In today’s rapidly evolving digital communication environment, political language functions not merely as a tool of expression, but as a strategic resource for power negotiation and ideological construction. In her monograph Decoding Korean political talk: From data to debate, Sujin Kang offers a rigorous and insightful analysis of institutional discourse—specifically, question–answer (Q–A) sequences—as they operate in South Korea’s highly structured political context. Drawing on conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, the book explores how political actors in televised debates and parliamentary hearings use questioning to assert authority, construct knowledge, and manage face. Deeply embedded in the morphosyntactic and pragmatic features of the Korean language, these practices shed light on how grammar and institutional norms interact. This book fills a crucial gap in East Asian political discourse research and is highly recommended for scholars in sociolinguistics, discourse studies, and political communication.

The data includes 275 hours of speech from thirty-four political events between 2016 and 2021, covering major moments such as the impeachment hearings of former President Park Geun-hye. Kang adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining large-scale text mining techniques (sentiment analysis, semantic network modeling) with detailed conversation-analytic examination. Rather than replacing interpretation, the quantitative tools guide and support a micro-level analysis of 19,533 Q–A sequences.

One of the book’s most compelling insights lies in its treatment of declarative questions in institutional interaction. Chapter 3 focuses on question turns that resemble statements—such as “You are married”—which function to assert epistemic authority while pressuring respondents to confirm or concede. These are typically used by speakers in [K+] positions and rely on prosodic cues—especially rising intonation in Korean—to convey interrogative intent.

Kang shows that such formats are particularly prevalent in legislative hearings. Politicians and prosecutors often deploy questions like “You knew about this already?” not to seek new information, but to position the respondent as presumptively knowledgeable or responsible. These utterances blur the boundary between question and accusation, enabling the speaker to challenge credibility and assign institutional blame without overt confrontation. While projecting epistemic superiority, they simultaneously constrain the respondent’s discursive space. This chapter compellingly illustrates how grammar and interactional design converge to perform institutional power.

Although centered on Korean political discourse, the book’s theoretical implications reach far beyond. It speaks to broader concerns about how language indexes power, manages accountability, and structures authority in public life. Its focus on the grammatical and pragmatic particularities of Korean avoids superficial typologies and highlights the cultural and institutional specificity of discourse practices.

In summary, Decoding Korean political talk is a theoretically grounded, empirically rich, and methodologically advanced work. It offers critical insights into how language operates within networks of institutional power and makes a valuable contribution to the study of political discourse in East Asian contexts. (This review was supported by funding from a graduate research project at Chongqing University of Technology, Project No. gzlcx20252098.)