I once heard a polyglot say that learning a language is learning a culture - when they speak Italian, they become Italian, when they speak Korean, they are Korean - and this is the mindset they have that allows them to speak so well in different languages.
While not all of us, or our students, will be motivated to immerse this deeply into a language, it points at the truth of how language and culture cannot be separated - and understanding these differences is essential, as a teacher and a language learner. Being an ESL instructor in Korea, I’d like to offer a brief explanation of some conversational practices and politeness conventions of the Korean culture, and some examples of differences in maxims of conversation between English and Korean.
In Korea, honorifics are very important and people address each other using different syntactic forms and honorific suffixes (Song, 2014) according to age, status, distance and context. Up to seven different levels of politeness can be distinguished (Brown & Whitman, 2015), but in daily use the most important are the formal and polite style, together called jondaemal (존댓말), and the informal style (banmal/반말).
The formal style, usually taking a variation of the suffix -habnida/ 합니다 (e.g. happy birthday/ saengilchukhabnida 생일 축하합니다) and polite styles, using the suffix -yo/요 (e.g. happy birthday/saengil chukhahaeyo 생일 축하해요) are often mixed within single discussions, but the formal style is seen as the higher of the two. In general, the formal style is for facts, news, and formal events, while the polite style is for expressing ideas, emotions, and used in formal situations that require more dynamic communication (Yoon, 2014). Both are used when talking to strangers, and the formal style is more common when talking to those who are older. The informal style lacks any special suffix (e.g. happy birthday/ saengil chukha 생일 축하) and is used when speaking to closer friends and children.
In English, different suffixes are not assigned according to formality. What's more, Korean has specific words that must be used depending on who is being addressed (e.g. eat: mokda 먹다/deusida 드시다, die: jukda 죽다/ dolagasida 돌아가시다), which is also not a feature of English. The only similarity is in title marking suffixes like -nim (님), which are used to show respect in much the same way that English speakers use Mr./Mrs./Dr., etc.
Maxims of conversation, which can be seen as mutual, intuitive agreements on how conversations should unfold (see Effectiviology, n.d. for a good online explanation), also seem to operate differently between Korean and English. The use of the word "ne" (네), meaning "yes", can demonstrate. When saying hello, thank you, good bye, see you tomorrow and a variety of other utterances, an acceptable response is "ne" (sometimes with varying tones). If one had to respond in this way in English, it would violate maxims of quantity and manner (Denham & Lobeck, 2013), and may come across as impolite. Also, maxims do not seem to carry over. When I ask my Korean students, "How are you?", the response is often "Fine." or "Not good." This could be seen as flouting a maxim to send the message of not wanting to talk, but in truth it is because this type of exchange is not part of the Korean language so is taken as a literal, one-sided question. Similarly, I have violated the maxim of quantity and manner when answering “I don’t usually eat breakfast” to the question, “Did you eat breakfast?” This is asked to show politeness in Korean and a true answer is not expected - “yes, how about you?” would be appropriate.
Finally, indirect speech is more common in Korea, which is directly linked to the emphasis on social status and distance. Direct speech shows concern for the speaker, while indirect speech shows concern for the listener and a sensitivity towards their wishes (Song, 2014) - so it is natural that in a culture extremely concerned with preserving “face”, more indirect speech is present. Even so, this seems to be topic dependent, as English speakers are more straightforward in general, but when it comes to commenting on one’s appearance (“You look tired today”, “Have you put on weight?”) or private family affairs (“Are you trying to have children?”), much more directness is seen than in English, Western cultures.
Politeness conventions and maxims of conversation are not universal, and appear to be heavily dependent on the cultural context in which they are found. Any ESL teacher living in Korea should have at least a basic understanding of these differences, not only to guide students towards a better understanding of the L2 culture (especially when considering how intertwined culture and language are), but also to avoid frustration, misunderstandings and assumptions in daily, personal interactions.
References
Denham, K. & Lobeck, A. (2013). Linguistics for everyone: an introduction (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Brown, L. & Whitman, J. (2015). Honorifics and politeness in Korean. Korean Linguistics. 17. 127-131. 10.1075/kl.17.2.001int.
Song, S. (2014). Politeness in Korea and America: A Comparative Analysis of Request Strategy in English Communication. Korea Journal. 54. 60-84. 10.25024/kj.2014.54.1.60.
Yoon, S. (2014). Differences between the Deferential and Polite Styles: In terms of their Indexical Meanings and Discourse Functions. Language Information. Volume 19. 115-144.
Effectiviology (n.d.). Grice’s Maxims of Conversation: The Principles of Effective Communication. https://effectiviology.com/principles-of-effective-communication/
Photo by Judy Been on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/@judybeen17?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText
