Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary examination into the sociocultural connotations of a distinctive address(or reference) term in Korean. Studying the terms of address embedded in a society reveal social relationships between speaker and addressee explicitly or implicitly. Ajumma is one of address terms, which is commonly used to address/refer to married women in Korea; yet it has negative connotations against women. In order to explore the Korean society through language practices, I conducted a group interview of young married women living in a small U.S town and tried to examine their attitudes toward ajumma. The analysis showed that the predominant perception on ajumma found in mainstream Korea remained the same in this community. However, ajumma seemed to be also functioning as young married women's solidarity and intimacy. This paper provides language users with the opportunity to reexamine and reflect their language practices through the address term, ajumma.
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