Out-group representation patterns of Korean third-person plural pronouns: A computational linguistic comparison of itul, kutul, and cetul in political discourse

Gyeongjae Oh^*, Sanghoun Song^**

^*Undergraduate Student, College of Education, Korea University; 145 Anam-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02841, South Korea
^**Associate Professor, College of Liberal Arts, Korea University; 145 Anam-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02841, South Korea

Abstract

This study compares the patterns of out-group representation realized through the Korean third-person plural pronouns itul, kutul, and cetul in political discourse. It also investigates whether these differences are related to the pragmatic properties of their morphological roots i, ku, and ce, which are traditionally categorized as proximal, medial, and distal deixis, respectively. Focusing on Korean presidential speeches and party spokesperson statements, this study adopts a multimethod computational linguistic approach, including (1) frequency analysis, (2) collocation analysis, (3) word embedding, and (4) surprisal analysis. The results showed a broad division between itul and the pair kutul– cetul, while also revealing meaningful differences between kutul and cetul. These findings further suggest that the contrast between the pronouns is partially motivated by the deictic distinctions between their roots. Thus, this study demonstrates that Korean third-person plural pronouns display internally differentiated patterns of out-group representation.

초록

Vol. 40 No. 4 (2022.12)

Journal Abbreviation j. Korea Saf. Manag. Sci.
Frequency Published four times annually in March, June, September, and December
Doi Prefix 10.14353/sjk.
Year of Launching 1993
Publisher The Sociolinguistic Society of Korea

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