‘NOT Smart’ Means ‘Stupid’, then ‘NOT Stupid’ Means ‘Smart’?: A Comparative Study between NESs and KEFLs

Abstract

Polarity antonyms such as optimistic vs. pessimistic have been the center of debate in pragmatics since Horn (1989) brought up the so-called asymmetric effect: negating of a positive adjective, NOT optimistic, is generally perceived as its negative counterpart, pessimistic, but negating of a negative adjective, NOT pessimistic, is rarely interpreted as its positive counterpart, optimistic. This study examines how sensitive the two groups, native English speakers (NESs) and Korean EFL learners (KEFLs), are to this asymmetric effect. A couple of acceptability judgment tests were carried out to show, first, whether the two groups equally express the asymmetric effect for the polarity antonyms, and second, how the two groups respond to the additional factor of such negative affixes as un-, in(m)-, and ir- in the interpretation of negated polarity adjectives. The findings revealed that for the KEFLs, interestingly, the asymmetrical effect did not occur with the negated polarity adjectives, even though it did occur for the morphological factor. We attribute to the KEFLs’ lack of awareness of politeness the absence of the asymmetric effect in their interpretation of the negated polarity adjectives, while attributing the asymmetric effect for the morphological factor to the KEFLs’ processing difficulty in comprehension of the notorious double negative expressions like NOT un-happy. Interviews with the KEFLs were also provided for our explanation. The findings of this study contributes to the development of a more effective curriculum for learning and teaching English polarity antonyms.