Abstract

Korea is experiencing significant social conflicts across various issues, including class, gender, generation, political ideology, and religion. While there are numerous studies in the fields of politics, administration, and sociology that aim to understand the current state and types of social conflicts or explore management strategies from a macro perspective based on the structural characteristics of these conflicts, there is a lack of psychological research explaining the phenomenon of social conflicts intensifying during individual communication processes. This paper aims to examine social conflicts in South Korea from the perspective of verbal communication, with the goal of understanding the psychological mechanisms behind language that triggers social conflicts. To achieve this, the Social Category and Stereotypes Communication Framework proposed by Beukeboom and Burgers (2019) is addressed and the psychological mechanisms are explored through which linguistic labels and descriptive biases used in communication can form and reinforce stereotypes related to social categories. The framework is then applied to the South Korean context, analyzing several linguistic labels and descriptive biases that fuel conflicts related to gender, generation, and ideology/politics in the country. Finally, this article asserts that subtle differences in carelessly used language can amplify social conflicts, emphasizing the need for future empirical research to scientifically examine the effects of linguistic labels and descriptive biases used in South Korean society.