Brown and Ford's (1961) pioneering work demonstrates how the address terms used by two members of a dyad reflect the deference and/or solidarity between those two persons. In particular, Korean address terms readily reveal the nature of the dyads relationship. Sohn (1983) states that even a two-year age difference between the speaker (S) and the addressee (A) manifests itself in non-reciprocal language use, including address terms. A person of higher status addresses a person of lower status by name while a person of lower status addresses a person of higher status by a title or a kinship term. What, then, indicates higher status? In addition to age, several other factors mark status and hence influence the choice of the address term. Rank, for example, plays a very important role. Traditionally, rank and age were redundant in that an interlocutor higher in rank was most likely also older. When this is not true, a conflict in rank and age emerges and must be linguistically resolved. Solidarity also influences the choice of the address term. In some dyads, solidarity can neutralize a difference in status; in other dyads, solidarity cannot. The present study, based on surveys completed by 208 undergraduate college students in Seoul and Kyengsangto, reviews address terms used toward specific addressees (fellow undergraduate students) based on the following four factors: (1) the sex of the addressee; (2) the rank of the addressee, i.e., whether the addressee is senpay, same-year student, or hwupay; (3) the age difference between the speaker and the addressee; and (4) whether the relationship between the speaker and the addressee is characterized by low or high intimacy. The primary variables under investigation are sex and regional background, or hometown. The data indicate that, of those two factors, hometown carries a stronger influence than sex.
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