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Article published In: Internet Pragmatics
Vol. 2:2 (2019) ► pp.233–259

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Agency and impoliteness in Korean online interactions

 | McMaster University
 | Monash University
Published online: 21 October 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00036.kim
Abstract
(Im)politeness research has often focused either on the importance of social norms or on the intentions of the speaker, with the active role of the listener in assigning social meanings overlooked. This limitation particularly applies to so-called “discernment languages” such as Korean and Japanese. The current paper addresses this gap by offering a small-scale qualitative study of recipient agency in Korean naturally occurring computer-mediated communication (CMC). The data analyzed includes 14 text messages between the recipient (the proprietor of an online food business) and his customer, which were posted on a blog that he owned and operated. We focus on how the recipient agentively evaluates the language usage of the customer, including inconsistent evaluations of her use of non-honorific language, or panmal. The results suggest that the instability of (im)politeness interpretations cannot be explained solely by social norms or intentions but should also include the socially-mediated agency of the recipient.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.(Im)politeness in Korean
    • 2.1Honorific versus non-honorific speech
    • 2.2Address and reference terms
    • 2.3The metalanguage of Korean (im)politeness
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Interaction one
    • 4.2Interaction two
    • 4.3Interaction three
    • 4.4Interaction four
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by (9)

Cited by nine other publications

Brown, Lucien & Soung-U Kim
2025. Towards an Emic Metalanguage for Korean Im/politeness. In Politeness Metapragmatics [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 217 ff. DOI logo
Brown, Lucien & Soung-U Kim
2025. Methodology. In Politeness Metapragmatics [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 75 ff. DOI logo
Brown, Lucien & Soung-U Kim
2025. Politeness in Korean. In Politeness Metapragmatics [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 47 ff. DOI logo
Garre-León, Víctor
2025. Perceptions of impoliteness in Twitter interactions: Evidence from Spanish Heritage speakers. Lingua 317 ► pp. 103901 ff. DOI logo
Kim, Mary Shin, Sujin Kang & Tyler Miyashiro
2024. Challenges in Managing Korean Online Service Requests and Complaints via Business Chat. In Exploring Korean Politeness Across Online and Offline Interactions [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 247 ff. DOI logo
Kim, Soung-U. & Lucien Brown
2024. What Do Korean Speakers Know About Politeness?. In Exploring Korean Politeness Across Online and Offline Interactions [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 9 ff. DOI logo
Brown, Lucien, Soung-U Kim & Hyunji Kim
2023. The embodied enactment of politeness metapragmatics. Journal of Politeness Research 19:1 ► pp. 149 ff. DOI logo
Robertson, Wesley Cooper
2022. Register phenomena as international news: risk, register, and translation in Japanese coverage of quotes from the 2020 US presidential debate. Continuum 36:3 ► pp. 448 ff. DOI logo
Xie, Chaoqun
2021. Philosophizing (Im)politeness: Lived Experience, Desire and Human Nature. In The Philosophy of (Im)politeness [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 225 ff. DOI logo

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