2016, Vol.24, No.2

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.57

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

For Japanese and Korean learners of English as a second language (ESL), the substitution of [š] (the palatalized [s]) for /s/, is a well-documented error pattern, in which a phonological rule of the learner's native language (L1) is transferred to the production of the target language (L2). A necessary task for learners to achieve target-appropriate production of L2 sounds is to overcome such rules of L1 phonology. Motivated by anecdotal observations, this work investigates any potential relations between the pronunciation accuracy of the target English /s/ and some social factors of Korean and Japanese ESL learners: L1, gender, academic major, LOR, and attitude. Two sets of production data, spontaneous speech and isolated words reading, were collected from sixteen Japanese and thirteen Korean learners of English. Then, a series of impressionistic analyses of the data was conducted. The findings indicate that the level of target-appropriate L2 production is, to an extent, related to the learner's personal and social factors.

Many linguists have praised Hangeul as one of the most scientific languages. However, it took five hundred years for Hangeul to become officially adopted as the writing system in Korea. Some have attributed this delay to social factors such as the persecution against Hangeul users or the resistance to Hangeul by ruling classes who endorsed Chinese characters. These social factors, however, fall short of explaining the five centuries' delay of the official adoption of Hangeul. This paper aims to explain the delay by considering the early Christians' embracement of codex in writing letters they used to communicate among themselves in the Roman Empire as well as McLuhan's well-known idea that “media is message”. In the past, the media kept using Hangeul suitable to the Chinese characters, although Hangeul was a new and different message from the latter. This paper suggests that in order to understand more clearly why it took five centuries to officially adopt Hangeul, we have to take into account the fact that until the late nineteenth century, Hangeul, a phonogram - new message - was written in the media appropriate to the Chinese characters, an ideogram - old message, which caused a typical incongruity between message and media to discourage Koreans to use Hangeul.

In Conversation Analysis (CA), laughter, which is treated as a systematically produced activity, has been investigated in connection with troubles. This paper examines initiating laughter in three writing tutoring sessions at a university writing center in Korea, deploying the method of CA. Laughter can be used in two ways in the dataset. Firstly, tutors can use laughter to mitigate their negative assessment about the student's essay. Along with delays and mitigating expressions, laughter infiltrated in the assessment can mitigate the dispreferred nature of the negative assessment. Secondly, both tutors and students can display their talk or action as inappropriate through laughter. The tutor uses laughter when producing talk that can be treated problematic or accountable. The students join in the tutor's laughter, and this shared laughter mitigates the problematic nature of the tutor's talk. Students may similarly use laughter to display their awareness of the inappropriate nature of their talk or conduct, when responding to the tutor's questions. The analysis suggests that laughter can be associated with interactional troubles. The conclusion will include comparisons with other institutional contexts.