Changing Internet Language Features Among the Korean Scholarly Group

This study aims at identifying how the Korean scholarly group s internet language features changed during the last 10 years. For this study, 2,450 written texts on the same web-site in which a previous study collected data were analyzed. This comparison study showed the following results: 1)First of all, the scholarly group s internet texts still involved standard language, high-quality vocabulary and long sentences; 2)However, it was very difficult to find Chinese characters and the percentage of the usage of English increased significantly; 3)Presenting objective data and numbering were still frequently seen; 4)Furthermore, typical internet languages such as slang, argot and abbreviations began to appear; 5)Texts showing self-reflection and teaching tone have been decreased. Instead, texts implying psychological pressure and worries about their jobs have increased; 6)The biggest change was that most of communicator s names were written in English (or unidentified words) or commonly used internet names. This study concludes that comparing to the previous study, the scholarly group s internet language features have changed (although some based on occupational variables remained the same), and that these changes might be affected by social changes taking place in the scholarly group.