Honorifics and Politeness

Abstract

Korean is well known for possessing one of the most developed systems of honorifics that can be found amongst the world's languages. The only other major language to mark honorification through a comparably developed system of morphology is Japanese. In other so-called “honorific languages” such as Javanese and Thai, honorification is limited to lexical substitutions. This chapter provides an overview of the state of the art in research on Korean honorifics, focusing on research within the remit of pragmatics and politeness research. It discusses the two main areas of the honorifics system; speech styles or hearer honorifics and referent honorifics. The chapter then expands the analysis to acoustic and non-verbal correlates of (non-) honorific speech and a discussion of the place of Korean honorifics within a wider model of politeness. Hearer honorifics are forms that index the relationship between the speaker and the hearer or immediate audience.

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