2008, Vol.16, No.1

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.57

pISSN : 1226-4822
https://journal.kci.go.kr/socioling

This paper stipulates Sejong and Saussure as integrative linguists that based their work on scholastic research, and by comparing their representative works, "Hunminjeongeum with Commentaries" and "General Linguistics Lectures" which were published by people close to them, this paper shows the modernity and post-modernity of their linguistics in terms of their discursive significance. The modernity of Saussure’s linguistics was revealed through scientific methodology of language research using such analysis strategies as langue-centered language research. Although Sejong’s methods were different, he also applied the same scientific and universal rationalism in his invention of letters. Saussure was definitely a modern structuralist, he also opened the possibility of integrative linguistics. Sejong also fully showed such two-sided characteristic through Hunminjeongeum. He had thoroughly expressed the two-sided characteristic in the principles of Hunminjeongeum letters by paying attention to both universality and uniqueness. The differences between these two become prominent in terms of history and the subject. Saussure used the strategy of trying to eliminate historicity through the dichotomy of diachronie and synchronie. In contrast, Sejong naturally accommodated the Asian historical tradition. Ultimately, the linguistics of Sejong and Saussure are integrative (fusional). The setting of the issues and strategy of Saussure, who wanted to establish a unique domain for linguistics, in fact premised a fusion or integration between linguistics and other scholarly disciplines, or requested such a result. The creation of Sejong’s Hunminjeongeum is the result of scholastic fusion of such disciplines as linguistics, music, and science.

This paper examines two English discourse markers, "yeah" and "kin'of," in two nonnative speakers' turns of voluntary corrective actions. From a conversation analytic perspective, the two items are examined in terms of their functional properties during the nonnative speakers' turns. Two nonnative English speaking graduate students, working as teaching assistants in an engineering lab of an American university, participated in the study. The analysis of the dyadic interaction between the nonnative speakers and the native English speaking undergraduate students revealed that the nonnative speakers used "yeah" and "kin'of" in a significantly different manner from the target language norms. In their endeavor to create a shared meaning with their students they often engaged in word- and structure searches, during which they used the discourse markers as the fillers to a possible void in talk. An examination of the spatial location and functional properties of the items also revealed that the markers were more rule-governed in the nonnative speakers’ talk than other hesitation markers. The findings indicate the importance of examining the discourse functions of the markers in the discussion of nonnativeness.

A vast amount of research has now established that writer-reader interaction is embodied in written texts through various linguistic devices. Among them, modalization plays a key role as a strategy for constructing the interaction in text. The impetus for this study is that it allows a new perspective to cross-cultural comparison between English and Korean texts. Based on contextual analysis of 356 British and Korean newspaper science popularizations with the two pairs of analytical categories that show how directly the writer performs the interaction with the reader (Types DI and II) and how strongly the writer commits him/herself to propositions (Types S and W), this paper argues that the discoursal preferences in the interactive use of modalization by the two groups of authors seem to be a reflection of the different orientations to human relations in British and Korean societies: equality-orientation in Britain and hierarchy-orientation in Korea.