Lexico-grammatical Framework of a Politeness Category in Russian and Korean

Abstract

This paper presents research on subject pronouns such as “Ty” (You) and “Vy” (polite form of You) from the perspective of expressing politeness. Politeness is explored as a communicative category, which has various connotations in different cultures. Second person singular subject pronouns have different roles when comparison is drawn between the two languages. For instance, second person subject pronouns are indicators of two forms of politeness in Russian such as informal and formal when addressing somebody using “Ty” and “Vy” respectively. Second person subject pronouns in the Korean language do not indicate forms or degrees of politeness, but they are the means of expressing politeness. It is presented in the paper that second person object pronouns in Russian are related to “terms of address” as an indicator of social etiquette and the attitude of a speaker towards an interlocutor (close versus distant) as well as their social roles in the society (superior vs inferior, elderly vs young). Meanwhile in the Korean language forms of politeness are divided into official and unofficial, which implies that politeness in Korean is social in nature and depends on the communicative situation (formal or informal). In contrast with Korean politeness, pragmalinguistic meaning of politeness forms in Russian have the connotation of proximity, closeness (or familiarity) and distancing (or showing respect) when the subject pronouns “Ty” and “Vy” are used respectively. Yet, Korean degrees of politeness have major differences to show various levels of respect or a lack of it. Comparative analysis of second person singular pronouns in both languages showed that subject pronouns have differences from the perspective of structure, semantics and function. As for structural differences, pronouns in Korean compared to Russian pronouns, are included into the category of content words. The functional difference is that pronouns in Russian indicate a degree of politeness and are used in different forms of politeness (“Ty” and “Vy”). Semantic and linguistic aspect of a politeness category relies on the the lexical and grammatical framework, so in Korean it is a grammatical system of politeness, whereas in Russian it is a system of subject pronouns such as “Ty” and “Vy”. Lexical and grammatical features of the two languages compared in this work show that politeness in the Russian language is interpersonal in nature, it indicates the formal and informal nature of communication, which is expressed through strategies used by communicators to become either close or distant. In the Korean language politeness is social in nature and depends on the level of formality of a particular communicative situation.