Korean Horrifics

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Language, Culture and Curriculum

ISSN: 0790-8318 (Print) 1747-7573 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.wendangku.net/doc/dc7983012.html,/loi/rlcc20Korean honorifics and politeness in second language learning

Andrew Sangpil Byon

To cite this article: Andrew Sangpil Byon (2012) Korean honorifics and politeness in second language learning, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 25:2, 205-207, DOI:10.1080/07908318.2011.625620

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Published online: 24 Oct 2011.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Korean honori?cs and politeness in second language learning ,by Lucien Brown,Amsterdam /Philadelphia,PA,John Benjamins,2011,311pp.,US$149.00(hardback),ISBN 978-90-272-5610-2

Korean is one of the most dif?cult languages for adult English native speakers to learn.For instance,the Defense Language Institute of the USA groups foreign languages into four different categories according to dif?culty levels.Category I languages that include Spanish,Italian and French are the easiest,while Category IV languages that include Korean,along with Arabic,Chinese and Japanese,are the most challenging to learn.For instance,to reach the advanced pro?ciency level,Category I languages need 480class hours,whereas Category IV languages need 1320hours (Association of the United States Army,2010).

One aspect of Korean that makes the language unique and also dif?cult to learn is its complicated honori?cs system.The popularity of Korean as a foreign /second language (KFL)is a recent phenomenon (Byon,2008).Consequently,the number of studies that explore and document the acquisition of the Korean honori?cs system by KFL learners has been very limited.In this regard,the recent volume of Lucien Brown is a very welcome contribution to the existing KFL literature.

Brown explores how advanced KFL learners with a ‘western background’(either having English as their ?rst language or having had education and socialisation experiences in western societies such as the USA,UK and Canada)appreciate,use and acquire the Korean honori?cs system.Twenty advanced KFL learners who resided in Korea at the time of data collection participated in the study.In addition,40Korean native speakers pro-vided ?rst language (L1)data.Several types of cross-sectional research data are presented,deriving from discourse completion tasks,role-play,recordings of natural conversation,learners’stories and introspective interviews.Each data set was then subjected to either quantitative (e.g.based on inferential statistics)or qualitative (https://www.wendangku.net/doc/dc7983012.html,ing conversational analysis tools)analysis.

The book offers many interesting and insightful results.First,in spite of their advanced pro?ciency level,the learners often displayed non-conventional honori?cs usage patterns.The author attributes the occasional divergence of honori?cs use to the learners’politeness ideology.For instance,the learners’egalitarian cognitive value orientation in?uenced them to avoid using the two extremes of the honori?cs system (e.g.the use of referent honori?cs and /or panmal ‘plain speech style /non-honori?c usage’).In addition,the author remarks on the Korean native speakers’different expectations and /or discriminatory attitudes towards the learners’honori?cs usage.The author comments that the Korean native speakers have double standards when it comes to foreigners using the honori?cs.That is,they might not expect or want foreigners to use the honori?cs as native speakers do.As the author writes:Korean interlocutors did not always perceive it as appropriate for non-Koreans to apply modes of honori?cs use that were tied up with Korean ingroupness or that indexed hierarchical ISSN 0790-8318print/ISSN 1747-7573online

https://www.wendangku.net/doc/dc7983012.html, Language,Culture and Curriculum

V ol.25,No.2,July 2012,

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relationships.It was pointed out that neither Koreans nor the L2speakers themselves necess-arily expected L1-L2interactions to follow the hierarchical modes of Korean social interaction,even when the setting was Korea and the language being used was Korean.(p.248)

The author argues that such a discriminatory expectation by Korean native speakers can be an implicit and invisible barrier for KFL honori?cs acquisition.

Moreover,the author argues that KFL teachers’unwillingness to explicitly point out and correct the learners’pragmalinguistic shortcomings,as well as the inappropriate description of honori?cs usages found in most KFL textbooks,may negatively affect lear-ners’honori?cs acquisition.As pedagogical implications,the author calls for increasing awareness among KFL instructors and textbook writers of how inadequate descriptions of honori?cs usage in KFL textbooks can increase learners’adoption of inappropriate hon-ori?cs.Moreover,he highlights how politeness ideologies and identity issues of the learners can complicate their acquisition of the honori?cs system.

Overall,the book is commendably well written and clearly organised.The title of the manuscript accurately represents the contents.In addition,the literature review is relevant and thorough.In particular,the comprehensive review of studies published in South Korea is impressive.This,of course,was possible due to the author’s extensive stay in South Korea as a resident scholar.The goals and research questions are clearly stated and they have strong rationales.The description of the complex Korean honori?cs system is concise,appropriate and accurate.Moreover,the author describes the system in a way that will be accessible and understandable even to those readers with no Korean language background.The author devotes four entire chapters (i.e.Chapter 5through Chapter 8)to presenting,analysing and discussing each type of data set in depth.The application of both quantitative and qualitative research methods is rigorous and exemplary.

