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Pragmatic Effects of Non-Normative Politeness in Korean

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Pragmatic Effects of Non-Normative Politeness in Korean Is an over-polite compliment worse than an impolite insult?: Pragmatic effects of non-normative politeness in Korean Hagyeong Shin ([email protected]), Gabriel Doyle ([email protected]) Department of Linguistics, San Diego State University 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA USA 92182 Abstract Table 1: Honorific inflections of the past tense of “do” (ha-) Honorifics in Korean appear as verbal inflections and have in Korean. Honorification decreases from top to bottom and been considered as markers of politeness. This study inves- tigates the pragmatic effects of honorifics, and suggests that left to right. -ess is past tense suffix. honorifics can contribute to the semantic interpretation of verb phrases in complex ways. Native Korean speakers reported Honorific Suffix -sy Speech Level different inferred meanings of “did very well” and “did very Present Absent poorly” based on the normative or non-normative honorific forms. We found significant effects of non-normative hon- DEF (deferential) ha-sy-ess-supnita ha-ess-supnita orifics in positive assessments: over-polite honorifics brought POL (polite) ha-sy-ess-e-yo ha-ess-e-yo negative interpretations. This suggests that pragmatic listen- e e ers interpret utterances based on the interaction between lit- INT (intimate) ha-sy-ess- ha-ess- eral meanings, honorifics, and the normativity of the hon- PLN (plain) ha-sy-ess-ta ha-ess-ta orifics within a relationship context, to obtain an estimate of the speaker’s intended meaning. This is inconsistent with the previous explanations of honorific usage as discernment or vo- litional politeness. We suggest that non-literal meaning infer- Honorifics in Korean ences reflect listeners treating the honorifics as signals to po- tential communicative goals. Honorifics in Korean have two main realizations: honorific Keywords: pragmatics; semantics; politeness; honorifics; lexical items and honorific inflections. This study focuses pragmatic inference; Korean on verbal honorific inflections, specifically speech levels and the -sy suffix. Table 1 demonstrates some of the honorific Introduction inflections that are available for the verb “do” (ha-). The Languages have many ways of expressing politeness. Some speech level appears at the end of the verb phrase, and re- languages explicitly mark politeness with honorifics: gram- flects the relationship between the speaker and the addressee. maticalized or lexicalized forms for politeness. Honorifics are Four levels presented in Table 1 are tested in this study, and prevalent in languages such as Japanese, Javanese, Hindi, and their perceived honorification decreases from top to bottom. the subject of this investigation: Korean. Because appropriate The presence of honorific suffix -sy increases the honorifica- honorifics depend on the speaker-listener relationship, they tion toward a subject of a sentence or a referent of the verb. primarily function as a reflection of social norms (discern- This study examines cases where the subject of the sentence is ment politeness). However, speakers may strategically devi- the addressee, thus both the suffix and the speech level refer ate from the normative form in certain contexts, such as when toward the listener. Honorific inflections, therefore, can be making requests (volitional politeness, Hill et al., 1986). generally defined as stylistic features reflecting the speaker In this paper, we investigate whether such deviations inte- and listener’s position within a social hierarchy, not the truth- grate more generally into the pragmatic inference process that conditional meanings (Sohn, 1999). listeners undertake when interpreting a message. Specifically, In colloquial Korean, speakers must choose some level of we look at whether a speaker’s choice of honorific forms in- honorific inflection to form valid verb phrases; there is no fluences how a listener assesses the speaker’s true opinion. default form or level. In most cases, the appropriate hon- We carry out judgment experiments to compile data on Ko- orifics can be determined by the speaker-listener relationship, rean listeners’ interpretations. Our result shows that the in- as honorifics were mentioned as relationship-acknowledging ferred meaning of the message changes with honorifics in a devices (Matsumoto, 1988). Honorifics are grammaticalized complex manner that cannot be adequately explained by ei- and conventionalized in relation to the speaker-listener re- ther strictly normative or strictly strategic use of honorifics. lationship. Speakers using appropriate honorific forms as- Instead, honorifics could be used as pragmatic signals to the signed by the relationship context will therefore stay aligned meaning depending on the context. with the normative