KJC Korea
Journal Central

The purpose of this study is to categorize intention of comment writers by analyzing frame of swearing comments in response to internet news articles. To accomplish this purpose, this study looks into the general trend of the studies regarding swearing comments and finds out the concepts of frame and framing especially useful for the news comments studies. And then, a model for frame analysis and intention categorization about the comments are made. This study particularly focuses on the comments about the internet news articles for “animal welfare” and “climate and weather” and uses the frame of the swearing comments provided by NAVER are analyzed. The findings show that the fame of “family, life respect, social welfare, economic feasibility” is evoked in the animal welfare, and the frame of “hardship of life, regional emotion, weather agency, money loss,” in the climate and weather. This study also shows the intention category of comment writers, “blame, disgust, curse, grumble, ridicule,” grounded in respective frame analysis

Swearing is a verbal abuse of a curse and a verbally and mentally homicidal act. These days, however, the concept of swearing prevails in various contexts, as with the saying "Any word that causes discrimination and hatred to the listeners is a curse." Words such as virgin, widow, and old man are not curses in a traditional perspective, but they can be interpreted as swear words that arouse an aversion depending on who listens to those expressions. Therefore, the movement of political correctness is foregrounded in pursuit of language purification, and the phenomenon of replacing old man with the elderly or silver is one example. These kinds of expressions appear in sociolinguistic areas that including race, sex, region, generation, occupation, and religion. These expressions could be political swear words and thus can be called political taboo words. These expressions are not traditional, objective, or typical swear words listed in the dictionary, but can be interpreted as subjective, psychological, and political swear words. Political taboo words should be purified to fair objective, nondiscriminatory, and non-aversive expressions; however, if purified languages are not coined, political taboo words can undergo the process of disuse.

The purpose of this study is to reconstruct the “aspect of vocabulary”, which is used in current grammar education, considering the overlaps between vocabulary categories. For this purpose, the existing discussion on the aspect of vocabulary and the way of implementing the curriculum and the textbooks were examined. As a result, it is confirmed that the vocabulary aspect education has not fully taken into consideration of “overlapping among the vocabulary categories”. In this study, we set up a category of vocabulary with multiple features and categorized these features using “+” and “-” depending on the case. In this way, aspect of vocabulary is restructured more coherently. More discussion on the future studies and education should be continued.

On December 27, 2017, the Ministry of Education in Korea published a policy intended to ban English education in public kindergartens and day-care centers. The policy instantly sparked a strong backlash from the public, who voiced concerns and opposition to it in online news comments. This study analyzed 5,815 online news comments to identify public perception of the ban in particular and early childhood English education in general. The findings revealed that the number of opponents of the ban was much larger than that of supporters (85.1% vs. 14.9%). The opponents disapproved the ban for the following reasons. First, the ban would make parents turn to private education and eventually end up widening the gap between those who can afford it and those who cannot. Second, the ban clearly infringes on the basic right to get an education. Third, English is being taught through play-based curriculum, which causes little stress and emotional burdens for children despite the concerns of the government. On the other hand, the supporters underscored the role of parents and the importance of children's native tongue to back up their arguments for the ban. Overall, this study may provide insights about how to utilize online news comments to study public perception of English education.

This study investigates washback effects on the learning portfolio of university students. The washback effects were explored using a questionnaire and interviews with two groups. The results were as follows. First, although learning portfolios have no effects on English learning purpose, other areas (English learning activities, language skills and language knowledge, and perception of assessment system) experienced partial washback effects. Second, there were significant changes and differentiation in each language skill(reading, writing and listening) and significant partial changes in English knowledge (vocabulary). Third, overall, learners preferred the traditional result-oriented assessment system to a process-oriented assessment system like a learning portfolio, despite that two groups have no differences in perception of assessment systems between the process-oriented assessment and product-oriented assessment system. Fourth, learners showed mixed opinions in the interviews: embarrassment from unfamiliar learning portfolio assessments and expectation of novelty. That is, although learners obtained their passive learning attitudes from the pre-existing instruction methods, they appreciated the merits and importance of learning portfolio assessment. Therefore, this study suggests that the washback effects of learning portfolio can be implemented for university students carefully.

