존대 현시에 의한 공손법 - 한국어 존대법의 역동성 -

Abstract

This paper focuses on some dynamic or changing aspects of deference in the Korean language and discuss an array of phenomena that raises interesting issues for Korean honorification, or politeness in general. We first discuss why it is not tenable to separate deference from politeness, as have been argued for by some leading scholars in the field of the East-Asian sociolinguistics. Then, as a way to accommodate the so-called ‘exceptions’ or ‘incorrect-but-authentic usage’, we propose a view that the phenomena can be treated as cases of ‘construction of context’ through the choice of linguistic features. We then develop a hypothesis called politeness by manifestation of deference’ for the (non-)use of Korean honorifics, which is claimed to be closely related to, but yet distinct from the ‘politeness by inference’ idea based on politeness principles or maxims (Leech 1983, 2014).