earticle

영어

This study tries to find out, focusing on power, social distance and the strength of complaint, features and differences of Korea and Japan on “Responses to Complaints”. The results are as follows: (1) In Japan, when one listens to the other complain about something, he or she is affected by ‘the strength of complaint’ rather than ‘power & social distance’. On the contrary, in case of Korea, under the same situation, a respondent of discontent is affected by both the strength of complaint and the power & social distance. (2)When investigating a behavioral sense of the respondent, Japanese people focus on delivering their apologetical mind to the counterpart, but a Korean takes heed on ‘releasing the complaints of the counterpart.’ Then it makes a huge difference between Korea and Japan. (3) When examining the strategy and linguistic expression of the respondent, Japanese language expresses [sorriness] and [sorriness + compensation], regardless of power & social distance and the strength of complaint. On the contrary, Korean language shows different strategies and linguistic expressions depending on power & social distance and the strength of complaint. This study will be helpful to research on linguistic behaviour and contribute to deepen the mutual understanding between Korea and Japan.