26.3081, Review: Pragmatics; Semantics; Socioling: Kiaer (2014)

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Subject: 26.3081, Review: Pragmatics; Semantics; Socioling: Kiaer (2014)

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Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2015 14:46:16
From: Sofia Rüdiger [sofia.ruediger at uni-bayreuth.de]
Subject: The History of English Loanwords in Korean

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-3986.html

AUTHOR: Jieun  Kiaer
TITLE: The History of English Loanwords in Korean
SERIES TITLE: LINCOM Studies in English Linguistics 19
PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Sofia Rüdiger, Universität Bayreuth

Review's Editors: Malgorzata Cavar and Sara Couture

SUMMARY

The monograph is divided into three parts which all illuminate different
aspects of English loanwords in Korean. Part I, “The Import of the English
Language,” provides the historical background, while Part II, “The Making of
Anglo-Korean Words,” deals with structural considerations and word-formation
processes, and Part III, “The Use of English Words in Korean,” completes the
picture with an overview of usage patterns of and attitudes towards English
loanwords in Korean. The book is aimed at researchers in the fields of
language contact and change as well as Korean and East Asian studies.

The historical overview of the language contact situation between English and
Korean is presented in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. The first chapter, entitled
“What If Hamel Had Been Welcomed in 1653?”, recapitulates the first encounter
between Korea (then called Choseon) and the West. Kiaer illuminates this
historical event from different perspectives by comparing excerpts from the
diary of a shipwrecked Dutch sailor, Hendrick Hamel, with writings from the
King’s Royal Diary (1619-1659). She furthermore provides literary sources to
introduce the moral code of ancient Korean society, which starting from the
19th century underwent a change from a rather secluded and conservative
society to a more open and “Western-oriented” (p. 7) one. Kiaer also gives
detailed information on the first English schools, such as their founders,
staff and curriculums. The chapter closes with the beginning of the Japanese
occupation, during which the discontinuation of English education was enforced
starting from 1911. 

Chapter 2 looks at the effect that the late opening of Korea to the West had
on the Korean language in the time period between 1896-1910, especially when
it comes to vocabulary. Kiaer identifies a phenomenon called “new word rush”
(p. 15), which came about with the introduction of new concepts, objects and
ideas. The oldest words borrowed from English into Korean include, for
example, ‘alcohol,’ ‘necktie,’ ‘coffee,’ ‘chocolate’ and ‘ice cream’ (pp.
16-17). The rest of the chapter is mainly spent with detailed lists of
loanwords from English categorized according to semantic domains, i.e. new
civilization and new ideas (e.g. ‘romantic,’ ‘cement’), measurement units
(e.g. ‘gram,’ ‘centimeter’), specialist vocabulary (e.g. ‘bacteria,’
‘cholera’), religion (e.g. ‘bible,’ ‘Hebrew’) and names of animals, plants and
clothes (e.g. ‘banana,’ ‘skirt’). Some of the examples are given in the
context of a sentence. As Kiaer demonstrates, some of the English loanwords
have native Korean or Sino-Korean counterparts, whereas others do not. In
these lexical doublets, sometimes one word is prevalent or used more often
than the other, and sometimes usage frequency seems to be similar, resulting
in a “slight difference in meaning” (p.23). Kiaer also provides extensive
tables of shared vocabulary between Korean, Chinese and Japanese and
elucidates on the Chinese and Japanese influences on the Korean vocabulary in
general.

Chapter 3, “Core Vocabulary,” shows the place English loanwords have found
within the lexical system of the Korean language. Within the chapter, Kiaer
reports the results of a short study in which participants of two different
age groups (20-40 years old and 40-60 years old) were asked to provide any
words they can think of regarding different lexical fields (i.e. fashion and
clothes, food, health and housing). The younger group provided altogether more
words in all fields than the older group of participants and the field of
fashion and clothing received the highest proportion of English loanwords from
both the younger and the older participant group. Kiaer uses these results to
demonstrate that the “use of Anglo-Korean words is part of cultural practice”
(p. 42). She also uses a method akin to linguistic landscaping in order to
prove the pervasiveness of English terms in the names of Korean companies.
Last but not least, a number of borrowed emotion words, particularly “cool,”
are investigated as they are “at the heart of language as spoken” (p. 45) and
therefore further demonstrate the Westernization of the Korean language.

Chapter 4 describes the linguistic characteristics of Korean words and starts
with a section on word formation in Korean, focusing on compounding with both
native Korean and Sino-Korean morphemes. According to Kiaer, the source
language for borrowings has in the last thirty years shifted from Chinese to
English, which she illustrates with the example of language use in Korean
newspapers. Korean newspapers have changed considerably in the last decades.
Not only has the direction of reading changed, but the use of Chinese
characters (Hanja) has also been visibly and significantly reduced. Kiaer
claims that many of these Chinese characters have been replaced with English
loanwords, which she illustrates with the analysis of one issue of a Korean
newspaper in terms of the amount of English loanwords used. Different adoption
strategies can be found there, such as the use of English orthography, a
transliteration or a transliteration plus English orthography. Another
frequent occurrence are names of foreign persons and places. The rest of the
chapter is devoted to an overview of the Korean sound inventory and syllable
structure rules, especially highlighting the differences to English. It is
then shown how these differences affect the spelling and pronunciation of
Anglo-Korean words. 

The last chapter of part II, chapter 5, explores the ways of forming new words
with lexical material from English. Kiaer identifies five productive patterns
of compounding: native Korean + English, English + native Korean, Sino-Korean
+ English, English + Sino-Korean, and English + English (p. 64). Regarding
derivation, it seems that Sino-Korean affixes are still very popular and
extensive lists of frequent Sino-Korean prefixes and suffixes are given. The
third word-formation pattern examined is blending, which is illustrated with
the productive pattern of adding –ting (from ‘meeting’) to Korean words (e.g.
“sogaeting,” ‘blind date,’ from Korean “sogae” ‘introduction’ + -ting or
“saiboting,” ‘online dating,’ from the English loan ‘cyber’ + -ting). This
process has become so productive, that –ting can be regarded a new suffix in
Korean. Kiaer also provides a list of other Anglo-Korean suffixes which are
productive in the Korean context, such as –peul from either “play” or “reply,”
-toon from “cartoon,” -tel from “hotel,” -pil from “village” and -ka from
“camera”. For each suffix a number of examples are given. The rest of the
chapter considers the lifespan of English loanwords in Korean. Some English
loanwords fall out of use whereas others have “survived and thrived” (p. 73).
According to Kiaer, this can be related to prosodic efficiency; words with
fewer syllables are more successful than words with a high amount of
syllables. 

The third part of the monograph starts with a chapter entitled “Korean
English.” As Kiaer emphasizes, Anglo-Korean words are hard to classify either
as Korean or as English, due to their hybrid status in the lexical system.
Kiaer tentatively distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate English
loanwords in Korean. The legitimacy of a word seems to be related to the
question whether the word does or does not make “any sense” (p. 82) in an
Anglophone context. The resulting question is how the legitimacy of English
loanwords in Korean can be reliably judged. To this end, Kiaer asked students
at Oxford University to judge the legitimacy of Anglo-Korean words formed with
a –web or –net affix, for example ‘web-toon,’ ‘web-office,’ ‘net-folder’ and
‘edu-net.’ Most of the English participants regarded those words as
illegitimate or were at least doubtful about their legitimacy. As a
counterpart to borrowing processes from English to Korean, Kiaer additionally
identified several words successfully borrowed from Korean to English
(exemplified by their use in The New York Times). The chapter concludes with a
report of the results from another study in which Korean students had to name
Anglo-Korean false-friends, i.e. loanwords which have changed their meaning in
the borrowing process to such a degree that they have become hard or even
impossible for English speakers to understand in their Koreanized version. As
can be seen in the list provided on pages 90-91, many loanwords show semantic
changes. 

Chapter 7 deals with the meanings of and the attitudes towards English
loanwords. Considering four pairs of lexical doublets (one native/Sino-Korean
term and one Anglo-Korean term), Kiaer shows that the terms have become
differentiated in meaning. Usually the English loanword refers to a more
modern or westernized sense whereas the Korean word is used for more
traditional meanings. Kiaer provides a list of terms which show the
differences in the connotation of these word pairs. For example, ‘nori’ is
used for traditional games whereas the English loanword ‘geim’ is used for
computer and mobile phone games, as well as drinking games. In order to
illustrate Korean attitudes towards English words, Kiaer quotes the results of
a survey conducted by the National Institute of the Korean Language (NIKL) in
2007 with more than 2,000 participants. Firstly, using common loanwords is
generally approved of whereas the use of uncommon loanwords is frowned upon as
‘showing off’. Secondly, using loanwords as an individual is more accepted
than the use of loanwords by institutions or companies. Finally, generally the
English as well as the Korean language are evaluated positively. 

The last chapter of the book explores the intersection between new words and
new cultural artifacts. The word ‘wellbeing’ has been introduced into the
Korean language in the early 2000s and has since then been appropriated by the
health industry as a modifier for all kind of health products and services,
e.g. ‘wellbeing food,’ ‘wellbeing fashion,’ ‘wellbeing diet’. Kiaer again
resorts to a small linguistic landscape study to show the prevalence of
English terminology on signboards in Seoul, focusing on the designations for
cafes, hairdressers and supermarkets, which can be either referred to by a
Korean or an Anglo-Korean word (or additionally a mixture of both). In the
last pages of the book, further results from the NIKL survey in 2007 are
reproduced, in which the understanding of English loanwords related to
technology and the internet was investigated. As the results show, the general
public is aware of the loanwords, even though reported understanding and usage
are lower for older generations. 

