KJC Korea
Journal Central

Students’ silence is a common phenomenon in Korean or EFL classes, and is associated with a stereotypical image of Korean students as passive and uncritical learners. This article explores the dynamics of an English writing class in Korea, and attempts to understand what students experienced as well as uncover the variables contributing to their silence. One writing instructor and seven Korean students were involved in this qualitative study. The results indicate that the writing professor and the students had different interpretations of the classroom silence, which had an impact on their view of the intention of communication. It also shows how the students were actively engaged in learning to write but had unresolved questions that could have been dealt with if they had availed themselves of the professor’s help. A range of variables were used to analyze the silence of the seven students in depth. Some valuable pedagogical implications are provided for teachers to investigate this phenomenon and to achieve a better understanding of student silence (166).

By analyzing retrospective autobiographic essays, this study aims to investigate factors related to English learning motivation, demotivation, and remotivation. Participants were 30 graduate students majoring in English education at a graduate school located in Seoul. They were asked to write retrospective essays on their English learning from kindergarten to the present day. In order to analyze their essays, we used reiterative reading by Miles and Huberman (1994) based on grounded theory. As a result, we identified four factors (instruction method, teacher, colleagues, tests) as the factors for English learning demotivation. Remotivation factors included teaching methods befitting students’ learning styles, instructor’s individual attention and kind words/encouragement, good interpersonal relationship, grade, and foreign country experience. Regarding factors of enhancing the level of motivation, five factors were identified: foreign country experience, high test score, teacher, salient goal, and university English-classes. These results indicate that demotivation and remotivation take different psychological routes and the importance of teacher needs to be fully considered for boosting students English-learning motivation since teacher factor could affect English learners either positively or negatively.

This paper analyzes the elements and properties of the discourse in the main text of Korean textbooks. The main text conveys ‘discourse knowledge’ that constitutes the communicative competence of Korean language on the basis of the fundamental properties of discourse rather than on unnatural sentences and conversations constructed only to present vocabulary and grammar. It consists of ‘discourse type’, ‘background knowledge’, ‘language use’, and ‘conversation organization’. As a result of this research, we found that the main text contains the following properties of discourse. First, the main text whose discourse type students frequently encounter is selected and language befitting that type is used. Second, the background knowledge of the discourse is presented. Third, the conversation of the main text is organized with the turn-taking system. The characteristics as a textbook are also taken into account in the main texts that we reviewed. These comprise dealing with limited discourse patterns, regulating language use, and the regular and restricted turn-taking system. The above analysis shows that the main text is constructed utilizing both aspects of education and discourse. The findings of this study will be helpful for textbook users in developing instruction and studying strategies and for textbook developers in constructing main texts.

The present paper delineates the interactive nature of storytelling in multi-party, face-to-face interactions by focusing on how tellership is negotiated and shifts among participants who have different knowledge states about the event that is being recounted. By employing a conversation-analytic approach to social action and storytelling, the study explicates the participation framework created among participants who may have different degrees of involvement depending on the moment’s configuration of interaction. Through detailed analyses of storytelling activities extracted from naturally occurring casual conversations, the study explicates how the boundary between speaker and hearer becomes unstable as the story unfolds, illuminating the interactive nature of storytelling in multi-party, face-to-face interaction (108 words).

The purpose of this study is to explore a research trend of academic research papers published in Korea on the topic of language education and identity. A total number of 40 papers were collected, classified and coded into 1) research subjects, sub-categorized into language learners and language (native and non-native) teachers and 2) the type of language use, sub-categorized into English (ESL, EFL), Korean (KHL) and Bilingual. A majority of the research papers was carried out on English language education in terms of language learners' identity construction. It showed that these studies contribute to better understanding of the complex relations between language education and identity formation. Most of the research findings revealed that language learner’s identity is dynamic, contradictory and multiple over time and space in sociocultural context all of which is based on post-structuralistic theory of identity. It was confirmed that the understanding of social identity in language learning and teaching could play a crucial role in helping learners and teachers in diverse educational contexts.

The purpose of this study is to compare the use of Korean honorifics between Korean students and Chinese students in Korea in order to find out why there are similarities and differences. To do this, a survey was conducted with questions about the terms of address, the greeting expression, and the honorific system of hearer. Social variables were limited to [intimacy], [senior], and [age]. As a result, Korean students were found to be affected by the variables in the order of intimacy, senior, and age. This answer had some similarities and differences with the answer of the Chinese students in Korea. While the cause of similarities could be found in the Korean linguistic culture, the differences were affected by the Chinese linguistic culture. Moreover, unlike the use of the same honorifics between the students of same nationality, the results of the survey have shown that two groups of students all used the ‘haeyo’ form more than the ‘hae’ form. This can be interpreted that the Korean linguistic culture to respect one another has affected the result in a linguistic culture perspective, while in the strategic perspective it may be the influence of face work technique.

