A Study of Korean terms of address choice in response to speaker’s attitude in the discourse context

Abstract

This research investigates how Korean terms of address are varied according to the speaker's attitude in the same speaker/listener relationship by comparing the honorific choices of Korean mother-tongue speakers and Thai Korean language learners. The term of address is one of the most challenging areas for foreigners in learning Korean language because they are presupposed to understand the sociocultural context of a language. The term of address is an essential mechanism for identifying the relationship between speakers and listeners. However, between the same speakers and listeners, the terms of address might be varied depending on the context. Until now, there has been a need for further research in Korean language education which examines the changes of terms of address due to the changes in speakers' attitudes in such discursive contexts. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how the choice of terms of address are varied according to the speaker's attitude by focusing on Korean mother-tongue speakers and Thai Korean language learners. For this purpose, 30 undergraduate and graduate students in the Republic of Korea and 30 undergraduate students who are studying Korean language in Thailand are surveyed. To determine how these target groups address names in 'neutral', 'friendly', and 'unfriendly' situations. This research also aims to find out what names Thai students employ in Thai language in the same situations so that we could examine the choice of names from a cross-cultural perspective. The study reveals that Korean mother tongue speakers’ choice of terms of address are varied widely in response to the changes of the speaker's attitude. Thai Korean language learners are different from Korean mother tongue speakers in their choice of titles, indicating that their native mother language influenced them.