Linguistic Politeness

Abstract

Linguistic politeness refers to using language in a way that takes into account the feelings of others regarding how they should be treated, including demonstrating appropriate concern for status, relationships and context. Descriptions of politeness in Korean have traditionally been dominated by the highly developed honorifics system. This chapter offers an up-to-date overview of how honorifics and other politeness markers and formulae are used in contemporary Korean. Recent studies show that politeness is not something that is merely communicated on the verbal level but is multimodal and embodied. The chapter then overviews research on the acquisition of politeness by L2 learners of Korean. L2 learners are socialized into the culture-specific meanings of honorifics and other politeness forms during interactions in the Korean language classroom and beyond. However, even L2 learners who have spent extended periods in Korea may use politeness forms in ways that flout these norms. Failure to follow L1 norms may result from different metapragmatic understandings of what it means to “be polite” and also deliberate attempts by learners to fashion their identities as “foreigners” and language learners. The chapter concludes with a discussion of pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research.