초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Brown and Levinson (1987) associate strategic honorific use with FTAs in relationship to(im)politenesslinguistic strategies. However, they do not address whether cultural values embedded within honorific devices function as another pragmatic negotiator in the perception of linguistic (im) politeness. Since cultural values are intrinsically built within both language and culture, they function as powerful social rules in social interaction. In Korean society, the ‘Confucian frame’ can be acquired and developed throughout one’s lifetime through social practice, and is, therefore, shared cultural knowledge to be used as pragmatic tools in human interaction. This culturally-learned frame thus becomes a system of behavioral rules, and affects the way a participant interacts and negotiates social meaning in situated contexts. Norms, individual frames, and the context of the interaction are anchored in feedback that is regulated by cultural script. Because the uses of honorific forms and cultural values are closely linked to semantic connotations, understanding the values embedded within Korean honorific forms requires an understanding of the underlying Confucian framework (the cultural script). In order to better understand the multi-functionality of politeness, researchers should analyze those meta-pragmatic functions existing far beyond linguistic dimensions. The values that are embedded within Korean honorific usage are invisible, mental and meta-pragmatic. Perceptions reflected in meta- linguistic behavior thus require a cultural frame to precisely interpret linguistic (im) politeness, especially within interactional discourse contexts. Nonetheless, many previous studies have neglected to analyze meta- pragmatic aspects of cultural values embedded within functional linguistic strategies in discourse contexts. The current study extends pre-existent politeness research in two important ways. First, it notes that cultural values embedded within honorifics play key roles in achieving the speaker’s pragmatic goals. Second, it observes that directness embedded within cultural values prevents it from being perceived as face threatening, since cultural values interacting with meta-pragmatic dimensions result in mitigating FTAs within interactional discourse contexts. A speaker’s perception of politeness is thereby effectively controlled by utilizing cultural values.
