Social meanings of honorific / non-honorific alternations in Korean and Japanese

Abstract

The use of honorifics in Korean and Japanese is generally dictated by social factors such as age, status, and gender (Sohn 1999, Kuno 1987). Honorifics are marked by a well-defined repertoire of linguistic elements, including address-terms, specialized vocabulary, and verbal suffixes. Depending on the relationship between the interlocutors, an honorific form is chosen over the other available forms. Recently, researchers have been questioning whether the choice is wholly dependent on the relative status, or if other factors play a role in the selection process (Strauss and Eun 2005, Dunn 2005, Yoon 2015). This study focuses on the honorifics productively encoded by verbal suffixes. Unexpectedly, continual shifts between verbal suffixes are observed in a single speech situation. Based on the analyses of media data, we identify a set of social meanings encoded by these shifts. Furthermore, we show that Silverstein’s notion of “indexical order” (Silverstein 2003) is crucial for accounting for suffix alternation.

Corpus-based analysis of honorifics in Korean and its pedagogical implication

“…After sharing his own anecdote about his wife, D1 pointed out the complex process of driving a manual car, which makes it more annoying for him to teach his family, as in line 9 through 13. In line with Lee and Cho's (2015) finding that the speech level alternation, albeit downshift in their data, indicates a topic shift, D1's abrupt speech level elevation also shows a topic shift from his driving lesson with his wife to the difficulty of driving a manual car. Simultaneously, he prolonged his negative stance toward the on-going topics.…”

“…In the previous section, especially in Table 6, we found that speech level elevation can be used to increase the distance between the speaker and the addressee/referent, which in turn enhances the objectivity of an utterance. This study also found data in which speech level elevation plays a key role in indexing a strong epistemic stance by increasing the relational distance between the speaker and the addressee, and thereby increasing the formality and seriousness of the interaction (Cook 1999, Brown 2011, Lee & Cho 2015. In the following excerpt (Table 6), a male researcher (C1) and two younger female college instructors (C2 and C3), are having a casual conversation about living a healthy life and specifically discuss playing tennis.…”

“…Then in line 9, he abruptly elevated his speech level by using the polite style sentence ender -ayo to point out that playing tennis can be hard on the body only when you stick to one technique. In deviating from the normative language use, this upshift of speech level functions displays his epistemic stance on the topic and thereby increases the formality and seriousness of his argument (Lee & Cho 2015). In their later conversation, he employed the speech level elevation again in a similar way, as in line 5 in Table 8.…”

“…Although many corpora-based studies have dealt with the speech level shift within the honorific speech styles and explored its various functions from a variety of perspectives, only a few studies have focused on the speech level alternation involving non-honorific expressions. By analyzing Korean talk shows and interviews, Lee and Cho (2015) found that the speakers shift their speech styles from honorific to non-honorific (these are referred to as "downshifts"), when express-ing certain meanings, such as deviation from the main topic and indications of personal involvement. In contrast, "upshifts" (switching from non-honorific to honorific speech styles) contribute to increasing the seriousness of an utterances and re-establishing the relationship with the addressee.…”

Between honorifics and non-honorifics: A study of the Korean semi-honorific style and a comparison with Japanese

“…The “polite” style sentence ender (e)yo was first attested in the 18th century as an allomorph of the “semi-formal” ender o . During the 20th century, it emerged as an independent style (Lee, 2000: 84–86; Sohn, 2015: 184). It was first popular among women in Seoul (Suh, 1984), and was generally used in informal situations (Kim, 2013: 20).…”