Arts and Humanities Commons^™

This presentation documents the extent to which the quantity research about the Korean language has grown in the West (with a special emphasis on the United States), particularly since the 1990’s. A search for doctoral dissertations in the subject areas of “linguistics” or “language” with word “Korean” in the dissertation title within the “ProQuest Dissertation and Theses” reveals fewer than 150 entries from 1920 to 1990 but over 700 entries for the most recent 22 years – a tenfold increase in annual production. This recent increase in the number of dissertations about the Korean language are part of a larger …

In considering what I might convey in the preface to this volume, the fifth in the Inquiries into Korean Linguistics series, I find myself drawn to the Korean word 감사 (感謝) kamsa, which translates as “thankfulness, gratitude, appreciation.”

I am grateful for to the leadership and membership of the International Circle of Korean Linguistics for entrusting me with the Presidency for the 2010-12 term. I also appreciate the trust that the organization placed in my efforts to take our biannual meeting to the People’s Republic of China – an ICKL first – thereby helping to forge new academic and intellectual …

"Since the late 19th century, the geographical rage in which the Korean language is spoken has increased dramatically. Currently ranked in Ethnologue as the 17th most widely spoken language in the world, Korean is used by over 66 million people in 33 nations..." So begins this article, which explores the ways in which Korean -- sometimes described as a "homogeneous language" -- has given rise to a number of global variants.

"In this essay, we consider the small but growing body of evidence that indicates how a collection of World Koreans exists during these earliest years of the 21st century, and use these facts as the foundation for a linguistic call to action to observe, describe, and explain the burgeoning linguistics variation found in Korean speech communities across the globe" (p. 302).

Soon after their arrival to Korea, Christian missionaries were confronted by decisions regarding how they would present written materials to the Korean people. While many Koreans used their indigenous script (Hangeul) for ev- eryday purposes, higher status literacy materials were expected to be pre- sented using Chinese characters (Hanja), a system unfamiliar to most but considered more prestigious by all. In deciding to publish the majority of their materials in the more accessible but lower-status script, the mission- aries contributed to a revaluation of Hangeul as a fully legitimate means of written communication in a broader range of functional domains.

Perhaps the most noteworthy product of Korean civilization, han'gŭl is a source of pride among Koreans: not only does it embody a sense of national uniqueness, but it is also a valuable tool against illiteracy. While this great cultural achievement has merited considerable attention in Korea, detailed English-language accounts of han'gŭl are scarce. Most prominent among this small body of work is Gari Ledyard's 1966 dissertation, "The Korean Language Reform of 1446," since republished (with modest revisions) in 1998. Two recent volumes about the Korean script are now looking to claim space alongside Ledyard's text: The Korean Alphabet of 1446 …

Descriptions of Korea's linguistic situation written by Westerners during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries not only reveal native and foreign attitudes toward the Korean language but also provide insight into language-focused evangelization tactics embraced by Christian missionaries. Upon their arrival in Korea during the 1800s, Westerners encountered a long-standing system of diglossia: socio-historical relations between China and Korea gave rise to the use of various Korean "lects" in which the degree of Chinese elements differed. Moreover, the nation's indigenous writing system, han'gul, was widely regarded by Koreans as culturally subordinate to Chinese script, an attitude that garnered much attention …