Likein Korean English speech

Abstract

This article focuses on the use of like by Korean speakers of English. South Korea is a fascinating context for world Englishes studies: English is generally learned as a foreign language, but deep political and historical ties facilitate a high visibility and prominent status of the language in Korean society. In this study, the use of like by Korean speakers of English with particular attention to discoursepragmatic aspects are investigated with the help of the Spoken Korean English Corpus (SPOKE). Like is a high frequency item in SPOKE and clearly forms part of the Korean English repertoire across its functional range. Even though usage of like as discourse marker and particle is influenced by having spent time abroad and (self-reported) English proficiency, it forms part of the repertoire of nearly all surveyed speakers.Quotative like has also found a place in the Korean English repertoire, albeit to a lesser degree.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

“We Use English But Not Like All the Time Like”—Discourse Marker Like in UAE English

“…Moreover, what has to be acknowledged is that the discourse marker use of like seems to be a relatively prominent feature of the English repertoires of the UAE students. In a sense, these speakers could therefore be seen to be somewhat comparable to the Korean English speakers analyzed in Rüdiger (2021). Clearly, Korea and the UAE are two quite different geographical locations and social realities, but perhaps the younger generations in a globalized world are not that different anymore.…”

“…Both Fuller (2003) and D'Arcy (2007) identified a female speaker lead among speakers of American English, yet Schweinberger (2014, p. 393) presented a more diverse picture and argued for "varietyspecific" differences with respect to gender. Moreover, Rüdiger (2021) could not identify differences with respect to gender either. Perhaps, in our modern and globalized era, it may be time to focus more on other variables than on the binary variable gender or to approach it as less binary.…”

“…In general, like has received much scholarly attention (see Discourse Marker Like), and it is clearly undergoing frequency shifts in present-day Englishes (D'Arcy, 2017). It has mainly been studied in native Englishes, but much less research focuses on non-native speakers of English or ELF varieties (see, for example, Diskin-Holdaway, 2021 or;Rüdiger, 2021). Yet studies investigating language change in ELF varieties identified accelerated grammatical language change (Laitinen, 2020).…”

“…Rüdiger (2021) used the same classification as D'Arcy (2017). This means that she differentiated between discourse marker and discourse particle uses.…”

English in Taiwan

“…Second, Rüdiger (2021), based on the SPOKE corpus, has shown how like is a firm part of the South Korean English repertoire and is used across the item's functional range (including its discourse-pragmatic functions). Despite the Korean speakers’ attested use of this lexical item in its various functions, like shows up as keyword for TASE (not SPOKE), on rank 3 nonetheless – definitely an invitation to have a closer look at both corpora to find out what Taiwanese speakers are doing differently.…”