EVALUATION

Overall, the monograph is very concise; a high amount of information on
English loanwords used in Korea is presented on just 126 pages. Even though
the title promises a predominantly historical account, other related fields
such as loanword use and attitudes are also incorporated in the book. Due to
the highly specialized content, this monograph will be of interest for the
experienced researcher rather than undergraduate students.

The strong point of the book is definitely the historical overview in Part I.
Numerous long quotes from sources produced in the respective periods provide
the reader with an insightful access to and vivid picture of the historical
aspects of the development of the language contact situation in Korea. 

Kiaer reports the results of diverse studies to support the claims she makes
in writing. Unfortunately, information regarding the methodology of each study
is often insufficient. For example, she reports a survey of food, clothing and
shelter vocabulary (p. 40ff), in which participants were asked to list a
number of words for each lexical field. However, the only demographic
information given was that ten participants were aged between 20 and 40 and
ten participants were between 40 and 60 years old. Furthermore, the reader is
not provided with the sex, occupation or any other information about the
participants, even though demographic factors could indeed have influenced the
results (e.g. someone working in fashion might give more fashion-related
lexical items; a student of health education might have a more specialized
vocabulary in this field). The missing information makes the comparison of the
two groups difficult and the interpretation of the results irreproducible. The
reflection on other studies (for example conducted by NIKL) is also
problematic as again insufficient demographic information is given and the
reported numbers of participants are faulty. For instance, on page 103 it is
stated that 2,039 adults participated in a survey: 982 males and 1,052 females
(spelled with a typo as 10,52). These numbers add up to 2,034 though, and not
to 2,039. The same problem applies to the number of participants given for
each age range which also does not add up to the total number of participants.
Similarly, on page 118, 1,948 participants are broken down into 1,597 Koreans
and 399 foreigners. Further questions arise regarding the mentioned
foreigners: e.g. which countries are they from and are they currently living
in Korea? No information is provided concerning these points. 

Kiaer neglects incorporating results from previous research on English
loanwords in Korean and fails to mention publications on the language contact
situation or the linguistic landscape of Korean cities. The monograph would
have highly benefited from references to works such as Lawrence’s (2012) study
on the linguistic landscapes of Seoul and other Korean cities. Previous
research on English loanwords in Korean, especially the creative type
including semantic shift, is also ignored (see for example Lee 1996, Kent 1999
and Kim 2012). This process is often connected with the concept of Konglish (a
blend of the words ‘Korean’ and ‘English’), a term which, surprisingly, is not
used in the book. 

The book provides ample visual materials in the form of pictures, graphs and
figures. However, many of the graphs and figures are hard to read or even
illegible, as they use different grayscales to differentiate between
categories. On p. 89 for example, the reader theoretically should be able to
discern ten different grays in partially overlapping lines. The pie charts on
p. 52 are equally hard to read as they also employ grayscales. Additionally,
many of the sources mentioned in the text cannot be found in the bibliography
(e.g. Odell 2013, Potts 2005 and 2007, Chaehaek et al. 2010). Names of figures
are sometimes in the wrong place and the design of the figure on p. 59 has
been deformed. 

In conclusion, the monograph does provide a wealth of information in form of
lists and a high amount of useful examples is given. However, the
interpretation of some of the study results is difficult, especially due to
the missing methodological information. Therefore, the monograph is more
likely to be of use to more advanced researchers who can deal with the
aforementioned problems.

REFERENCES

Kent, David B. 1999. “Speaking in Tongues: Chinglish, Japlish and Konglish.”
KOTESOL 
Proceedings of PAC2 (The Second Pan Asian Conference, 1999, Seoul). 197–209.

Kim, Eun-Young J. 2012 “Creative adoption: trends in Anglicisms in Korea.”
English Today 28 (2). 15–17.

Lawrence, Bruce C. 2012. “The Korean English linguistic landscape.” World
Englishes 31 (1). 70–92. 

Lee, Sun-Hwa. 1996. “Language Change in Korean with Special Emphasis on
Semantic Change of English Loanwords.” Doctoral Thesis (Universität zu Köln).


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sofia Rüdiger obtained her M.A. in Intercultural Anglophone Studies from the
University of Bayreuth in Germany, where she is also currently employed as a
research assistant at the English Linguistics department. At the moment she is
working on a PhD project on ELF use by Korean speakers. Her research interests
include varieties of English, ELF, English in the Korean context, corpus
linguistics and computer-mediated communication.





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