Invoking Categories Through Co-Present Person Reference: The Case of Korean Conversation

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Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) 1219–1242

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Invoking categories through co-present person reference:

The case of Korean conversation
Sun-Young Oh *
Department of English Language Education, Seoul National University, Gwanak-ro 599, Gwanak-gu,
Seoul 151-748, Republic of Korea
Received 11 September 2009; accepted 21 September 2009
Abstract
This article uses a conversation analytic framework to describe Korean speakers’ practices of co-present person reference by
means of quasi-pronouns. In referring to a co-present party in a conversation, Korean speakers make use of demonstrative-based
quasi-pronouns. While the proximal demonstrative is the default form to be used for this purpose, speakers often deploy the
distinction between proximal versus distal demonstrative-based quasi-pronouns in order to display their category membership with
respect to the referent (and the recipient), who is co-present in the interaction. Specifically, speakers refer to a co-present party with
a distal demonstrative ce (‘that’)-based quasi-pronoun instead of a proximal demonstrative i (‘this’)-based one when they try to
endow the referent with a different category membership than themselves, without respect to the actual physical distance between
them. This study provides an interactional motivation for the observed referential practices, and also supports the stance that the
characterizations of persons should be grounded in the participants’ own orientations in the interaction.
# 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Conversation analysis; Reference; Demonstratives; Membership categories; Korean
1. Introduction
This article involves a study of Korean speakers’ practices for referring to persons, especially co-present parties to a
conversation. There has been a great deal of interest in how personal reference is done in Korean (as well as in other
languages). The vast majority of Korean literature, however, deals with reference only as a part of the pronominal
system, without analyzing reference forms as used in naturally-occurring talk. A few studies that look at discourse,
influenced by work done on other languages (e.g., Hinds, 1978, 1979; Hinds and Hinds, 1979; Clancy, 1980; Givón,
1983), have investigated how third person characters are referred to in narratives in Korean (Hwang, 1983, 1987; Kim,
1989). The research on this topic has sought to discover how speakers introduce persons (and objects) into discourse
and then track them, and what factors determine the speaker’s choice of various reference devices in given contexts.
While providing interesting findings, these studies fail to examine the ways speakers refer to persons while interacting
with their interlocutors. More recently, a couple of researchers have attempted to explore the topic of personal
reference in conversations (Lee, 1989; Kim, 1997, 1999), but there are still several referential issues that remain to be
addressed. One uncharted area of research on reference in Korean concerns the functions of what this study calls
* Tel.: +82 2 880 7675; fax: +82 2 880 7671.

E-mail address: sunoh@snu.ac.kr.
0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2009.09.019
1220 S.-Y. Oh / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) 1219–1242
‘‘quasi-pronouns’’1 (i.e., nouns followed by a demonstrative). In light of their frequency in naturally-occurring

