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Extended Usage of ‘jagi’ and the Role of Women as Linguistic Innovators in the Daegu Area

  • The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea
  • Abbr : 사회언어학
  • 2019, 27(3), pp.279-305
  • DOI : 10.14353/sjk.2019.27.3.09
  • Publisher : The Sociolinguistic Society Of Korea
  • Research Area : Humanities > Linguistics
  • Received : July 31, 2019
  • Accepted : September 5, 2019
  • Published : September 30, 2019

Miju Hong 1

1경북대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the extended usage of ‘jagi’ to analyze to what extent and in what contexts ‘jagi’ is being used, and assesses the speaker's attitude toward it. Furthermore, this paper discuss the role played by women in the extended usage of ‘jagi’. For the purpose of this study, 117 adult males and females living in Daegu have been surveyed. The results of the survey have been analyzed to identify speakers' knowledge of and attitude toward ‘jagi’. Findings can be summarized as follows. First, ‘jagi’ is used as an intimate term of address for spouses and couples. More recently, it has also been used as a term of address between speaker and listener who are not involved in such relationships. Second, the typical usage of ‘jagi’ is its use among same-age women or lower class female speakers. Third, while many of the users of ‘jagi’ are women, there also are men using it. Fourth, the use of ‘jagi’ by younger speakers when speaking to older interlocutors is not an accepted usage. Fifth, the way men perceive and use ‘jagi’ differs from the way women do. For male speakers, there is no gender distinction between the speaker and the listener when using ‘jagi’, whereas women perceive it as being most commonly used by female speakers. Sixth, the use of ‘jagi’ has been extended from female to male speakers. More specifically, the new usage of the word was first advocated by women, who then played a key role in changing the use of ‘jagi’. The extension of the scope of speakers for ‘jagi’ can be considered within two different dimensions. On the one hand, the use of ‘jagi’ as an equivalent to the second-person pronoun by couples was extended to its usage as a general second-person pronoun by other types of interlocutors. On the other hand, if ‘jagi’ was initially mostly used by and among female speakers, the range of users was extended to male speakers and listeners.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.