현대국어 초기 구어체의 실현과 문학적 수용

The Realization of Early Spoken Modern Korean and its Use in Literature

Modern Korean began to make its way to the front stage at the beginning of the 20th century. During which time, Korean language has undergone significant changes in various aspects. Under the increasing influence of western culture and ideology, a new understanding towards national language, the Unification of the Spoken and Written Language, began to emerge while ethnic consciousness awakened. The Unification of the Spoken and Written Language means to write with hangul instead of Chinese characters and to write in spoken terms instead of written terms.In this unification movement, many major attempts were made in novel writing, among which, several sinsoseol pieces by Lee Injik achieved a certain level of success, and Lee Kwangsu's masterpiece “Mujeong” brought the movement further ahead.However, it is hard to say that the development appeared in novels is the result of peoples' linguistic insights or their understanding towards spoken language. Instead, it is more of a convenient borrowing of the spoken terms from pansori genre novels. Pansori novels started from modern Korean period and enjoyed a long-lasting popularity among common Koreans. Being the intellectuals of the new era, sinsoseol writers took advantage of the popularity of the pansori novels and brought the spoken forms into their own creative works. Hence, they were able to point out a new direction towards writing in Korean. As a result, Novels in that period used expressions closer to spoken language than other genres did. It is not correct to consider the shift from ‘-deora’(-더라) to ‘-da’(-다)or ‘-eossda’(-었다) as a significant development in the unification of spoken and written language. In order to judge orality, a comprehensive investigation of phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicology and discourse is necessary.