conversations, demonstrative-based quasi-pronouns have not received as much attention as they deserve in the
literature on referential choice in Korean. With rare exceptions (e.g., Oh, 2007), previous literature has only noted the
possible combinations of demonstratives and nouns, without addressing the critical issue of how, and for what
interactional purposes, parties to conversation utilize them. In addition, co-present person reference has never been in
focus so far, since previous research is mainly interested in the question of how non-present persons are referred to in
Korean. The existing linguistic analyses tend to be limited to the identification of the referential functions of each
reference form. It is critical to explicating the use of referential forms in conversation, however, to understand
precisely what the speaker is doing, in addition to what s/he is referring to, when s/he employs a reference form
(Schegloff, 1996).
This study attempts to fill one of the gaps in the current understanding of reference practices in Korean by
examining co-present person reference using naturally-occurring conversational data. Specifically, this study will
be devoted to finding answers to the following questions: In referring to co-present (and non-present) third parties,
Korean speakers recurrently make use of quasi-pronouns. When and for what interactional project(s) do speakers
use them? How are the sub-types of quasi-pronouns (i.e., proximal versus distal demonstrative-based ones)
distinguished in their usages and functions? In other words, this study examines Korean speakers’ practices of
exploiting quasi-pronouns in reference to co-present participants, paying special attention to the interactional
project of the speaker who uses a specific type of quasi-pronoun. As will be seen later, the analysis discloses one
factor – membership categorization of the participants – that has an accountably relevant bearing on the use of
Korean quasi-pronouns for referring to co-present persons. This study will thereby demonstrate that, in order to
adequately account for the use of these forms, we must include as a first order consideration the interactional basis
of the observed referential practices in our analytic explication. Before presenting the analysis of the use of quasi-
pronouns in Korean, the following two sections will first provide a brief review of Sacks’ concept of membership
categorization (1964/1965, Lecture 6, 1967, 1972a,b) and a detailed description of quasi-pronouns as a referential
option in Korean, respectively.
2. Membership categorization
This section briefly reviews Sacks’ original discussion of membership categorization (Sacks, 1964/1965, Lecture 6,
1967, 1972a,b) since this concept plays a crucial role in the current paper. The ‘‘Membership Inference-Rich
Representative’’ (MIR) device is ‘‘a basic mechanism of social control’’ (Sacks, 1964/1965, Lecture 6:48) that
members of a society use to locate membership categories and by means of doing so carry out various activities.
Membership categories refer to social classifications that may be used to describe persons (e.g., man, father,
policeman, etc.).
In describing a person, according to Sacks, a speaker can select from an infinite number of characteristics such
as eye color, height, religion, race, place of birth, sex, etc. In other words, there exist an unlimited number of
membership categories, one (or more) of which may be relevant depending on the context.2 This led Sacks to the
question of whether interactants have particular procedures for selecting categories as the basis for membership
categorization at a particular moment in talk-in-interaction. A membership categorization device (MCD) is defined
by Sacks as ‘‘any collection of membership categories, containing at least a category, which may be applied to
some population containing at least a member, so as to provide, by the use of some rules of application, for the
pairing of at least a population member and a categorization device member. A device is then a collection plus rules
of application’’ (1972b:218–219). To give some examples, the MCD of ‘family’ may include such membership
categories as mother, father, son, daughter, etc., while the collection of ‘sex’ consists of two categories, i.e., male
and female. Race, religion, age, and occupations are also instances of the MCD that may be used to classify a
population.
1
This term will be explained in detail in the next section.
2
Sacks emphasizes that categories are not the same as ‘groups’ or ‘organizations.’ Egbert cites Schegloff (p.c.) differentiating between a group
and a category by defining the former as ‘‘a social formation of members of a category who think of themselves as a group, and who often or
sometimes act by reference to the fact that they are a group’’; according to this distinction, ‘‘‘African American’ is both a group and a category,
whereas ‘persons with black eyes’ is a category’’ (2004:1469).
S.-Y. Oh / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) 1219–1242 1221
As for the rules of applying membership categories, Sacks identifies the following two.
2.1. Economy rule
‘‘A single category from any membership categorization device can be referentially adequate’’ (Sacks, 1972b:219).
Stated in a negative fashion, it is not necessary to employ several categories from different MCDs in order to recognize
that a person is being referred to. That is, one membership category is enough for characterizing a member of some
population. This does not mean that more than one cannot be used, but that more need not be used. It is thus adequate
reference in many circumstances to describe someone simply as ‘male’ or ‘father’ or ‘white.’
2.2. Consistency rule
‘‘If some population of persons is being categorized, and if a category from some device’s collection has been used
to categorize a first member of the population, then that category or other categories of the same collection may be used
to categorize further members of the population’’ (Sacks, 1972b:219). According to the consistency rule, if we use
‘son’ (from the collection ‘family’) to categorize the first person, then further persons may be referred to by other
categories of the same collection, e.g., ‘mother,’ ‘father,’ etc.
In relation to these rules, Sacks discusses two maxims, i.e., a hearer’s maxim and a viewer’s maxim. The hearer’s
maxim, also called ‘the consistency rule corollary,’ states that ‘‘if two or more categories are used to categorize two or
more members of some population, and those categories can be heard as categories from the same collection, then:
hear them that way’’ (Sacks, 1972b:219–220). This is useful when some categories occur in several different MCDs
and thus are possibly ambiguous. The category of ‘baby,’ for instance, occurs both in the devices ‘family’ and ‘stage of
life.’ If ‘baby’ and ‘mother’ are employed to categorize two members of some population, however, the ‘baby’ will be
recognized to be a category from the MCD ‘family’ rather than the ‘stage of life.’
The viewer’s maxim holds that ‘‘if a member sees a category-bound activity being done, then, if one can see it being
done by a member of a category to which the activity is bound, then: See it that way’’ (Sacks, 1972b:225). Category-
bound activities refer to activities that members of a society understand to be done by the incumbents of some
particular categories. For example, ‘deliver a sermon’ is bound to the category of ‘priest.’ For a viewer of a category-
bound activity, the category to which the activity is bound has a particular relevance for identifying the person
performing the action.
Sacks’ pioneering work on membership categorization has prompted many researchers to further investigate this
notion by exploring category types and interactional practices for selecting membership categories in various contexts
(Atkinson et al., 1978; Baker, 1984; Drew, 1978; Egbert, 2004; Francis and Hart, 1997; Hester and Eglin, 1997;
Psathas, 1999; Watson, 1978, 1997, etc.). The current study will hopefully contribute to the growing body of
knowledge in this field by describing one way in which membership categories are invoked in Korean conversation.
3. Referential options in Korean and quasi-pronouns3
As in other languages, there are several types of reference forms in Korean that are used to refer to someone other
than the speaker or the recipient. First of all, reference to others is frequently done with zero anaphora in Korean, as
with reference to the speaker or the recipient. Terms of address also play an important role in third person reference.
Korean has a large set of address-reference terms which are sensitive to the degrees of social hierarchy and solidarity
between the speaker and the addressee and/or the referents. All kinds of professional titles (including section or
division chief, company president, nurse, and taxi or bus driver), as well as extensively diversified kinship terms, are
used both as address and reference terms. Personal names can also be used, but not as often (and not in the same way)
as in English, because using a name (either as an address term or a reference term) is considered appropriate only if the
speaker is as old as or older than the referent. Used otherwise, a name would convey a serious affront or insult. Also
included in the category of full noun phrases (NPs) are simple nouns modified by a possessive pronoun (e.g., nay
tongsayng ‘my younger sibling’), attributive adjective (e.g., kwiyewun ai ‘(a) cute child’), or relative clause (e.g.,
nayka ecey mannan salam ‘the person whom I met yesterday’).
3
This section elaborates on Oh’s (2007) account of Korean quasi-pronouns.
Table 1
Quasi-pronouns in Korean.
Singular Plural
Child or Adult-Plain D-ay D-ay-tul
Adult-Neutral D-salam D-salam-tul
Adult-Familiar D-i D-i-tul
Adult-Polite D-pun D-pun-tul
D stands for a demonstrative.
Reference to others can also be done with pronominal terms. Most, if not all, linguists (e.g., Lee, 1973; Hong,
1987; Kang, 1988; Kim, 1989, 1992, 1994; Han, 1996) posit two third person singular pronouns for Korean, ku
and kunye,4 which are believed to correspond to English he and she, respectively.5 However, these so-called third
person pronouns are severely restricted in their distribution, appearing only in certain types of writing, and very
rarely in ordinary speech (there was not even a single instance of such pronouns in the conversational data used in
the current study). In naturally-occurring spontaneous conversations what I will call quasi-pronouns are used
instead. Quasi-pronouns are composed of a demonstrative followed by a general noun,6 as illustrated in Table 1.7
There are three demonstratives in Korean: i ‘this,’ ku ‘that (close to addressee),’ and ce ‘that over there.’8 In the
deictic context, these demonstratives are used to point to a person (or an object) relative to the distance between the
speaker and the addressee: i is used to indicate an entity proximal to the speaker; ku, proximal to the addressee; ce,
distal from both the speaker and the addressee. These forms are rarely used by themselves; instead, the normal way of
pointing at or referring to a third person/object is by modifying a noun denoting that person/object with the
demonstrative i, ku, or ce, depending on relative distance or other factors.
In addition to their usage as deictics, some demonstratives are also used anaphorically in referring to someone or
something previously mentioned in speech. It has often been noted that in anaphoric reference, it is ku forms, rather
than i or ce forms, that are used as the default (Ree, 1975; Chang, 1978; Kim, 1994). Ku thus can mean either ‘close to
addressee’ deictically or ‘known to both speaker and addressee,’ anaphorically (e.g., ku salam meaning ‘that person
near you’ or ‘the person we are talking about’). By contrast, ce-based quasi-pronouns are not normally used
anaphorically, and have only deictic usage. As for the proximal demonstrative i, its limited anaphoric usage, compared
with ku, has been pointed out by some researchers. It seems evident that among the three demonstratives, ku is used
most extensively for referents mentioned in the previous talk.
These third person quasi-pronouns in Korean display the relative social hierarchy between the speaker
and the addressee or the referent by means of the choice of noun following a demonstrative: The distinct styles
in the left column of Table 1 (i.e., Adult-Polite, Adult-Familiar, Adult-Neutral, and Child/Adult-Plain) reflect the
choice from among such hierarchical nouns as pun ‘esteemed person,’ i ‘(familiar) person,’ salam ‘person,’ and ai/ay
4
Additionally, there is a third person pronoun for inaminate referents, i.e., kukes, corresponding to English it. The plural counterparts of ku, kunye,
and kekes are ku-tul, kunye-tul, and kukes-tul, respectively.
5
It is often said that third person pronouns in Korean, i.e., ku ‘he’ and kunye ‘she,’ were introduced into Korean fairly recently in the early 1900s,
under the influence of Indo-European languages, particularly that of English (e.g., Kang, 1988).
6
Those who regard ku and kunye as the only third person pronouns in Korean consider these demonstrative-based NP forms a subtype of full NPs;
however, some other researchers call the demonstrative-based forms ‘‘compound pronouns’’ (e.g., Sohn, 1999), acknowledging the pronominal
status of these forms.
7
This table is based upon Sohn (1999).
8
Contemporary English makes a two-way distinction in deixis: this conveying proximity to the speaker, and that, proximity to the addressee. But
many languages, including Korean, have a tripartite system incorporating a third deictic (distance from both the speaker and the addressee), as
shown in the following (O’Grady et al., 1991:236):
Language this that that over there
Spanish este ese aquel
Korean i ku ce
Japanese kono sono ano
Palauan tia tilecha
R se
Turkish bu u o
‘child.’9 There are also derogatory forms consisting of a demonstrative plus a noun such as nom, nyen, casik, saykki,
which, when used, are emotionally colored and usually function as swear-words. In addition, there are a number of
other candidates (usually category terms) which, following a demonstrative, can compose quasi-pronouns: e.g., namca
‘man,’ yeca ‘woman,’ etc. As will be seen later, the choice of noun in the construction of quasi-pronouns may play a
role in the membership categorization of the referent.
Traditionally, these forms, i.e., demonstratives followed by a noun denoting ‘person,’ have been considered not so
much personal pronouns as ‘‘epithets.’’10 As noted, most Korean scholars adopt the standard treatment of analyzing such
forms, considering them as a sub-type of full NPs.11 However, their status in Korean seems to be quite different from that
in languages like English. Korean does not have a clear-cut distinction between demonstrative-NPs and pronouns. The
so-called third person pronouns in Korean are actually compounds formed on the demonstrative base ku: ku ‘he’ is
believed to be a development from ku-i ‘that man,’ and kunye ‘she,’ of ku yeca ‘that woman’ with some morphophonemic
changes. If this is indeed the case, then it seems justifiable to regard demonstratives followed by general nouns in Korean
as quasi-pronouns rather than full NPs. In fact, such demonstrative plus noun forms in Korean appear to be an instance of a
stage of grammaticalization moving from full NPs toward pronouns. Note in this regard that third person pronouns in
many other languages historically derive from demonstratives (Lyons, 1977). Some of the Korean quasi-pronouns appear
to be at a later stage of such a development and thus closer to genuine pronouns, compared to others.12 Both phonological
and morphological contraction (resulting from the loss of a word boundary) seems to be significant to the conception of a
form as a pronoun. For example, ai/ay ‘child’ is one of the most common nouns that, following a demonstrative, may
compose a quasi-pronoun. Since this noun consists only of vowels, morpho-phonological reduction occurs when it is
preceded by a demonstrative (i.e., ku + ai/ay ! kyay, i + ai/ay ! yay, and ce + ai/ay ! cyay). The conciseness of these
contracted forms, which are composed of only one syllable, compared with other quasi-pronouns like ku salam, which
consist of two separate words, seems to contribute much to the understanding that they are closer to pronouns than full
NPs. The current usage of this particular set of quasi-pronouns (i.e., kyay, yay, and cyay) displays many of the properties
typically associated with the process of grammaticalization: Besides the loss of the word boundary between the
demonstrative and the noun (‘‘reanalysis’’), the literal meaning of the noun ai/ay ‘child’ or ‘kid’ has been lost in most
cases (i.e., ‘‘desemanticization’’ or ‘‘bleaching’’) and these quasi-pronouns may refer to anyone (‘‘generalization’’) who
is not socially superior to the speaker (‘‘persistence’’).13
9
In the current study’s database as well as the segments to be discussed later, the Child/Adult-Plain style (i.e., D-ay) occurs most frequently, with
the Adult-Neutral (i.e., D-salam) being the second most frequent style. This is largely due to the nature of the interaction included in the database:
not only are the participants themselves close friends and family members but the topic of the conversations mainly concerns their friends,
colleagues, and relatives, for whom these two styles are most relevant.
10
Linguists like Wales (1996) call general nouns such as thing or person ‘‘pseudo-pronouns.’’ Words that are termed ‘‘epithets’’ by Lakoff (1976)
and Bosch (1983), e.g., the bastard, are also considered ‘‘pseudo-pronouns’’ by Wales, on the informational grounds that they are similar to
pronouns in terms of low semantic content. Wales acknowledges, however, that what he calls ‘‘pseudo-pronouns’’ can add an emotive or evaluative
connotation to the NP, as Halliday and Hasan (1976) have also pointed out.
11
For example, Kim (1989) examined the frequency and types of nominal reference in spoken (elicited) narratives. One finding that Kim considers
significant is that there was no occurrence of pronouns; rather only full NPs and zero anaphora were used as referential devices throughout his
database. This led him to suggest that the discussion of nominal reference in Korean can be reduced to the question of the choice of full NPs versus
zero anaphora, just as Clancy (1980) suggested for Japanese. However, it should be made clear that in Kim’s study pronouns are only defined as ku
‘he,’ kunye ‘she,’ and kutul ‘they.’ What are termed quasi-pronouns in this study (i.e., demonstratives followed by a general noun) are considered full
NPs in his, as in most other studies. As mentioned earlier, the so-called Korean third person pronouns never occur in actual speech, and therefore it is
natural that Kim found no instances of them in his oral data. In fact, he found that the most commonly employed forms for anaphoric reference
among various NP constructions were NPs with demonstratives, i.e., quasi-pronouns.
12
In the current study, however, the distinction will be made only in terms of the type of the demonstrative involved (i.e., the proximal versus distal
demonstrative), and not according to the degree of grammaticalization.
13
Reanalysis, which is ‘‘the most important mechanism for grammaticalization’’ (Hopper and Traugott, 1993:32), is defined as the ‘‘change in the
structure of an expression or class of expressions that does not involve any immediate or intrinsic modification of its surface manifestation’’
(Langacker, 1977:58). One of the simplest and common types of reanalysis is called ‘‘fusion’’, in which two (or more) words are combined into one
(‘‘compounding’’) following the weakening or loss of the boundary between them. The reanalysis brings about changes in the semantics,
morphology, and phonology of the original expression, and thus often leads to grammaticalization (Hopper and Traugott, 1993). The development of
grammatical from lexical meaning involves a process of weakening of semantic content (desemanticization), which has been characterized by the
metaphor of ‘‘fading’’ or ‘‘bleaching’’ (Kurylowicz, 1965; Givón, 1973; Fleischman, 1982; Bybee and Pagliuca, 1985; Hopper and Traugott, 1993,
etc.). ‘‘Generalization’’ refers to ‘‘the loss of specific features of meaning with the consequent expansion of appropriate contexts of use for a
gram(matical morpheme)’’ (Bybee et al., 1994:289). That the quasi-pronouns incorporating the noun ai/ay ‘child/kid’ are not usable in referring to
social superiors indicates ‘‘persistence’’ (Hopper, 1991), i.e., the retention of the original lexical meaning of the source construction.
Quasi-pronouns are productively used in naturally-occurring conversations, constituting an important reference

type in contemporary Korean. However, they have not received much attention in previous studies on referential
choice in Korean. With rare exceptions (see Oh, 2007), previous research has only noted what kinds of nouns can
follow demonstratives to refer to people failing to address the crucial issue of how, and for what interactional
purposes, the quasi-pronouns are employed by the parties to a conversation. By analyzing in detail the uses of
quasi-pronouns in reference to co-present persons in actual conversations, this study will achieve a better
understanding of the ways in which Korean speakers refer to other people. This study will be devoted to an
examination of how Korean speakers mobilize referential practices in order to achieve certain interactional goals
and outcomes, and how such practice is attended to by the recipient(s).
4. Data and methodology
The current study uses naturally-occurring conversation data only, which comes from the database that has been put
together for a larger scale of research on personal reference in Korean. The database consists of 12 telephone
conversations (approximately 340 minutes) and 13 multi-party face-to-face conversations (approximately 560
minutes) among acquaintances, close friends, and family members. All of the conversations were collected and
transcribed by the researcher. All the names and initials of the participants and references to other people, schools,
organizations, etc. have been changed to protect the participants’ privacy.
All the data were transcribed following the transcription conventions developed by Jefferson (1983) (see the
transcription conventions in Appendix A). In the transcripts, there are usually two additional lines below each
romanized Korean utterance: the line for the morpheme-by-morpheme gloss,14 and the line for the English translation.
Korean utterances were romanized according to the Yale system, representing the actual sound instead of standard
orthography; the classification of grammatical morphemes in Korean followed Lee (1991), with slight modifications
(see the abbreviations of grammatical morphemes in Appendix A). Arrows are used next to the line number in order to
draw the readers’ attention to the target form(s). For easier reading, English translations have been italicized. I tried to
preserve various features of interaction (e.g., silence, laugh tokens, and inbreaths) in the lines both of Korean
utterances and English translations; small capitals in English translations correspond to the underlining in the original
Korean utterances (i.e., a marker of stress).
This study employs conversation analysis (Sacks et al., 1974) as the theoretical and methodological framework.
The framework of conversation analysis is critical to the explication of interactional functions of reference forms
in any language, since it enables the researcher to take the perspective of the participants themselves and conduct
micro-analyses of what is interactionally going on at a given moment in talk-in-interaction.
5. Referring to co-present persons with quasi-pronouns: deployment of proximal versus distal

