Changing Internet Language Features Among the Korean Scholarly Group

Abstract

This study aims at identifying how the Korean scholarly group's internet language features changed during the last 10 years. For this study, 2,450 written texts on the same web-site in which a previous study collected data were analyzed. This comparison study showed the following results: 1)First of all, the scholarly group's internet texts still involved standard language, high-quality vocabulary and long sentences; 2)However, it was very difficult to find Chinese characters and the percentage of the usage of English increased significantly; 3)Presenting objective data and numbering were still frequently seen; 4)Furthermore, typical internet languages such as slang, argot and abbreviations began to appear; 5)Texts showing self-reflection and teaching tone have been decreased. Instead, texts implying psychological pressure and worries about their jobs have increased; 6)The biggest change was that most of communicator's names were written in English (or unidentified words) or commonly used internet names. This study concludes that comparing to the previous study, the scholarly group's internet language features have changed (although some based on occupational variables remained the same), and that these changes might be affected by social changes taking place in the scholarly group.