Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1417

Part of Session 157: Dialect Perceptions in the City (Other abstracts in this session)

Urbanicity and Language Variation and Change: Mapping Dialect Perceptions in and of Seoul

Authors: Jeon, Lisa; Cukor-Avila, Patricia
Submitted by: Jeon, Lisa (University of North Texas, United States of America)

Urbanicity and Language Variation and Change:

Mapping Dialect Perceptions in and of Seoul

Studies in perceptual dialectology conducted in the U.S. (cf. Dennis Preston, 1989) have shown that people have strong opinions about the number and placement of dialect regions. Similar studies in other parts of the world have corroborated these results in Japan (Long 1999); France (Kuiper 1999); the Netherlands (Rensink 1999); and in the UK (Montgomery 2007). There has been relatively little research conducted in this area on Korean, however, with early studies using only short language attitude surveys. An exception is Long and Yim (2002) who conducted the most extensive study to date incorporating the methods of perceptual dialectology and language attitude research.

The present study is an extension of Long and Yim (2002), but differs in its method of investigation in an important way. This study highlights the importance of urban areas in perception (Montgomery and Beal 2011). It uses ArcGIS to geo-reference hand-drawn maps from over 200 Koreans living in areas that represent the dialect regions outlined in Long and Yim (2002). During this process, dialect categories for subjects’ perceptions in and of Seoul were identified and mapped. In addition, demographic information was correlated with results showing how subjects’ perceptions are stratified by factors like age, sex, socio-economic class, social networks, and time spent living in the dialect region.

A preliminary analysis of these data suggests that Koreans’ perceptions of dialect regions are not limited by province boundaries as suggested by Long and Yim (2002). In fact, the data reveals not only perceptions of dialect variation unassociated with geographic borders, but also taps into the way people connect ideas about language and place (Johnstone 2010). These findings shed new light on the relationship between urbanicity and language variation and change in Seoul. The results from this study have implications for perceptual dialectology, language attitudes research, and urban linguistic ecologies.

References

Johnstone, Barbara. (2011). “Language and Place.” Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics, Rajend Mesthrie (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kuiper, Lawrence. (1999.) Variation and the Norm: Parisian Perceptions of Regional English. In Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Preston (ed.), 1, 243-262. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Long, Daniel. (1999a). “Mapping non-linguists’ evaluations of Japanese language variation.” In Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Preston (ed.), 1, 199-226. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Long, Daniel & Yim, Young-Cheol Yim. (2002). Regional Differences in the Perception of Korean Dialects. In Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Long & Preston (eds.), 2, 249-275. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Montgomery, Chris. (2007). Northern English dialects: A perceptual approach. PhD dissertation, University of Sheffield.

Montgomery, Chris, and Joan Beal. (2011). Perceptual Dialectology. In Analysing Variation in English, April McMahon and Warren Maguire (eds.), 121-148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Preston, Dennis R. (1989). Perceptual Dialectology: Nonlinguists’ views of areal linguistics. Dordrect, Holland: Foris.

Rensink, W. G. 1999 (1955). Dialectindeling naar opgaven van medewerkers. Mededelingen der centrale commissie voor onderzoek van het nederlandse volkseigen 7, 20-3. Translated as ”Informant classification of dialects”. In Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Preston (ed.), 1, 3-7. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Urbanicity and Language Variation and Change: Mapping Dialect Perceptions in and of Seoul