginning of the class, (b) students’ group solidarity and peer pressure between classmates, and (c) the students’ excessively collaborative approach to peer assistance. It is argued that the exclusive English-only instruction disempowers the KETs’ status and dismantles their vocational identity. In order to remedy the current situation, within a scaffolding supported by the eclectic use of first language where necessary for effective class management, KETs are empowered and overcome constraints imposed by the limited L2 oral competence of some non-native English teachers.

This study aims to explore the forms of negative yes/no interrogatives and the social actions they perform in task-oriented conversations in Korean and English. The data consist of 20 Korean and 22 English pairs interacting with each other while arranging a series of 15 pictures. It seems that negative yes/no interrogatives are used more extensively in Korean conversation than in English, and that they have different interactional functions in the two languages. Analyses of the data suggest that negative yes/no interrogatives in English are used to perform a very specific function in interaction, making an assertion in a disaligning situation while seeking agreement from the addressee. On the other hand, it is shown that negative yes/no interrogatives in Korean are used as an important interactional device between conversationalists. It seems that the choice of the two types of negative yes/no interrogatives in Korean is largely dependent on the speaker’s estimation of the following two factors: (a) the degree of certainty about the information conveyed, and (b) the degree of common ground with the addressee. (Hanyang University, Ansan)

This article is a response to the need for a more nuanced understanding of the silence and talk concerns of participants with Asian and American backgrounds in relation to class participation. Although the silence of students from Asian culture in English-dominant education has been widely discussed in the L2 literature, a comparative approach to silence of Asian and American students in academic courses is scarce. By attempting to deconstruct dichotomizing trends of thinking about classroom silence embedded in cultural differences, this study aims to position dialogic negotiations of differences on the fault line in-between cultures. Using data from students’ essays and classroom observation over a semester, I compare and contrast perceptions of oral participation in an L2 academic class. I discuss what common expectations both groups have regarding oral participation and the differing attitudes they have toward silence and willingness to communicate. My discussion implies the need to remap dichotomizing ideas about East versus West and to form a pedagogically appropriate response to silence in increasingly intercultural academic communities.

Japanese has borrowed many words from English through contacts with English-speaking countries since the mid-19th century. The borrowed words have been integrated into the Japanese lexicon, observing phonological and morphological rules of Japanese. Among the types of loanwords from English, this research examines abbreviated English words in Japanese by classifying them into five categories: (i) consonantal abbreviations, (ii) acronyms, (iii) initialism (iv) clipping, and (v) blending. Examination of the present data shows that more than half of the tokens are examples of clipped words, suggesting that clipping is the most frequently used method of abbreviating borrowed words into Japanese. Initialism comes second in making abbreviated expressions, even applying to newly coined Japanese English (JE) words. After that, this study explores linguistic motivations which are responsible for the formation of abbreviations in English loanwords. It shows that economy and distinctiveness/contrastiveness are two most important motivations for the formation of abbreviations of English loanwords in Japanese.

From a conversation-analytic perspective, this paper examines the ways in which the Korean sentence-ending suffix (SES) -ketun is used in naturally occurring spoken Korean discourse. Focusing on the question of how the practice of informing implemented by the ketun-utterance provides a basis for the sequentially implemented action of account-giving (Kim & Suh 2009), it analyzes (i) the nature of the information marked by -ketun in terms of how it is grounded, (ii) the sequential contexts where the informing sequence that -ketun generates is embedded, and (iii) features of the ketun-marked account with reference to the practices of formulating non-negotiable upshot, evoking positionally relevant identities, unpackaging information geared to enlightening the addressee, and stance-shifting. These practices are analyzed as being constitutive of the action-organizational features of the ketun-marked account, whose upshot is proposed to be that of evoking and managing the information gap or disparity in knowledge asserted by the speaker to exist between the participants.