demonstratives
As mentioned earlier, there are at least three common referential options available in Korean for referring to a
co-present party to conversation: i.e., noun phrases including names, titles and kinterms, quasi-pronouns, and zero
anaphora. Noun phrases such as names seem to be regularly used when for some reason the party referred to is
physically distant from the other parties, and thus not available in the immediate interactional context. In the
majority of cases of co-present person reference, however, speakers employ quasi-pronouns or zero anaphora.15 As
far as quasi-pronouns are concerned, the choice of a particular reference form often depends on the physical
proximity between the speaker(/recipient) and the referent. Thus, if the party being referred to is physically close
to the speaker, s/he is mentioned with a proximal demonstrative i-based quasi-pronoun, such as yay. If the party
being referred to is far from the speaker, s/he is referred to with a distal demonstrative ce-based quasi-pronoun like
cyay. Although there is another distal demonstrative ku (‘distant from the speaker, close to the addressee’),
ku-based quasi-pronouns cannot be used in referring to a co-present person. Instead, they are the default form of
14
In the morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, a colon is used when morphemes are separable, and a hyphen, inseparable.
15
Depending on the nature of the interaction and the participants (e.g., when referring to a social superior), however, category terms such as titles
and kinship terms may be preferred to quasi-pronouns.
reference to non-present persons. In other words, for the purpose of referring to a co-present person, the tripartite
distinction of Korean demonstratives is reduced to a two-way distinction as in English (i.e., close i vs. distant ce,
from the speaker’s perspective), due to the unavailability of ku.16 Since parties to conversation are normally
positioned (physically) close to each other, i-based quasi-pronouns appear to be the most common, and in this
respect, unmarked forms of reference to a co-present person.
Physical proximity, however, is not a sole determinant of the type of quasi-pronoun used to refer to a co-present
person. Interestingly, the speaker’s stance toward the party being referred to often overrides physical proximity. A
comparison between Segments (1) and (2), which are from the same conversation among three friends, makes this
point clear. In both segments S makes reference to N, but with a different type of quasi-pronoun, even though the
speaker and the referent remain at the same physical distance. In Segment (1), the three friends have been talking
about the husband of J’s friend. N has delivered news that the company that he works for was facing an economic
crisis, in response to which J says at line 1 that they must be feeling very insecure. In the following line, S launches a
new sequence, asking J to try the bread that N has brought.
Note that S uses the i-based quasi-pronoun yay in referring to N who is seated nearby.17 Given that N is physically close to
S (as well as to the recipient J), this form seems to be a natural option for the speaker to employ.
Later the conversation arrives at the following exchange. Here, however, the same speaker is seen employing a
different type of quasi-pronoun, i.e., cyay, in referring to the same co-present party, N, even though they both remain in the
same seats as before. They are talking on the topic of getting a tan, and J has just said that she tried very hard to get a tan,
but did not succeed.
16
The use of ku-based quasi-pronouns, compared with i-based quasi-pronouns, is discussed elsewhere (see Oh, 2007).
17
The three are seated around a round table, with each at approximately the same distance from the other two.
At lines 1–2, N tells J and S that people ask her where she got a tan while there was bad weather, implying that
unlike J, she gets a tan very easily. In response, J expresses her envy at line 3, displaying that the current state of her
skin is different from that of N’s (that is, her skin is not dark). (At the same time, she complains about her current state,
i.e., about the fact that she does not get tan as easily as N.)18 J incorporates the modal suffix keyss into her turn. A basic
meaning of keyss is ‘‘the speaker’s presumption or conjecture . . . based on immediate information or circumstantial
18
In this local culture, i.e., among Korean girls in their twenties, having a tan is considered prestigious.
evidence’’ (Sohn, 1999:361). In other words, J is providing her presumption or conjecture of the interlocutor’s internal
state (and thereby expressing her envy towards N), and this makes some response (i.e., either a confirmation or
rejection of the presumed state) from N relevant next (because only she has access to her own internal state).
At lines 4–5, N qualifies her prior talk, by providing the clarification that the reason why her skin is currently dark is not
because she actually got a tan, but because she originally has dark skin. At lines 6–8, S delivers her confirmation on N’s
being originally dark, and in doing so, refers to N with cyay instead of yay, which would have been an unmarked form of
reference for a co-present party. In addition to referring, what S accomplishes by using this marked form cyay to refer to N
is to display her position relative to the referent (N), and thereby to the recipient (J) who had displayed her own position
toward N earlier in the talk. By means of using cyay, which consists of a distal demonstrative ce plus a general noun ay
‘child,’ the speaker positions herself away from the referent. The three participants are thus being divided into two
categories, so to speak, depending on whether or not the original color of their skin is dark. That this is understood as such
by the participants is displayed in the following talk. At line 9, J says that unlike herself, those who are originally dark get a
tan easily, to which N provides an agreement and confirmation token e ‘right.’ Notice that only N, and not S, confirms J’s
talk, because only N is in the position of being able to corroborate (or reject) J’s talk from her own personal experience
(N is not addressed by the eye gaze of J, who is concurrently engaged in the activity of cutting bread and therefore not
looking at anybody in particular). In other words, what J reports on is a ‘‘B-event’’ (Labov and Fanshel, 1977), and thus
only the person who figures s/he has knowledge about it would respond to it.19 It displays, therefore, that N understands
herself to be a member of the specific category. From lines 12 through 19, N delivers an upgraded agreement by
elaborating her experience of getting a tan easily, which is a bit exaggerated and thus garners laugh tokens. On the other
hand, at line 21, S introduces information that Senhuy, who is their mutual friend, is also very white, thereby adding even a
non-present person as a new member of the opposite category group (i.e., those who are not originally dark). The additive
particle twu, which is translatable as English ‘also,’ displays her stance that S considers J (and possibly herself as well) as
having a different category membership than N. The upshot of this is that the speaker refers to a co-present party with a
distal demonstrative ce-based quasi-pronoun instead of a proximal demonstrative i-based one when s/he is trying to
endow the referent with a different category membership than him/herself, without respect to the actual physical distance
between them. Through the use of this reference form, parties to conversation are thus assigned an emergent category
membership, which is only made relevant at a particular moment in a particular interaction. In the following, I provide a
few more pairs of segments from different conversations, which will reveal a similar dynamic.
The next pair of examples are taken from a face-to-face conversation between two old high-school friends, M and K,
who are now in their early sixties. M and her daughter (R) are visiting K, who emigrated to the U.S. about 30 years ago. R
is co-present in this interaction, but not as an active participant, remaining an unaddressed recipient in most cases. M has
just told K that the granddaughter of one of their high-school classmates already goes to middle-school, and in response K
says that this may well be the case, considering that the classmate had gotten married early (at line 1). On a possible
completion of K’s turn, M provides an agreement token (at line 2), and the sequence is brought to possible completion.
19
Labov and Fanshel (1977) classify statements according to the shared knowledge among the participants:
A-events: Known to A, but not to B.
B-events: Known to B, but not to A.
AB-events: Known to both A and B.
O-events: Known to everyone present.
D-events: Known to be disputable.
According to Labov and Fanshel (1977:100), ‘‘If A makes a statement about B-events, then it is heard as a request for confirmation,’’ which they call
‘‘rule of confirmation’’.
Following a .3 second pause (at line 3), M launches a topically related new sequence, saying that she gave birth to her
daughter very late. Here M refers to her daughter, R, who is seated next to her with the proximal demonstrative-based
quasi-pronoun yay. As noted, this is the unmarked option for referring to a co-present person who is physically close to
the speaker.
In the following segment, however, the same referent who is at the same physical distance from the speaker as in
Segment (3) is referred to not with yay but with the distal demonstrative-based quasi-pronoun cyay. In an earlier
sequence, M asked K which middle-school she graduated from, in response to which K answered that she had gone to
‘‘Hanseng’’ middle-school, although she had to move to the country later, and graduated from another school there. In
response, M makes a positive assessment of ‘‘Hanseng’’ middle-school, and over the following stretch of talk moves to
tell about her own high-school days. After that sequence is brought to an end and following a .6 second silence, M
returns to the previous sequence at line 1:
At line 1, M checks her understanding of what has not been explicitly mentioned but what she had drawn out of K’s
prior talk, which is confirmed by K at line 2. M thereby shows a contribution the talk has made to her understanding of
something that she knew to be a fact, but for which she did not know the reason (i.e., that K was a year behind in
school). Following a 1.0 second pause, M starts to talk but interrupts herself before the turn reaches possible
completion, and brings up the new piece of information that her daughter graduated from Hanseng women’s high-
school which is supported by the same foundation as K’s middle-school. Interestingly, M does a self-repair in referring
to her daughter (R) who is seated next to her, from the use of unmarked yay to marked cyay. Note that her correction,
cyay, is done with additional stress, displaying its status as a correction. By means of the distal demonstrative-based
quasi-pronoun cyay, M is distancing herself from her daughter. What is appealing about this example is that in contrast
to M, K, who has attended the same foundation (‘‘Hanseng’’) school, positions herself with M’s daughter by referring
to her with yay (at the arrow in line 6) instead of cyay, even though, physically speaking, R is a bit closer to M than to K,
who is seated on the opposite side of the table, and who, above all, is her daughter. Thus, with her use of cyay, M
assigns herself a membership category that is different from that of the referent. By means of yay, on the other hand, K
categorizes herself together with the referent, and thereby away from the recipient (M) at the same time.
Segments (5) and (6) are from a face-to-face conversation among two families: T’s family (T, his wife K, and his
daughter P) are visiting T’s older brother H and his wife M at their new house. Prior to the interaction shown in
Segment (5), T has been telling a story about how he introduced his former employer, who is suffering from post-
operative complications, to H’s son, a famous doctor, so that he could get a medical consultation. In the exchange
below, T describes the great gratitude the man has shown to him for making the introduction:
At line 6, T begins to provide the piece of information that the former employer (whose name is Choicinswu) gave T’s
wife a necklace as a token of appreciation. His talk is interspersed with laugh tokens (represented by the h’s in the
parentheses), and the stance is aligned with by (and only by) his family, i.e., the daughter (P) and the wife (K).
In continuing the Turn Constructional Unit (TCU) (Sacks et al., 1974) that has started at line 6, T undertakes a self-repair
(at line 9), inserting a descriptor (i.e., paio ‘bio’) before the noun mokkeli ‘necklace,’ which is repeated and thus serves as a
frame for the insert. What is being inserted provides a characterization of the necklace not as an accessory but as a health-
related product. Directly upon possible completion of T’s turn, K offers an upgraded characterization of the necklace
(i.e., from ‘‘bio-necklace’’ to ‘‘medical treatment device’’), while displaying herself to be aligned with T’s laughing by
means of the smiling voice with which she produces her talk. However, neither T’s nor K’s talk gets any response or
uptake from the intended recipient H or M.20 Following a .3 second pause (at line 11), T starts to talk again, presenting
another piece of information that the former employer wears the necklace himself, implying that the necklace is designed
for patients such as him or T’s wife who also recently underwent surgery, which then gets a minimal receipt token from H.
In any case, the point here is that at line 6, T refers to his wife K with i salam literally meaning ‘this person,’ and which is a
proximal demonstrative-based quasi-pronoun. The participants in this interaction can be divided into two subgroups
according to their seats: H and P are seated on one sofa and compose one subgroup, and the remaining three make up the
other subgroup, with T sitting on the other sofa, and K and M, sitting on the floor near the sofa occupied by T. Therefore,
from the standpoint of physical distance (as well as social relationship), K is closer to T (her husband) than to H
(the brother-in-law), which makes T’s use of the proximal demonstrative-based form not at all unusual.
Let us now compare the segment above with the following one, which involves a later interaction from the same
conversation. T has been telling about the same former employer, specifically about the unsuccessful result of his
recent back operation. With the telling sequence having been brought to closure and following a .2 second pause, T
launches a new sequence at line 1 by delivering a question to H, who has remained his principal interlocutor.
20
This non-alignment may be attributed to the fact that the former employer expressed his gratitude to T instead of H’s son (i.e., by giving the gift
to T’s wife, instead of the wife of H’s son), who actually provided him with the medical consultation.
By asking the question that he is asking of H in line 1, T is requesting his permission to turn off the airconditioner; or
alternatively, he may be heard as offering to turn it off. What follows this, however, foreshadows an impending
dispreferred response by the recipient: first, by the non-forthcomingness of the response that has been made relevant by
the question (see the .3 second pause at line 2), and next, by an other-initiated repair, with which the speaker claims
that he has had some trouble in understanding or hearing the interlocutor’s prior talk. Facing this interactional
challenge, T undertakes to rework the first pair part. Interestingly, what he does is manipulate the interlocutor’s
understanding of his first pair part (at line 1) such that this is taken as an offer instead of a request: By asking H if it was
not the case that he was cold, T implies that he was concerned about H and thus had offered to turn off the
airconditioner. Whether or not the offer sequence initiated at line 1 gets a preferred response from the recipient is thus
contingent on the response to this question. H’s response at lines 5–6 displays his understanding of T’s turn at line 4
precisely as such: he not only provides an answer to T’s Yes/No question, which obviates the need for the offer, but also
says that it was his concern for them, i.e., the guests, which prompted him to turn on the airconditioner. In response, T
hurries to deny H’s assumption that they may be feeling hot, saying that, on the contrary, his wife is feeling cold. Note
at line 7 that T refers to his wife K with ce salam instead of i salam, even though both of them (T and K) have remained
in the same seats as before (i.e., as in Segment (5)). What he accomplishes by employing the distal demonstrative-
based quasi-pronoun here is to categorize himself differently from his wife according to whether or not they are feeling
cold. In effect, T is claiming that it is only his wife, and not himself, who is feeling cold, and that it is her for whom the
airconditioner should be turned off; this thereby claims that it was in fact on behalf of his wife (rather than on behalf of
H) that he made the offer (or the request).21 As it happens, K disagrees with T’s categorization of herself by saying that
she is okay (i.e., not feeling cold), to which T responds with a next turn repair initiator at line 10. In partial overlap both
with T’s and K’s talk, H begins to back down, providing a conditional acceptance of the offer (or acceding to the
request) at line 11. By saying that he is okay (or that he does not care), T again displays that he is not one of those who
may be feeling cold. K, on the other hand, attributes her not feeling cold at the moment to the clothes that she is
wearing, thereby implying that she would probably feel cold otherwise. In other words, by making her rejection of T’s
categorization of herself contingent on the clothes, K justifies the categorization to a certain extent. By repeating part
of his turn at line 5 (nan kwaynchanhe ‘I’m okay’) in partial overlap with K’s talk, H re-affirms the position that he
does not belong to the category, the members of which are people (over)sensitive to the cold, and for whom the
airconditioner should be turned off. As it happens, the airconditioner is turned off by M (H’s wife) shortly thereafter.22
21
This also has the effect of portraying the first pair part at line 1 as a request for permission instead of as an offer.
22
The conversation, however, arrives at the following exchange later, where H asks M to turn on the airconditioner, wording it as an offer for the
guests at line 2:
In Segment (7), three male friends (K, N, and L) had been talking about their troubles at work, seated around a table
at a bar after work. After K delivers a complaint about his boss in an extended telling sequence, N proposes to K that
instead of talking about work, they ‘‘praise L to the skies.’’ This meets an outright challenge from K, who requests (in
an imperative format) that N do what he is proposing to do first ‘‘in the department,’’ i.e., at work (N and L work in the
same department):
In the second TCU of his turn at line 2, H proposes a candidate understanding of the physical state of the guests (i.e., that they must be hot). T and K
both reject H’s proposed understanding, saying that they are fine, which is registered and agreed with by M (at line 6). H, however, insists that she
turn on the airconditioner. In overlap with H’s turn, K suggests that H and M should go to bed, implying that they should leave now. M’s talk at line 9
is designed to respond to both H and K’s talk: in the first TCU, she rejects H’s request by saying that they are fine; in the next TCUs she responds to
K, denying that it is time for them to go to bed, thereby disagreeing with K’s intended departure. As it happens, H re-insists that the airconditioner
should be turned on (at line 11), in response to which T again disagrees with him. M also disaligns herself with H, saying that they are fine, which is
followed by an account for why his request cannot be granted – i.e., because K would feel cold. Note that just as T did in Segment (6), M also refers
to K with a distal demonstrative-based quasi-pronoun ce salam, thereby signaling the distinct category membership of K. At line 15, H finally backs
down, displaying his understanding of M’s implicit account by registering it as many as four times (e e e e). K’s response, a laughter token, displays
that she does not disagree with M’s categorization of herself.
With his request (at line 1), K in effect blames N for not having complimented L at work. Following a .2 second pause,
N rejects K’s request on the grounds of his inability to accede to the request. Rushing through into the next TCU and
thereby maintaining the floor, N launches a pre-announcement sequence, projecting an account for his claimed
inability. Following K’s go-ahead response (at line 4), N delivers the account that in the department he does not have
the authority to ‘‘praise him to the skies,’’ which also serves as an excuse in response to K’s blame. At lines 11–12, N
elaborates the previously offered account, and in so doing, he refers to the co-participant L, who is seated beside him,
with yay, i.e., a proximal demonstrative-based quasi-pronoun.
In the following exchange from the same conversation, however, N refers to L with a distal demonstrative-based
quasi-pronoun (cyay), again with no change in the physical arrangement of the participants involved. Below, K is
expressing his anger at and dissatisfaction with L’s unfairly doing other people’s work:
At lines 1–2, K offers the advice to L that he should not take on unnecessary extra work and suffer from it. What K also
does with his first turn is blame L for not refusing to do such work unfairly imposed upon him. With no response
forthcoming (see the .4 second pause at line 3), K resumes talking, only to drop out, finding himself in overlap with the
start of L’s response at line 5. As has been portended by the delay of his answer, L rejects K’s advice characterizing the
situation as beyond his control, and thereby also providing an excuse in response to the blame. Before L’s turn reaches
possible completion, however, K interrupts him with an upgraded advice/blame, and wins the overlap. At line 11, L
begins to disalign himself with K, not accepting his advice but providing another excuse (in terms of being
shorthanded). This is blocked by K’s expression of his resentment/annoyance at L’s being overworked at line 14. What
is remarkable is that at line 16, the co-participant N, who has been silent throughout the prior interaction between K
and L, provides a negative assessment of L (i.e., as being too weak), referring to him with cyay, i.e., the distal
demonstrative-based quasi-pronoun. By employing cyay instead of yay, N categorizes the referent L differently from
himself (and K): L is given membership in a category in which the members are not strong enough to insist on their
own opinion or belief.23 By providing the advice that he has given to L and blaming/disagreeing with L’s conduct, K
has already claimed not to belong to that category. Therefore, by means of N’s use of cyay at line 17, the three
participants are being partitioned into two separate groups, i.e., those who are too weak to resist the social pressures on
23
Some might argue that ‘‘being weak’’ or ‘‘being sensitive to cold’’ is not so much a category as a mere description. According to Sacks, however,
speakers can base membership categorization upon any characteristic of a person. While it is certainly not the case that any description may
constitute a category, there appears to be no simple way of deciding a priori what should, and what should not, be considered as a category. What is
most important in the decision should be whether, and how, the parties to interaction orient themselves to the (potential) category.
themselves, and those who are strong enough to do so. Following a micropause, K proposes a candidate understanding
of the prior talk (i.e., that L is as ‘‘weak’’ as tofu), signaling with the smiling voice with which he produces his turn that
it is meant to be a joke. Still this utterance makes a response from the prior speaker relevant next, and following a .3
second pause, N begins to reject the proposed understanding of his talk. That K’s proposed understanding was indeed
designed to be a joke and is understood as such by the recipients can be seen from the participants’ laughing following
N’s response, which ends with a laugh token itself. The upshot is that the speaker accomplishes the categorization of a
co-participant apart from himself and the other co-participant by his use of a distal demonstrative-based quasi-
pronoun.
6. Reference to ‘‘virtually’’ co-present person
In the segments discussed so far, reference was made to one of the co-participants by another co-participant
through the use of a quasi-pronoun. Interestingly, speakers also can talk about referents in a picture as if they were co-
present in the interaction. This observation was made in examining a face-to-face conversation among three sisters
(H, K, and M). K had recently been to the U.S., and had brought along some pictures that she had taken there with her
friends. The participants in this interaction, who are looking at the pictures, regularly refer to those in the pictures
with proximal demonstrative-based quasi-pronouns. It almost seems as if the referents in the picture are considered
virtually co-present in the interaction, and are treated as such referentially.24 For example, in the following exchange,
K is showing pictures to H and her daughter C, who is temporarily participating in the interaction. H is holding the
pictures, and the three are seated next to each other, looking at the pictures together.
24
It is also possible to use ku-based quasi-pronouns for the referents in the picture, treating them as non-present persons.
At line 1, C asks K about her relationship to a woman in the picture, proposing a candidate understanding of the
relationship. K’s response to this question is neither a confirmation nor a rejection of the proposed understanding; by
saying that the woman is a little older than she is, K displays her understanding that the relationship of ‘‘friends’’
presupposes an equal age. Immediately following K’s answer, C checks her candidate understanding of the
relationship between the woman and a man in the picture. Following a .8 second pause during which K provides a non-
verbal confirmation, C begins to provide an assessment of the man’s appearance (i.e., that he looks old), which is
