언어행위와 문화 - 문화적 가치의 연구와 연계된 ‘사회문화 화용론’ 제언

Abstract

Linguistics nowadays, unlike other human sciences, is not properly dealing with the cultural values which could be assumed to be an influential factor in the speech act realization. Because speech acts are principally realized in socio-cultural contexts and the system of language usage is rooted in the common knowledge and conventions of the people of each cultural community, the culturally different speech acts seem to represent the preferred values of a community, and thus a key to finding out such underlying values. The act of promise in some African languages, for example, is not a proper promising in the sense of the Western culture but a mere polite reaction towards the interlocutor, and the comments of some Japanese politicians on the past cruelties of Japan during the World War II are highly softened, but not enough for a sincere apology in the eyes of the related nations such as Korea and China. These peculiar speech act phenomena are analyzed and explained in terms of some insights from the Cultural Studies in order to prove the interrelationship between the culture-specific value systems and speech act conceptions of a language community. What kind of values underlie the linguistic behavior of a language society should be one of the goals of Socio-Cultural-Pragmatics based on Culture Studies. The distinction of individualism vs. collectivism and that of low vs. high contextual culture makes it possible to examine the mentioned interrelationship. How this goal can be reached could be further investigated with the help of socio-cultural interactional principles.