Of course,no published work is perfect and every work has areas that leave some room for improvement.The ?rst concerns the relatively small sample size on which the study is based.Note that the ?ndings are derived entirely from 20KFL learners residing in Seoul.Moreover,although they all have had ‘western’education /socialisation experiences,their ethnic background,occupation and ?rst languages are not uniform.For instance,among the 20participants,there are 10Korean heritage learners,while the other 10have different national and ethnic backgrounds,such as Caucasian,Japanese,Chinese,Ukrainian and so forth.Moreover,their occupations differentiate them even further.Some are exchange students,some are graduate students and some are professional workers.A study that incor-porated a larger participant pool would be valuable.

Second,while the author’s arguments regarding how learners’different politeness ideology and identity issues affect their honori?cs learning experience are striking and persuasive,the voices of Korean native speakers should have played a greater role in the analysis.For instance,the author reports that some Korean native speakers do not expect to use or apply honori?cs when talking to foreigners.However,there may be vast individual differences even among Korean native speakers in their preferences and expectations regarding the use of honori?cs by foreigners.In future studies,it would be interesting to ?nd out how the Korean general population would actually think and respond to the KFL learners’identity issues as well as to their politeness ideology.

Third,the author’s argument that the teachers rarely provide learners with explicit feed-back regarding inappropriate honori?cs usage is solely based on learners’subjective responses –the voices of the teachers are not re?ected in the study.It would be very useful in the future to have a longitudinal empirical study that described the instructional 206Book reviews

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interactions that take place in actual KFL classrooms and explored how KFL teachers themselves perceive and react to KFL learners’honori?cs usage.

Lastly,the author remarks that certain social variables,such as age and the social pos-itions of professionals,in?uence the learners’honori?cs usage (e.g.avoiding non-honori?c panmal ).However,it must be stressed that this very same principle applies to L1speakers as well.For instance,while it appears to be conventional to use the non-honori?cs style for a close friend in Korean society,in reality it is not common even for an L1speaker to switch to panmal if the addressee is a friend with whom the speaker ?rst became acquainted after they became adults or married and so forth.

Brown’s (2011)book is a valuable contribution to the KFL literature,interlanguage pragmatics and politeness studies.As noted earlier,there are relatively few studies that investigate the acquisition of the Korean honori?cs system.However,there has been a growing interest in this topic among scholars and applied linguistics students recently.Hence,this book is a great asset to the ?eld and will be enthusiastically welcomed.I strongly recommend it and look forward to seeing more book-length studies of this topic in the future.

References Association of the United States Army.(2010).DLI’s language guidelines.Retrieved August 3,2001,from https://www.wendangku.net/doc/dc7983012.html,/publications/ausanews/specialreports/2010/8/Pages/DLI’slanguage guidelines.aspx Byon,A.(2008).Korean as a foreign language in the USA:The instructional https://www.wendangku.net/doc/dc7983012.html,nguage,Culture and Curriculum ,21(3),244–255.Andrew Sangpil Byon East Asian Studies Department State University of New York,Albany,NY,USA abyon@https://www.wendangku.net/doc/dc7983012.html, #2012,Andrew Sangpil Byon https://www.wendangku.net/doc/dc7983012.html,/10.1080/07908318.2011.625620

Voices,identities,negotiations and con?icts:writing academic English across cultures ,edited by Phan Le Ha and Bradley Baurain,Bingley,UK,Emerald,2011,xxi +220pp.,￡62.95(hardback),ISBN 978-0-85724-719-3

In their introduction to this edited collection,Phan Le Ha and Bradley Baurain do indeed whet our appetites (p.xvii)for the chapters to follow.‘This book’,they tell us,‘features a diverse array of methodologies and perspectives that sift,problematize,interrogate,and challenge current practice and prevailing writing and publishing subcultures’(p.xiii).The book also claims that it seeks to ‘break new ground’(p.xiii)in its examination of what the book’s subtitle names as ‘writing academic English across cultures’and to ‘broaden conceptions of academic writing in English’(p.xiii).Before proceeding to examine these claims in more detail,let me brie?y describe the overall structure and organ-isation of the book.Following on from the editors’introduction titled,‘Problematizing and enriching writing academic English’,Part I:‘Pedagogical and psychological journeys’Language,Culture and Curriculum 207

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