interrupted by K, who preemptively provides information on the ages of the couple. Note at the arrow in line 7 that K
refers to the man in the picture with an i-based quasi-pronoun (i acessi literally meaning ‘this uncle’). Following the
sequence dealing with the appearance of the man, which is omitted here, K launches a new sequence at line 17,
beginning her turn with kulentey ‘but/by the way.’ As soon as K brings in the fact that a car accident happened, H asks a
follow-up question regarding who had the accident, providing a candidate answer to her own question in partial
overlap with K’s response (at line 21). Notice that as K did at line 7, H also refers to the referent in the picture with
an i-based quasi-pronoun (i yeca ‘this woman’). As shown in this segment, proximal demonstrative-based quasi-
pronouns can be chosen to refer to people in the picture that the speaker (and the recipient) is paying attention to.
Given the claim that referents in the picture are taken to be virtually co-present in the interaction, it may be expected
that like co-present parties to conversation, they may be referred to with distal demonstrative-based quasi-pronouns
when the speaker wishes to assign a category membership to them (and thereby to him/herself). This expectation is
met. Note, for example, in Excerpt (10), the usage at the arrow in line 5 (the participants and the referents here remain
the same as in the preceding segment):
Noticing from the picture that the woman is married to an American, H displays her understanding of their marriage by
providing what she has heard about interracial couples (at line 1). The half-rising tone of her turn as well as the turn-final
use of may (originally myense) makes a response from the recipient (i.e., either a confirmation or a rejection of the
proposed understanding) relevant next. As it happens, however, this does not engender any responsive conduct.
Following a substantial (1.0 second) pause, H and K start to talk at the same time, resulting in an overlap. With H dropping
out, K presents her assessment of the woman, characterizing her as the most fortunate woman in Korea (at lines 4–5).
What is intriguing about this utterance is that K refers to the same woman in the same picture (as in the preceding segment)
with ce yeca (literally ‘that woman’), i.e., a distal demonstrative-based quasi-pronoun instead of a proximal
demonstrative-based one. By means of doing this, K is categorizing the referent as a member of the category of ‘‘fortunate
women,’’ to which K claims herself not to belong.25 K’ s use of the noun following the demonstrative ce is also significant
in the categorization of the referent and thereby of herself. The general noun yeca ‘woman’ is not normally used to refer to
a person who shares a close relationship with the speaker, as such person reference would usually invoke the use of
kinship terms like enni ‘(older) sister.’ In fact, K refers to the woman with enni preceded by a demonstrative elsewhere in
this conversation. However, since K is displaying/claiming here that she and the woman do not share a category
membership, yeca, which implies a distant relationship, is more appropriate than enni. This displays that the choice of
noun (as well as of demonstrative) in the construction of quasi-pronouns can play a role in membership categorization. By
using yeca ‘woman’ in conjunction with the distal demonstrative ce, the speaker effectively highlights the disparate
membership of the referent and herself in the sub-category of ‘women,’ i.e., fortunate versus not-so-fortunate women.
Following a .2 second pause, H provides an aligning response, which is immediately followed by the beginning of K’s
account for her assessment in an extended telling sequence (i.e., the fame and wealth of her husband). This displays the
speaker’s orientation to the social success of the husband as the categorizing device (the device with which to categorize a
(married) woman into fortunate vs. unfortunate groups). Notice that K still refers to the man with i-based quasi-pronouns
(i.e., i salam, i acessi), making a sharp contrast to her use of the ce-based quasi-pronoun just three lines earlier in reference
to his wife in the same picture. The differential treatment by the speaker for the two referents in the same picture cannot be
explained in terms of the difference in physical distance, since the examination of the video-recording makes clear that at
both times of reference K and H are sitting at the same distance, with the picture in H’s hand. Since the category and the
categorization device employed here (i.e., fortunate vs. not-so-fortunate woman according to the social success of the
husband) is only applicable to (married) women, K simply uses an unmarked form of reference (i.e., a proximal
demonstrative-based quasi-pronoun) for the man.26 Note also that the noun co-occurring with the proximal demonstrative
25
Since the referent is not actually co-present in this interaction, we do not have evidence as to how the categorization is taken by the referent
herself.
26
That K categorizes the woman and herself contrastively, and that this categorization is understood as such by K’s recipients, is evidenced again in
a later exchange, though not in the form of a co-present person reference. After a complaint sequence about their mutual sister is brought to closure,
K reinitiates the topic of the woman’s being fortunate by saying that she has never seen such a fortunate person. (Here, K’s interlocutors are her sister
M and her niece C, with H momentarily away.):
is not gender-based (i.e., namca ‘man’) but either neutral (salam ‘person’) or kinship-based (acessi ‘uncle’).
Compare this with the gender-oriented noun (i.e., yeca ‘woman’) that was used after the distal demonstrative to refer
to the man’s wife at line 5. This again demonstrates that speakers select nouns (as well as demonstratives) to
compose quasi-pronouns in the light of how they wish to categorize the membership of the referent (and in so doing of
themselves).
In sum, we have observed that the use of i-based versus ce-based quasi-pronoun for referring to a co-present person
is exploited by the speaker to display his/her category membership with respect to the referent (and the recipient). It
may be that the original meaning of the demonstratives signaling relative proximity is extended to the speaker’s
At line 4, M begins to express her envy towards the referent, who was born a woman like herself but is so fortunate (unlike herself). M is thus on the
way to displaying her own category membership by focusing on the contrast between the referent and herself, but is interrupted by C. In contrast to
M, whose response apparently displays her own position with respect to the referent, C provides a candidate understanding of K’s stance toward the
referent (characterizing it as ‘‘envy’’), thereby displaying her understanding that K and the woman belong to different categories. C’s response may
have been touched off by the impending expression of envy by M. With her turn at talk at line 5, C then categorizes M and K as members of the same
group, which is opposite to the referent’s category. By attending to K’s, and not her own, stance toward the referent, C also displays that as an
unmarried woman, she is not categorizable by the categorization device being employed here by K.
Following an other-initiated repair sequence (at lines 6–7), K begins to confirm C’s proposed understanding of her stance toward the woman in
the first TCU at line 8, but does not bring the TCU to completion (see the cut-off after ci-), and instead begins to change her stance with kulen ke
potatwu ‘not so much that as.’ In the following talk, K admits to the benefit of the category group to which the woman belongs, but claims that she
chose to live as a member of the category that she currently belongs to, thereby rejecting C’s proposed understanding of her stance toward the
opposite category member(s). This segment thus displays how participants in this interaction position themselves with respect to each other as well
as to the referent in terms of the categorization being applied.
display of their stance toward the referent (and the recipient): that is, spatial proximity is extended to indicate the
speaker’s closeness to the referent in terms of category membership (i.e., same-category membership); and
non-proximity, the distant relationship between them (i.e., different category membership).27 This demonstrates that
there are observable and accountable systematic referential practices that are mobilized by the speaker (often for their
interactional projects) and are so attended to by the other parties.
7. Concluding remarks
This study has aimed to improve the understanding of Korean speakers’ practices involved in doing personal
reference by addressing one issue that has been overlooked in previous research. Specifically, this paper has discussed
from an interactional perspective speakers’ practices of exploiting two types of quasi-pronouns in Korean in reference
to co-present parties to conversation. To review, the choice between the two types of the quasi-pronouns available for
co-present person reference often depends on the physical arrangements of the speaker and the referent. However,
speakers refer to a co-present party with a distal demonstrative ce-based quasi-pronoun instead of a proximal
demonstrative i-based one when they try to endow the referent with a different category membership than themselves,
without respect to the actual physical distance between them. This finding confirms the observation that ‘‘various
reference outcomes may be the product of practices and choices made on other than reference-related grounds’’
(Schegloff, 1996:449).
The current study supports the position that researchers should adopt the relevance of a category only if that
category can be shown to be relevant to the participants themselves (Sacks, 1972a,b; Schegloff, 1972, 1987, 1991).
From this viewpoint, there exist demonstrably various – or indefinite – ways in which any person can be properly
described or categorized. For example, we may think of at least three categorizations that can correctly describe the
participants in Segments (7) and (8); the three participants in these segments are all male and employees at the same
company, and in that sense they all share the membership in the categories of gender and professional affiliation. On
the other hand, two participants (K & N) are higher than the other (L) in social rank at work, and the three may thus be
divided into two social categories (i.e., in terms of higher versus lower social status). However, these descriptively
correct and potentially significant categorizations of the participants are not oriented to by the participants
themselves at the particular moment of the interaction shown in Segment (8); rather, the category of ‘‘being weak’’
versus ‘‘not being weak’’ is the one that turns out to be relevant to them at that moment. Considering another case, in
Segments (3) and (4), the categorial identity as the members of the same family does not seem relevant to the
participants while the identity as the high-school alumni does. In contrast, the three friends in Segment (2) are all
graduates of the same high school, but they do not orient themselves to this social category; instead, ‘‘being originally
dark or not’’ is what matters to them at this moment of the interaction. No matter how trivial or inconsequential these
categorizations of persons may seem to the outsiders, they are the very categories that are relevant to and oriented to as
such by the participants. By the use of cyay instead of yay, speakers display to their coparticipants that they are
making relevant such a category. Given this fact, researchers cannot dispense with grounding their characterizations
of persons in the participants’ own orientations in the interaction.28 Relatedly, this study has shown that
which categorial identity is relevant to the participants at a given moment in an interaction is determined locally. In
this sense, this study attests to the ‘‘so-called local character of the organization of interaction, that is, its turn-by-turn,
sequence-by-sequence, episode-sensitive character’’ (Schegloff, 1987:208), one of the most recurrent and
robust findings of conversation analytic studies. In an interaction’s moment-to-moment development, the
participants display in their talk or other behavior which of the indefinitely many identities they are invoking for the
immediate moment, and the coparticipants know who they relevantly are at every moment over the course of the
interaction.
27
From a grammaticalization point of view, this may also be explained by the ‘‘subjectification,’’ which refers to the tendency that ‘‘meanings . . .
become increasingly based in the speaker’s subjective belief state/attitude toward the proposition’’ (Traugott, 1989:35). This further confirms that
Korean quasi-pronouns are an instance of a stage of grammaticalization (i.e., moving from full NPs to pronouns), as previously suggested.
28
This is called ‘‘the problem of relevance’’ (Sacks, 1972a,b).
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my appreciation to Emanuel A. Schegloff and two anonymous reviewers for very helpful
comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. I alone am responsible for any errors.
Appendix A
I. Transcription conventions (adapted from Ocks et al., 1996:461–465)

