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The Realization of Early Spoken Modern Korean and its Use in Literature

  • Korean Language & Literature
  • 2015, (92), pp.33-61
  • Publisher : Korean Language & Literature
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature

Hong, Jongseon 1

1고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Modern Korean began to make its way to the front stage at the beginningof the 20th century. During which time, Korean language has undergonesignificant changes in various aspects. Under the increasing influence ofwestern culture and ideology, a new understanding towards nationallanguage, the Unification of the Spoken and Written Language, began toemerge while ethnic consciousness awakened. The Unification of theSpoken and Written Language means to write with hangul instead of Chinesecharacters and to write in spoken terms instead of written terms. In this unification movement, many major attempts were made in novelwriting, among which, several sinsoseol pieces by Lee Injik achieved acertain level of success, and Lee Kwangsu's masterpiece “Mujeong”brought the movement further ahead. However, it is hard to say that the development appeared in novels is theresult of peoples' linguistic insights or their understanding towards spokenlanguage. Instead, it is more of a convenient borrowing of the spoken termsfrom pansori genre novels. Pansori novels started from modern Koreanperiod and enjoyed a long-lasting popularity among common Koreans. Beingthe intellectuals of the new era, sinsoseol writers took advantage of thepopularity of the pansori novels and brought the spoken forms into their owncreative works. Hence, they were able to point out a new direction towards writing in Korean. As a result, Novels in that period used expressions closerto spoken language than other genres did. It is not correct to consider the shift from ‘-deora’(-더라) to ‘-da’(-다)or‘-eossda’(-었다) as a significant development in the unification of spokenand written language. In order to judge orality, a comprehensiveinvestigation of phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicology and discourseis necessary.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.