Lexical Changes in Academic Abstracts in Korean Humanities and Social Sciences Following the Commercialization of LLMs: A Corpus-Based Analysis of KCI Abstract Data (2004–2024)
(LLM 상용화 이후 한국 인문사회과학 학술 초록의 어휘 변화: 2004~2024년 KCI 초록 데이터 기반 분석)
Published in Language and Information, 2026
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Abstract
This study quantitatively examines the impact of the commercialization of large language models (LLMs) on academic writing in Korean humanities and social sciences. To this end, we compiled approximately 880,000 English and Korean abstracts published in the Korea Citation Index (KCI) between 2004 and 2024. Based on the linear trends observed in 2021-2022, we estimated the expected word frequencies for 2024 and identified excess vocabulary by comparing the predicted and observed frequencies. The results show that, in English abstracts, excess vocabulary prominently emerged in style words across both the social sciences and the humanities. In particular, style words such as additionally, underscoring, and aligning in social science abstracts exhibited relatively stable usage until 2022, followed by a sharp increase after 2023. In Korean abstracts, summary and evaluative expressions such as 중요한 (important), 이러한 (such), 시사한다 (suggest), and 강조한다 (emphasize) also increased. However, the magnitude and diffusion of these changes were more limited than in English abstracts. These findings suggest that while LLM-related shifts are detectable in Korean academic writing, the overall patterns and intensity of change are not uniform across languages.
Recommended citation: 구슬, 김가연 & 김병준 (2026). Lexical Changes in Academic Abstracts in Korean Humanities and Social Sciences Following the Commercialization of LLMs: A Corpus-Based Analysis of KCI Abstract Data (2004–2024). Language and Information, 30(1), 1-24.