국내 언어와 성 연구의 주요 성과와 향후 전망

Achievements and Prospects of Language and Gender Research in Korea

This study outlines the language and gender studies in Korea over the past 30 years and derives some prospect of the future research. Following the epitome of the beginning and development of the studies in the framework of modern sociolinguistics, this article reviews the relevant studies on both Korean and foreign languages. The review shows that the works on this topic can be broadly classified into three main research areas; language variation, utterable genderlect and objective genderlect. Though having entered upon this research area two decades later than those in Amercian and European countries, Korean sociolinguists have produced significant results, especially in the gender-specific utterances in Korean. Works on other languages have been also carried out, often with applied linguistic purposes of cross-linguistic/cultural analysis, foreign language education, translation as well as consciousness raising of gender issues. Emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary approaches both in perspectives and research methods of the future studies, this article expects continuation of variation studies for completing the description of ‘language variation and change’, sociolinguistic efforts and movement against the gender bias and discrimination, and analysis of various types of communication in cyber space. It is also pointed out that language use of sexual minorities is one of the most untapped and subtle sociolinguistic topics in Korea.