2009, Vol.17, No.2

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.57

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

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea. Language purification, as a matter of language policy, should be handled very carefully, since it could be taken as a kind of conspiracy for exclusive nationalism or totalitarianism. In order to avoid these unexpected misunderstandings, we need to make every effort to seek morally and ideologically acceptable policies. From this point of view, I addressed the issue of Korean language purification/refinement(Gugeo Sunhwa) and discussed a new direction of 'Gugeo Sunhwa.' I suggest, as a corollary, that Korean language purification/refinement be replaced by 'Urimal Dadeumgi' (Korean language elutriation), so that it can attract interests of the community as a whole. We also need to make sure that Urimal Dadeumgi will help to enhance human right, effective communication, and the recognition of the current social attitude to language.

Today, use of the word ‘Gugeo(국어)’ is natural and taken as a matter of course. However, ‘Gugeo’ has actually only been in general use for about 100 years. To clarify the meaning and circumstances in which ‘Gugeo’ was first used, we examine the writings of Ju Si-gyeong, who is credited with being first person to actively use it. Although Ju Si-gyeong published a number of works related to language and script beginning from 1897, he did not start to regularly use ‘Gugeo’ in his writing until after 1906. However, it was around this time when he began to emphasize the relationship between language and nation; specifically, he argued that a nation’s independence and autonomy was closely related to language. Moreover, Ju Si-gyeong also proposed his own unique notation system, strongly stressing the need to transcribe ‘Gugeo’ in its basic, ‘as is’ form. Specifically, in this case ‘Gugeo’ did not refer to the actual pronunciations of words, but rather the abstract basic principles that made each utterance possible. To him letters must reflect not their actual pronunciation, but rather something abstract that makes that pronunciation possible.

This paper investigates the variation observed in the use of 'ye' and 'ne' in Korean, especially focusing on the suggestions of J. W. Kim(1985) and H. S. Kim(1998) that women use 'ne' in a higher frequency than men. This study is conducted on the basis of two types of data: 12 relatively recently released movies and 7 TV talkshows (baegbuntoron) produced by MBC. In the preliminary analysis of this lexical sociolinguistic variable two additional variants, 'e' and 'nye', were observed (besides 'ye' and 'ne'), especially the former accounting for as many as 9 percent of the tokens. Results of logistic regression analyses provide support to the genderlectal difference suggested by previous research, and also show that discourse functions of 'ye' and 'ne' and speaker-hearer age relationship can influence their usage as well. A significant idiolectal variation within two gender groups was also observed. Overall 'ye', not 'ne', was a more dominant variant of the two.