When grammaticality is intentionally violated: Inanimate honorification as a politeness strategy

IF 1.8 1区 文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2024-09-17 DOI:10.1016/j.pragma.2024.08.012
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Abstract

This paper examines the use of honorification for inanimate subjects in Korean, a linguistic phenomenon that, although traditionally ungrammatical, has been increasingly used in recent years. Despite negative perceptions and deliberate national campaigns to discourage it, its continued use requires a systematic investigation. Thus, to explore its social and linguistic functions, we conducted a questionnaire and a self-paced reading experiment. The questionnaire results suggest that native Korean speakers are well aware of the grammatical irregularity of such expressions. Nonetheless, these expressions are rated more positively only in the presence of an honorifiable addressee, indicating speakers’ sensitivity to the social nuances of inanimate honorification within interpersonal relations. The self-paced reading experiment further suggests that this sensitivity is particularly pronounced during real-time language processing, as no processing difficulty was observed for sentences with inanimate honorification when the addressee was honorifiable. The findings indicate that the contemporary use of inanimate honorification in Korean likely serves as a politeness strategy, where speakers intentionally deviate from grammatical norms to convey respect and garner positive evaluation from their interlocutors.

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当语法被有意违反时:作为一种礼貌策略的无生命荣誉化
本文研究了韩语中对无生命主语使用敬语的情况,这种语言现象虽然传统上不符合语法,但近年来却越来越多地被使用。尽管人们对这种现象有负面看法,而且国家也在刻意阻止这种现象的使用,但仍需要对其使用情况进行系统的调查。因此,为了探索它的社会和语言功能,我们进行了一次问卷调查和一次自定进度的阅读实验。问卷调查结果表明,以韩国语为母语的人非常清楚这类表达的语法不规范性。然而,只有在可表彰的对象在场的情况下,这些表达才会得到更积极的评价,这表明说话者对人际关系中无生命表彰的社会细微差别非常敏感。自定进度的阅读实验进一步表明,这种敏感性在实时语言处理过程中尤为明显,因为当收信人是可尊敬的人时,对带有无生命尊称的句子没有观察到处理上的困难。研究结果表明,当代韩语中无生命尊称的使用很可能是一种礼貌策略,说话者有意偏离语法规范,以表达尊重并获得对话者的积极评价。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
3.90
自引率
18.80%
发文量
219
期刊介绍: Since 1977, the Journal of Pragmatics has provided a forum for bringing together a wide range of research in pragmatics, including cognitive pragmatics, corpus pragmatics, experimental pragmatics, historical pragmatics, interpersonal pragmatics, multimodal pragmatics, sociopragmatics, theoretical pragmatics and related fields. Our aim is to publish innovative pragmatic scholarship from all perspectives, which contributes to theories of how speakers produce and interpret language in different contexts drawing on attested data from a wide range of languages/cultures in different parts of the world. The Journal of Pragmatics also encourages work that uses attested language data to explore the relationship between pragmatics and neighbouring research areas such as semantics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, interactional linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, media studies, psychology, sociology, and the philosophy of language. Alongside full-length articles, discussion notes and book reviews, the journal welcomes proposals for high quality special issues in all areas of pragmatics which make a significant contribution to a topical or developing area at the cutting-edge of research.
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