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Barnes-Sadler, Simon (2018) 'A Digital Humanities Approach to Inter-Korean Linguistic Divergence: Stylometric Analysis of ROK and DPRK Journalistic Texts.' S/N Korean Humanities, 4 (1). pp. 127-153.

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Abstract

Linguistic divergence between standard varieties of Korean has been much studied, however, it has largely concerned itself with fine-grained analyses of single points of divergence, for example vocabulary, and the language policy behind such divergence. In contrast, this paper examines general trends of language in use in the ROK and DPRK in a specific genre of writing. We first briefly review prior research on the linguistic divergence which the standard varieties of these countries have undergone to contextualize our argument that a digital humanities approach could provide new insights for the field. This includes taking advantage of internet mediated data collection and quantitative analyses applied to relatively large amounts of data. In order to demonstrate the potential of this approach more fully, we present a small-scale stylometric analysis of ROK and DPRK journalistic texts. This pilot study suggests that national origin determines the stylistic characteristics of these texts to a greater extent than the topic and allows us to tentatively propose general characterizing features of ROK and DPRK journalistic style. We conclude with a prospectus for the incorporation of such methods into the study of ROK/DPRK linguistic divergence.

Item Type: Journal Article
Keywords: Linguistic divergence, munhwaŏ, pyojunŏ, Stylometry, Digital Humanities
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PI Oriental languages and literatures
ISSN: 23840668
Copyright Statement: The file made available here is the final pre-publication draft of this article. The copyright of the published version is held by The Institute of Humanities for Unification.
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.17783/IHU.2018.4.1.127
Date Deposited: 01 Jun 2018 08:34
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/25902
Related URLs: http://www.snko ... /AboutUs/04.php (Publisher URL)
Funders: Other

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