Genderlectal Variation in Korean?: An Empirical Sociolinguistic Study of Utterance-Final Tones

Abstract

This paper empirically examines genderlectal variation in sentence-final boundary tones claimed by Lakoff (1975) on the basis of Seoul Korean data. Two studies are conducted in the research focusing on declaratives, the most frequently used sentence type, and additionally exclamatories. Study 1 is conducted based on six speakers' (3 males and 3 females) reading of 33 constructed dialogues, while study 2 examines recordings of three radio talk-shows cohosted by a male and a female. The two studies commonly found a clear difference in the use frequency of complex tones; the females produced a notably more frequent use of complex tones than the males, supporting Crystal's (1971) claim. However, no cross-gender difference was revealed in the inventory of tones. Shared attitudinal meaning of complex tones are proposed and their sociolinguistic implications are also discussed.