A Proposal for Korean Dialectology

Dialectology involves the study of individual dialects and the relationship between one and another. Many Korean dialectologists have, however, indulged in only describing and interpreting the linguistic characteristics of particular dialects. As a result, there have been very few linguistic geographers in Korea. 1 would like to emphasize that full scale data must be collected with satisfactory and proper filed work methods, and the geographical distribution of various linguistic items has to be investigated. It can also be pointed out that a pure linguistic approach is bound to be too mechanical and to misinterpret some information. Dialects vary not only because of linguistic factors, but because of non-linguistic ones. Here we are confronted with the need for studying dialect in its wider setting