1. Temporal and sequential relationships
[ a point of overlap onset
[
] a point at which two overlapping utterances both end
]
= If the two lines connected by the equal signs are: (1) by the same speaker, a single, continuous utterance
is broken up to accommodate the placement of overlapping talk; (2) if they are by different speakers, the
second follows the first with no discernable silence between them (i.e., ‘‘latched’’ to it).
(0.5) silence represented in tenths of a second.
(.) micropause
2. Aspects of speech delivery

. falling, or final intonation, not necessarily the end of a sentence
? rising intonation, not necessarily a question
, ‘‘continuing’’ intonation, not necessarily a clause boundary
?
a rise stronger than a comma but weaker than a question mark
:: the prolongation or stretching of the sound just preceding them.
- a cut-off or self-interruption
word underlining indicates some form of stress or emphasis, either by increased loudness or higher pitch
WOrd upper case indicates especially loud talk
8 The talk following the degree sign is markedly quiet or soft
88 The talk between the two degree signs is markedly softer than the talk around it
_: inflected falling intonation contour
: inflected rising intonation contour
" sharper rises in pitch than would be indicated by combinations or colons and underlining
>< The talk between the ‘‘more than’’ and ‘‘less than’’ symbols is compressed or rushed
<> A stretch of talk is markedly slowed or drawn out
< The immediately following talk is ‘‘jump-started,’’ i.e., sounds like it starts with a rush.
hhh hearable aspiration. It may represent breathing, laughter, etc.
8hhh hearable inbreath
3. Other markings
(( )) transcriber’s descriptions of events
(word) uncertainty on the transcriber’s part
( ) Something is being said, but no hearing can be achieved
II. Abbreviations of grammatical morphemes

