KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study examines how the term “fashion baseball” functions as a discursive resource for constructing fan identity and organizing intragroup boundaries in an online baseball fan community. Focusing on the layered interactional structure of posts, comments, and replies, thise study analyzes how the meaning of “fashion baseball” is constructed and transformed through repeated interactions. Data were collected from the “Korean Baseball Town” board of MLBPARK using the keyword “fashion baseball fan.” A co-occurrence analysis centered on “fashion baseball” was conducted across four interactional layers: posts and, first, second, and third-level comments. The findings showed that discourse develops in a layered manner. At the post level, “fashion baseball” is associated with insufficient baseball knowledge and recent fan influx. In first-level comments, the term functions as an evaluative label related to participation styles and fan authenticity. In second-level comments, meanings are negotiated through argumentative interactions, whereas in third-level comments, the discourse is fragmented into localized conflicts. Therefore, fan identity is continuously reconstructed through interaction and indexical meanings accumulate across discourse layers.

This study compares the patterns of out-group representation realized through the Korean third-person plural pronouns itul, kutul, and cetul in political discourse. It also investigates whether these differences are related to the pragmatic properties of their morphological roots i, ku, and ce, which are traditionally categorized as proximal, medial, and distal deixis, respectively. Focusing on Korean presidential speeches and party spokesperson statements, this study adopts a multimethod computational linguistic approach, including (1) frequency analysis, (2) collocation analysis, (3) word embedding, and (4) surprisal analysis. The results showed a broad division between itul and the pair kutul–cetul, while also revealing meaningful differences between kutul and cetul. These findings further suggest that the contrast between the pronouns is partially motivated by the deictic distinctions between their roots. Thus, this study demonstrates that Korean third-person plural pronouns display internally differentiated patterns of out-group representation.

Using narrative inquiry, this study explores the identity construction of three Chinese master's degree holders from humanities and social science backgrounds through their employment experiences in South Korea. The findings revealed two shared patterns: first, participants faced structural constraints including visa restrictions and language and cultural barriers, that shaped their identity negotiation strategies; second, despite these challenges, participants exercised agency to resist ascribed identities and construct more self-directed ones. At the same time, their identity trajectories differed considerably, reflecting the diversity of individual experiences within a shared social position. This study extends identity and language learning theories to workplace contexts and calls for more flexible visa policies, culturally responsive corporate support, and enhanced vocational Korean language education programs that reflect actual workplace discourse.