This study aims to examine the sociolinguistics of the abusive language used by NAVER news commentators. The results are as follows. First, it can be seen that there are many comments on political articles, and criticizing the government's policies or accusing the former and present presidents. Those who wrote those comments were usually in their forties, and the commentators who add profane comments were in their fifties. Moreover, the percentage of males who comment using profanity is quite high. In the case of commentaries on political articles, the ratio of male authorship was overwhelmingly high, however, in the case of social/cultural articles, the proportion of women who wrote commentaries was higher. The most frequent type of profanity was of the “mental deficiency type”, followed by the “sexual phenotype.” People commenting on news articles used abusive words, but they change their forms in various ways, this tactic is derived from the response to blocking profanity. Second, according to the analysis of the survey results, the respondents stated that they occasionally wrote comments on internet news but did not use profanity in the internet space. The most common reason for using profanity on the internet was “habitual”, followed by “trying to relieve stress”. The reaction to such profanity was intensive and ambivalent at the same time. The reason for using profanity was mainly attributed to positive and insensitive reactions. However, the result of a regarding how to cope with the abusive use language in internet comments showed that the respondents should mostly refrain from using it or should not use it. Also, the respondents thought that it was necessary for the manager to adopt measures to change the forced conversation on the internet site. Due to the high rate of responses to “striking out”, “strong regulation”, and “abusive deletion programs” in an effort to prevent the abusive language use in the internet space, the respondents generally did not seem to have any objection to these regulations.

This study analyzes the discourse marker (henceforth DM)1) actually in college English textbooks (henceforth CETs) which have been most commonly used in college general English curricula in Korea. Based upon seven discourse functions of the DM actually used by native speakers in everyday language use, I analyze whether they are well represented in the CETs. The findings showed that although six functions of this marker were adequately presented in the CETs, their frequencies were somewhat dissimilar to each other: their uses as an informative marker and a contradiction marker were observed the most frequently, whereas their use as a disagreement-prefacing marker was observed the least frequently. In addition, their use as a topic-shift marker did not appear in the CETs. In addition, the DM actually appeared differently, depending on the CETs’ level. For instance, the frequency of actually was quite low at the beginner level as compared to actually at the advanced level, which resulted in interpretations that advanced-level students may use the DM actually more than low-level students. It is expected that this study can deepen our understanding regarding discourse markers and broaden relevant research field for the future.

The majority of silence research has been limited in a negative perspective in which silence was stigmatized as passive non-behavior or counterproductive behavior in the organization. The present study proposed a broader and balanced approach of silence as a way of active communication in daily communication and investigated its social functions. The Eighty college students completed an open-ended questionnaire asking context cues, the reasons, and the consequence of intentional silence in daily life. The reasons and consequence were categorized to extract their structural factors. Eleven factors of silence reasons were abstracted: “partner caring”, “conflict avoidance”, “thinking arrangement”, “dissatisfaction”, “discomfort”, “embarrassed”, “annoyingness”, “misunderstanding”, “no-idea”, “uninterestedness”, and “ignorance”. The silence consequence data revealed 11 factors such as “turning topic”, “understanding and accepting silence”, “apologizing”, “partner's efforts of resuming communication”, “escaping discord”, “continuation of partner's unilateral speaking”, “misunderstanding”, “partner–embarrassed”, “awkwardness”, “stop communicating”, and “nothing happened”. Furthermore, the analyses on frequencies of silence reasons by partner's gender or relational attribute(vertical vs. horizontal) showed the patterns that have been consistently found in verbal communication literature. The findings suggest that silence is not meaningless inaction but active and goal-driven communication. Its functional implications in cultural contexts were discussed.

This study is aims to study the perceptions of test-takers of TOPIK by analyzing the result in a critical assesment perspective. A survey with 98 TOPIK test-takers was conducted, and in-depth interviews with 10 students were followed to delve into their emotional reactions toward the TOPIK test. The results showed that the test-takers of TOPIK considered the test as an instrument to accomplish their purpose such as entering school, continuing studies, or applying for jobs. It was found that the test-takers had suffered from mental pressure, stress when they took the test. Second, the test-takers acknowledged TOPIK to be irrelevant to evaluate practical Korean language skills which are required to stay or study in Korea. Third, most test-takers were able to access information on TOPIK through various ways, yet they recognized the ways to be insufficient and limited. Besides, the respondents expressed discomfort with the inconsiderate management system and environment of the test in particular, such as the announcement of the results, considerable distance to the test venues, and attitude of the examination supervisors. The research proposes the following suggestions to improve TOPIK. First, considering that the purpose of TOPIK is to evaluate Korean language proficiency of test-takers, the questions must be developed for assessing their authentic skills of Korean language. Second, the test environment needs to be enhanced to ensure a complete and equitable test to be conducted. Paying attention to recruiting and educating exam supervisors is also needed as well. Third, it is important to protect the test-takers’ rights over their responsibilities.