Abstract
This article investigates the Korean language as spoken in Hawaii by the early Korean immigrants who arrived in Hawaii between 1903 and 1924. This language has been largely isolated from the language spoken by Koreans in Korea and has been in contact mainly with English as spoken in Hawaii. Whenever single language comes to be spoken by separate groups in isolation from one another, divergence results. Such divergence is greater if these groups are placed in divergent environments, and Hawaii is quite different from Korea in many respects; for instance, Hawaiian society is much more egalitarian than that of Korea. Much sociolinguistic study of the Korean language is being done in Korea, and this research indicates that the Korean language is undergoing rapid sociolinguistic change. Such rapid change may be ascribed to the introduction of Western egalitarian philosophy (Suh 1979a, b, 1980). The purpose of this study is to investigate the sociolinguistic aspect of the Korean language as spoken in the milieu of the egalitarian society of Hawaii. The Korean language has an intricate address system, number of speech levels, two statuses, and some other honorific and humble expres sions, which are chosen on the basis of communicative distance (Peng 1974:33) between (or among) the people involved. In this complex socio linguistic system, Howell (1967:56) points out, a difference of single year is frequently enough to insure deferential speech on the part of the junior.1 We will attempt to compare the address terms and speech levels used by the oldest group in Park-Choi's study (1978) with those used by early Korean immigrants to Hawaii. We will also review some of the re search methods used in sociolinguistic studies. In section one, we will consider some drawbacks of the widely used
Published Version
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