2020, Vol.28, No.1

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.57

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

This study examined the language choice for modality patterns to express the degree of probability specifically in email texts based on Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) analytical framework. Participants were students enrolled in an English writing composition course at an online-based Korean university. They were required to write an email thanking their professor, in which they stated their future plans (definite or indefinite) with a degree of probability. The text analysis was compared with two groups of students' scores (high-scoring group n=40 and low-scoring group n=29), based on an assessment of the course assignment. After building up two learner corpora, UAM Corpus Tool version 3.0 was used to analyze the language choice closely using a modality system of the SFG framework. The high-scoring group showed more range and frequency in the use of modal verbs combined with a modal Adjunct or another modal expression. Explicit teaching on the importance of expressing the appropriate degree of probability using a range of modality devices, rather than relying heavily on the primary modality (choice of modal verbs) is highlighted as a pedagogical implication.

This study aims to show that language purification policies are the most important factors that influence Korean language differentiation, based on the premise that Korean is a pluricentric language having two regional varieties: South Korean P’yojuno and North Korean Munhwao. To this end, on the basis of a precedent study that analyzed regional variation mechanisms in French through four factors—terminological, socio-terminological, psycho-terminological, and extra-terminological—we identified two factors having great influence on the language change in South and North Korean societies: socio-terminological and extra-terminological. We also found that these factors precisely correspond to two categories in Kloss's(1969) theory of language planning— corpus planning and status planning; this confirmed that we should consider Korean language differentiation from the standpoint of language policy. There are many factors that cause language differentiation, and there is no doubt that these factors also have complex interrelationships. However, this study is all the more meaningful in that it uses systematic analysis to state that language policy plays an important role in Korean language differentiation.

This study intends to review ≪The Subject's Linguistic Theory≫, the 1st volume of the Linguistics Collection, published in 2005 by the Institute of Linguistics at the Academy of Social Sciences. The Linguistics Collection was published with the aim of summing up the achievements of the linguistics research conducted by North Korea after its liberation from Japanese colonial rule, and the fact that ≪The Subject's Linguistic Theory≫ was selected as the 1st volume of this series means that this field is the best manifestation of the nature of North Korean linguistics. This study aims to see how North Korea's language perception differs from or same as ours, and eventually to explore the possibility of mutual communication of linguistic studies conducted in the South and the North. In section 1, it explains the overall purpose of the study, and in section 2, it examines the process in which the North's linguistic theory, called “The Subject's Linguistic Theory,” has been formed, and in section 3, it analyzes the contents of ≪The Subject's Linguistic Theory≫ (2005), published as part of the Linguistics Collection. In section 4, we attempt to present the necessity of meta-linguistics and the role of social linguistics through the theoretical questions that this 'The Subject's Linguistic Theory' poses to us.