LINGUIST List 23.2316
Tue May 15 2012
Diss: Discourse Analysis/Pragmatics/Socioling: Yoon: 'A Contrastive Study of Responsibility for Understanding Utterances Between Japanese and Korean: Apologies and requests'
Editor for this issue: Xiyan Wang
<xiyanlinguistlist.org>
Date: 14-May-2012
From: Sumi Yoon <smy8005
hotmail.com>
Subject: A Contrastive Study of Responsibility for Understanding Utterances Between Japanese and Korean: Apologies and requests
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Institution: Kanda University of International Studies
Program: Ph.D
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2012
Author: Sumi Yoon
Dissertation Title: A Contrastive Study of Responsibility for Understanding Utterances Between Japanese and Korean: Apologies and requests
Linguistic Field(s):
Discourse Analysis
Pragmatics
Sociolinguistics
Subject Language(s):
English (eng)
Japanese (jpn)
Korean (kor)
Dissertation Director:
Yoshinori Nishijima
Dissertation Abstract:
From the point of view of language typology, Japanese and Korean areregarded as very similar. Both languages belong to the group ofagglutinative languages, are categorized as SOV languages, and the subjectand object in a sentence in both languages are not obligatory. Furthermore,the two languages have their own honorific systems no matter how they aredifferent in relative or absolute use. In this way, Japanese and Korean aresimilar with respect to grammatical structure and honorific behavior.
Indeed, learning Japanese as a foreign language is easier for Korean nativespeakers compared to learners from other countries, especially at thebeginner level. However, Korean learners of the Japanese language finddifficulties communicating with Japanese native speakers even though theyspeak Japanese fluently. This may be caused by the differences in discoursestyle, especially spoken discourse, between Japanese and Korean people. Oneis apt to think that a Korean person who speaks fluent Japanese has noproblems with communicating in Japanese. However, knowing Japanesevocabulary and grammar does not always lead to smooth communication.Assumptions by language experts that Korean and Japanese are linguisticallyand culturally similar may account for the dearth of research comparing andcontrasting both languages.
An example of these assumptions can be found in Hinds' typology of languagein discourse level, where Japanese and Korean are both considered to bereader/listener-responsible languages, whereas English is classified as awriter/speaker-responsible language (Hinds, 1987). Considering commonrhetorical features of both languages, Japanese and Korean have beenunderstood to be listener-responsible languages in discourse. However, onthe conversational level, Yoon (2009) demonstrated that Korean should beclassified as a speaker-responsible language based on her contrastiveanalysis of daily conversations between married couples in Japanese andKorean, where address terms are used as contextualization cues (Gumperz,1982) to convey the speaker's intention to the interlocutormetacommunicatively. Furthermore, it was also pointed out that Koreancouples use address terms as contextualization cues more frequently andmore variously than Japanese couples, especially in apologies and requests.
In this dissertation, the different communication styles are examined interms of the responsibility for understanding utterances (Hinds, 1987) onthe conversational level between Japanese and Korean people. The hypothesisof the dissertation is that Japanese is a listener-responsible language inwhich the speaker gives less information and uses unclear expressions, thusthe responsibility for understanding utterances falls on the listener,while Korean should be categorized as a speaker-responsible language, inwhich the speaker is actively responsible for the listener's understandingof utterances (Yoon, 2009).
Page Updated: 15-May-2012