use of honorifics. This type of honorific Overall, this suggests that despite grammaticalized forms use can be summarized as discernment politeness (Hill et al., seeming to be low in semantic content, they can still signif- 1986; Ide, 1989; Koo, 1995). icantly influence the inferred meaning of the message. We Besides the normative use of honorifics, they can also be argue that a full understanding of honorific use will require used more strategically. Politeness Theory (Brown & Levin- their incorporation into frameworks of pragmatic inference, son, 1987) has explained strategic honorific use through neg- such as the Rational Speech Act framework (RSA, Frank & ative politeness, a politeness strategy for minimizing threats Goodman, 2012; Goodman & Stuhlmuller,¨ 2013). to the listener’s negative face—the desire not to be imposed 2797 upon.1 This form of politeness is distinguished from posi- Under this hypothesis, speakers would use higher levels tive politeness, a strategy used to minimize threats to positive of honorifics to offset the negativity of an honest assess- face—the desire to be liked or approved. In the Politeness ment. Therefore, we can expect to see a monotonic decrease Theory perspective, speakers use honorifics largely to miti- in listeners’ inferred values of scalars as the honorific level gate the potential face threats existing in the utterance. This increases, with the “poorly” condition possibly showing a type of honorific use can be summarized as volitional polite- larger effect due to the more explicit face-threatening assess- ness (Hill et al., 1986; Ide, 1989; Koo, 1995) ment. Being over-polite or being under-polite (relative to nor- These explanations for honorifics’ uses are well-supported, mative forms) should show opposite effects on the inferred but such general politeness strategies may represent only a meaning. This hypothesis is similar to the threat-management subset of how honorifics are actually used. We argue that de- account of Politeness Theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), viations from normative politeness levels can function as a or the social utility addition (Yoon et al., 2016) to the RSA pragmatic signal to the listener about the intended meaning framework explaining listeners’ discounting of compliments of an utterance. We suggest that honorific use ties to a more when they thought the speaker was being polite. general pragmatic behavior than previously described, pro- viding pragmatic information beyond mitigating face-threats Hypothesis 3: Honorifics, in addition to their discern- and potentially signaling a speaker’s communicative goals. ment or volitional use, also can signal cues that influence the listener’s interpretations in complex ways. Effects of Hypotheses honorific levels will differ by the relationship context Based on the above discussion, we consider three hypotheses and the literal meanings of the utterance. for the potential effects of honorifics on pragmatic inference. Under this hypothesis, there will be a significant but non- These span from a null pragmatic effect (if honorifics mainly monotonic effect of honorific levels. Unlike Hypothesis 2, express the speaker-listener relationship) to a monotonic rela- here we do not necessarily expect under- versus over-polite tionship between inferred meaning and levels of honorifics (if messages (again, relative to normative forms) to have dif- honorifics mainly manage face-threat) to a complex relation- ferent effects on the listener’s inference. Instead, deviations ship between honorifics and inferred meaning (if honorifics from normative honorifics could signal that the speaker is provide cues about the speaker’s communicative goals). indicating different meanings or goals, for example, being To test this, we examined listeners’ inferences of values for hyperbolic or sarcastic. This hypothesis is similar to the scalars: speakers’ statements that a listener had done “well” QUD (Question Under Discussion) addition (Kao & Good- or “poorly” on a test. We first described the speaker-listener man, 2015) to the RSA explaining ironic interpretations.2 relationship, then provided assessment sentences with eight honorific inflections from Table 1, and asked participants to Experiment 1: Literal interpretations estimate the exam score based on the assessment. More de- Method tails are in the next section, but our hypotheses and the pre- dictions they make follow. Design The purpose of Experiment 1 was to establish the lit- eral baseline interpretations of the phrases “did very well” Hypothesis 1: Honorifics are primarily about discern- and “did very poorly”. Each question in the experiment ment politeness. Changes in levels of honorifics will started with a vignette describing a conversation and a re- have no significant effects on pragmatic interpreta- lationship context: a speaker is asked to tell a listener how tion of scalars. the listener
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