2010, Vol.18, No.1

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 18(1). The purpose of this research is to analyze the terms of address assigned to visitors of some of the internet sites that are administered by Korean government agencies. We focus especially on the use of the designated forms of address that have been established by the operators of these sites. The data for this study was collected from what are considered to be the 24 major government internet sites based on the amounts of site traffic or their importance in setting standards for the proper usage of the Korean language. In section 2, we describe the general characteristics that underlie the expression of site specific terms of address. In section 3, we observe the relationship of the identity of 9 prototypical individual sites to the specific terms of address that are employed on these sites. In this approach, we treat the genre of visitors and the goals of the internet sites as discrete analytical variables that are then analyzed in terms of forms of address as related to site identities. In so doing, we note how the internet site operators establish and maintain the identities and terms of relationship that exist between the visitors and the government agencies that sponsor the web sites. In the process of this analysis, we will observe that the terms of address for visitors are not necessarily identical in the similar types of internet sites. Rather, the terms of address vary according to the intentions and attitudes of the operators of the internet sites.

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 18(1). This large-scale corpus study examined the gender differences in the use of tag questions in terms of three different social variables: age, education and private/public situations. Seven hundred and fifty-three tag questions were extracted from the British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), where social variables were parsed and tagged. Overall, women used a slightly higher number of tag questions: Out of the weighted 550 tag questions, men used 237 tag questions (43.1%) and women used 313 tag questions (56.9%). Among men, the number of tag questions increased with age while the number of tag questions decreased with age among women. The women in the 18-25 and 26-45 age brackets used more tag questions than the men in the same age brackets. But the women older than 45 used fewer tag questions than the men older than 45. Women with a secondary education used more tag questions than men with the same education. But both women and men with a tertiary education had about the same frequency of use of tag questions. In the private situations women used more tag questions than men while in the public situations men used more tag questions than women.

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 18(1). This paper explores whether the English reading texts of College Scholastic Ability Tests are factually accurate. The tests which were administered over the fifteen-year period since 1996 are investigated with regard to whether the information in the texts which deal with historical events or figures and real life situations is factually accurate. The results show that there are 12 test items which are not factually accurate. Some of the items which use the original texts intact or have a minor modification to them contain information which is not true when their original texts are cross checked with various sources of materials. Others have inaccurate information resulted from the revisions of the original texts such as modifying them in order to lower the difficulty of the items. In conclusion, it is suggested that every effort should be made to confirm whether the information in the reading texts is factually accurate or to sustain the information as it is as much as possible if it is accurate.