ACC Accusative particle ATTR Attributive
ADD Additive CIRCUM Circumstantial
ADV Adverbializer CL Classifier
ANT Anterior suffix COMM Committal
COMP Complementizer IND Indicative

COMPAR Comparative INTERR Interrogative
COND Conditional LOC Locative particle
CONN Connective NECESS Necessitative
DCT:RE Deductive Reasoning NEG Negative particle
DECL Declarative NOM Nominative particle
DEF Deferential NOML Nominalizer
DFN Defective Noun PL Plural marker
DM Discourse Marker POL Polite suffix
FR Factual Realization PRECED Precedence
GEN Genitive QP Quasi-Pronoun
HEARSAY ‘Hearsay’ Evidential QUOT Quotative particle
HT Honorific Title SIMUL Simultaneous
HON Honorific TOP Topic particle
IE Informal Ending TRANS Transferentive
IMPER Imperative UNASSIM Unassimilated
IMPFV Imperfective VOC Vocative particle
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Invoking Categories Through Co-Present Person Reference: The Case of Korean Conversation

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Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) 1219–1242

Invoking categories through co-present person reference:

Keywords: Conversation analysis; Reference; Demonstratives; Membership categories; Korean

* Tel.: +82 2 880 7675; fax: +82 2 880 7671.

‘‘quasi-pronouns’’1 (i.e., nouns followed by a demonstrative). In light of their frequency in naturally-occurring

2.1. Economy rule

2.2. Consistency rule

3. Referential options in Korean and quasi-pronouns3

Quasi-pronouns are productively used in naturally-occurring conversations, constituting an important reference

4. Data and methodology

5. Referring to co-present persons with quasi-pronouns: deployment of proximal versus distal

6. Reference to ‘‘virtually’’ co-present person

I. Transcription conventions (adapted from Ocks et al., 1996:461–465)

2. Aspects of speech delivery

II. Abbreviations of grammatical morphemes

COMP Complementizer IND Indicative

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