This study is on the story advertisement counted as narrative text. The purpose of this paper is to make the concept of story sure and to propose a new type of TV-advertisement, the story advertisement as narrative text. It will ultimately lead to an opportunity to identify the essence of the advertisement text. The story of the story advertisement means that a message of the advertisement must be a story composed of character, background, event. A character means someone or something tells about something or acts in advertisement. Background is something like that the movie or film is set in. Nothing is more important than event. Being composed of event means the entire story of the advertisement is well-organized with clear transitions and logical sequences. Because TV-advertisement is made up the spoken word and images, there are two modes of representing the events: to be expressed by either or both of these factors. If the message of TV-advertisement has all the makings of story, the advertisement will be characterized as story advertisement as narrative text, in short 'story advertisement'.

This paper examines Korean and American newspapers’ reporting styles in terms of the types of quoting methods and reporting verbs in the news narrative concerning the U.S.-South Korea free-trade agreement. Direct speech was about thirty-six percent in American newspapers while Korean newspapers used direct speech most of the time. The most striking difference in reporting styles between Korean and American newspapers is that partial quoting was about seventeen percent in American newspapers but only about one percent in Korean newspapers. Two types of reporting verbs were identified from the database: neutral verbs and evaluation verbs. In American newspapers, neutral verbs were mostly used as reporting verbs. Evaluation verbs, which were used as reporting verbs, were six percent in American newspapers but twenty-two percent in Korean newspapers. This study suggests that American reporters seem to express their subjectivity mainly by using partial quoting method, whereas Korean reporters may involve themselves in news narrative by using evaluation verbs. These aspects may be related to the different cultures and reflect the history of the newspapers.

This paper diachronically analyzed addressee-honorifics of Kokdugaksi Norum which has been recorded for nearly one century. In Chapter 1, I hypothesized that there are variations in sentence-endings and honorific expressions of Kokdugaksi Norum since language changes over time. Chapter 2 introduced the plot of the Korea’s traditional puppet-play and examined the number of sentences and syntactic words spoken by Kokdugaksi in Kokdugaksi Geori. Chapter 3 explored the variation aspects according to two traditional groups of the puppet-play and diachronically combined them for analysis given there is not much linguistic difference between the two groups. As a result, I linguistically found diachronical changes in sentence-endings to verify the hypothesis established in Chapter 1. Also, as the use of speech level ‘ha-o’ decreased, the use of ‘hae-yo’ increased and speech levels ‘hae’ and ‘ha-sip-si-o’ partly served the function of ‘ha-o’. In terms of content, changes in the sentence-endings and honorific expressions spoken by Kokdugaksi resulted in weakening resistance to and criticism of patriarchy delivered by Kokdugaksi. This paper applied this phenomenon to dialogues between modern husbands and wives. It concluded linguistic gender inequality exists in dialogues of modern husbands and wives and the decrease in speech level ‘ha-o’ was the major reason for it. Finally, Chapter 4 summarized main points and described contributions of this paper.

This paper investigates the errors in public language use in Chungcheongnamdo Province and surveys the level of understanding and awareness of the norms in public language use. The exploration aims at diagnosing the problems and, further, suggesting ways of improvement. The study shows that in public language many errors have been committed with respect to orthographic rules pursuant to spacing, punctuation, foreign-word rendering, among others. Also found problematic are the use of highly difficult Sino-Korean words and the lack of structural coherence. High among the responses of the surveyed are that they are either not cognizant of the mottos of the provincial or local governments or unable to understand them. Reasons cited for the difficulties in fully comprehending public language are that it contains difficult Sino-Korean words, borrowed words, and foreign words. This finding points to the fact that public language is often rendered either inaccurate or too difficult, and strongly calls for implementation of such language policies as optimally utilizing Korean language specialist-officials, expanding language education for civil servants, developing systems for public language improvement, and diversifying approaches to disseminate information to the citizens and civil servants alike.(189)

The purpose of this study is to recommend rational broadcasting language policy by conducting an analysis on the realities of using non-standard language in TV Drama. To this purpose, weekend dramas that were broadcast on three ground wave TV stations and four comprehensive channels during five months were analyzed. Standard language serves as a large framework for ensuring that the citizens use proper language. Because broadcasting language priorities communication and connection with the general public, there is a need to distinguish language norms and broadcasting language policy. First and foremost, expressions that are used more frequently than standard language and that do not infringe upon the logic of the language system may be added on as standard language. Meanwhile, drama broadcasting language should prioritize utility value, more so than the norm. In other words, even when a language is non-standard language, newly coined language that manifests difference in nuance with standard language and that factor in the situation of the time should be allowed to be used on the broadcast since it reflects the awareness of the public. Separate from this, it would be necessary to include the expression that infringe upon the logic of language system or excessive use of foreign language from the target of regulation to encourage correction.

In Euphemistic expressions, metaphors work and aim to assign and express a new concept through the basis of the existing system of meaning and notion, and also create conceptual similarity between two areas by comparing the source domains and target domains, based on similarity. In this study, we investigated image schema metaphors in euphemistic expression; the aspect of the carrier metaphor, the orientational metaphor, and the link metaphor through perspective cognitive semantics. The image schema metaphor is not developed by one's own will, but is pre-conceptual, which means that it happens before concept formation with physical experience and then become structured. This image schema has two extreme theories of value; positive and negative, however euphemistic expressions generally express negative meaning circuitously. Language, as a source domain, appears to be motivated by human physical or goal-oriented characteristics, and, even in the details of structure or operation, there must be one's own cognitive reason.