An Overview of Studies of Conversation in Korean Linguistics

Abstract

Since the pioneering research on turn-taking carried out by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974), discourse-oriented functional linguists have done a great amount of research in discourse analysis and conversation analysis (CA). Inspired by this line of research, some Korean linguists have carried out research on conversation by adopting assumptions and methodology of CA in analyzing conversation data. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the studies which have dealt with conversational data in Korean linguistics, mostly focusing on interaction- based studies. To achieve this goal, this research first provides a brief overview of basic assumptions, methodology, and major research topics of CA and development of conversation-analytic discourse studies. After that, this overview discusses major findings and research topics in CA and 'conversation and grammar' in the following terms: (i) turn-taking, turn-constructional units, turn increments, and prosody, (ii) interactional functions of clausal connectives and sentence-ending suffixes, (iii) interactional- sociolinguistic approaches to functions of language and social variables, (iv) conversation, grammar, and grammaticalization, and (v) other interaction- based studies. Based on this classification of research topics, this study shows that interaction-based research can provide a new way of viewing language functions. Overall, this paper shows what has been done and what should be done in the study of conversation in Korean linguistics.