FEATURED NEOLOGISM:

I am particularly interested in neologisms that reveal broader cultural and social changes in contemporary Korean society. One example that I find especially thought-provoking is the expression “1인분 (irinbun),” literally “one serving.” In recent Korean Gen Z discourse, this term has expanded beyond its original culinary meaning to refer to a standardized portion of work or responsibility. The metaphor draws on the fixed, measurable nature of a “serving” and applies it to labor, reflecting a generational preference for clear boundaries, quantifiable fairness, and a move away from collectivist overwork norms. The rise of “1인분” in workplace talk and social media since the late 2010s provides insight into how younger Koreans conceptualize individual responsibility and negotiate autonomy within changing work cultures.

I am a researcher in sociolinguistics, semantics, and pragmatics with a corpus-based approach to meaning construction in discourse. My work examines how linguistic forms—such as evaluative expressions, stance markers, and interactional features—encode social meanings and shape communicative norms in Korean public discourse. I study how meanings shift across contexts and how discourse practices reflect cultural values, ideological positioning, and patterns of social evaluation. I have extensive experience with corpus annotation in spoken and learner language, including research on implicit bias, inappropriateness, and discursive framing. I am interested in how new or contextually marked expressions participate in broader processes of semantic change and social meaning-making within digital and media environments.