Indexicality of Commercial Signs in South Korea

This research stands on changing sociolinguistic paradigms in South Korea (hereafter Korea). Sociolinguistic paradigms in Korean society have long gone beyond the wide use of Korean language as semiotic resources since Korea embraced globalization as a national policy in 1990s. Let alone the penetration of English into Koreans’ daily activities, an encounter with compounds of various linguistic resources in the street is not foreign, rendering indexicality of linguistic semiosis complex. Within this context, the followings are highlighted to investigate indexical meanings of commercial signs appreciating arguments from the Discourse-Historical Approach further appropriating Silverstein’s order of indexicality: Socio-historical accounts of Korean nationalism that is still believed to be one of the most influential ideologies; the effect of nationalism on sociolinguistics of globalization in Korea; and Koreans’ negotiation between nationalism and globalization, through which we can illuminate scaling processes of sociolinguistics of globalization in Korean society.