부산의 공간성과 언어문화

Abstract

Having a specifically bound geographical domain as its common ground, a dialect is a region-specific language that represents the values of the concrete regional area. Speaking of the Busan region, it is the very area that has experienced a number of social transformations caused by various historical factors and incidents. In the course of its societal shifts, Busan has encountered full-scale structural transformations which are attributed to numerous factors including occasional changes in the administrative districts, the migration of the Korean-War refugees, and the new inflows of industrialization-induced population, Such a transformation is still on the rise. Situated in the periphery of the Gyeongsang Province, Busan continues to generate its own unique culture. And many locality-specific aspects of the Busan culture exhibit a great deal of semblance with the linguistically represented counterparts currently prevailing across the region: its culinary culture, ball-game culture (exclusively in the baseball stadium), singing-room (a.k.a. Noraebang) culture, film festival culture, Jagalchi (fish market) culture, and so forth. Taking the ball-game culture for instance, the baseball craze can be interpreted as a sign of the local solidarity in relation to the migrating population, Such a peculiar trait―derived from the unique historicity―has demonstrated a tendency to increase the general frequency in the use of a certain register or idiomatic expression like 'Uriga namiga' literally meaning "Are we strangers to each other? (Of course not!)". And this kind of peripherality-based solidarity often gets expressed in the form of a bold and blunt utterance, a particular prosody, and a simplest stylistics and, quite intriguingly, is viewed as the explicitation of the spirit of resistance. The cohesive force thereof can grow bigger and faster. In terms of the film festivals held annually in Busan, the underlying component and driving force can be said to be the general tolerance of the Busanites, the coast-side population once considered to have weak cultural infrastructure, The Busanites' sense of tolerance―the ability to put together, watch, and listen to diverse stories of others impartially―has been consolidated by their own experience of a cross-cultural understanding obtained through its modern history of heterogeneous cultural formation. This kind of cultural uniqueness, too, sees similarities with the mode of linguistic reception in that foreign elements of different tongues get accepted and integrated into a single framework. To sum up, as is conspicuous in the examples provided, the culture of the Busan region shows that the particular properties and traits of its language are entirely dissolved in the culture itself. If viewed from a Gyeongsang-Province-based perspective, that is, with the Gyeongsangdo's common conceptual constituents (i.e. cognitive universals, if there is any) set as the main criteria, Busan's cultural attributes may be (mis-) translated as something quite discrepant and peculiar only. But, on the other hand, such characteristics can be understood as salient realizations of its unique integrative and cohesive framework when the main focus is placed on the cultural-cognitive properties of the Busan region, which are constantly under the influence of its unique locality.