• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.225-254
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to contrast the patterns of realization and understanding of refusal speech acts between Korean and Thai learners. This study intends to answer the following questions: (1) Do Koreans and Thai learners perform refusal speech acts differently? (2) Do Koreans and Thai learners understand refusal speech acts differently? A DCT and a follow-up interview were conducted to collect data of two groups of 30 native Korean speakers and 30 native Thai speakers. For research question 1, we analyzed the refusal strategy and provided reasons given by Koreans and Thai learners depending on the context. For research question 2, we ran a chi-squared test on the elements of the follow-up interviews, such as the weight of burden of refusing, and whether the participant would actually refuse or not. The differences between the refusal strategies of the two groups could be categorized by the preceding inducing speech act. In refusing a request, the difference was prominent in the apologizing strategy, whereas in refusing a suggestion, the difference was mainly in the direct refusal strategy. When refusing an invitation, the most evident difference was the number of refusal strategies employed. When providing an explanation of refusal to people with high social status, Koreans gave more specific reasons for refusals, whereas Thai learners tended to use more vague reasons. Moreover, when refusing an invitation, Koreans primarily mentioned the relationship, and Thai learners showed the spirit of Greng Jai. When asked the weight of burden of refusing, Koreans felt pressured to refuse a request from people with high social status, and a suggestion or invitation from people with high level of intimacy while Thai learners found it highly difficult to make a refusal in all cases. In answering whether they would actually refuse or not, Koreans tried not to make a refusal to people with high level of intimacy, and such a trend was not evident among the Thai. This study can help us better understand the learner's pragmatic failure, and serve as a basis in establishing a curriculum for teaching speech acts.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.381-388
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• 2020

This paper discusses English Hedges or Hedging Expressions on the basis of their morphosyntactic-pragramatic properties within the perspective of sociolinguistics. The term, 'Hedges' for the past decades since Lakoff(1973), has received little attention from the English grammar circles such as morphosyntax and the generative grammar theories. This paper presents a more comprehensive approach to the identification, distributions, functions, and the morphosyntactic properties of English Hedges. The earlier research on English Hedges in the 70's show that hedges are metalinguistic or mitadiscourse expressions which constitute a means for executing Politeness strategy in pragmatics. Nonetheless, research from the interface of syntactic-pragmatics has been scarce. This article suggests a more complex body of English hedges that have not been extensively discussed in the literature. Additionally, their configurational domain is to be proposed as part of the PolP with [±hedged] above CP⁺ (or CP beyond). The ramifications of the current study are suggested in terms of comparative linguistics, EFL/ESL studies of English for global communication, and pragmatics-sensitive machine translation studies in the forseeable future.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.52
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• pp.393-416
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• 2018

Negative Stripping Construction in English involves the disjunction but, the adverb not, and a constituent NP. This construction is an incomplete sentence although it delivers a complete sentential meaning. Interpretation of this construction may be ambiguous in that the constituent NP can either be construed as the subject, or as the complements including the object. To generate such sentences and resolve the issue of ambiguity, we propose a construction-based analysis under direct interpretation approach, rejecting previous analyses based on deletion approaches. In so doing, we suggest a negative stripping construction rule that can account for ambiguous meaning. This rule further can enable us to explain syntactic structures and readings of Negative Stripping Construction.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.33
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• pp.407-459
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• 2013

The paper pragmatically analyzes ellipsis in Russian and Polish colloquial and informal texts. The famous Polish writer Sławomir $Mro{\dot{z}}ek^{\prime}s$ "Exit to the South", written in Polish and Russian is used as a material for the analysis. Russian and Polish ellipsis in colloquial and informal texts have in common that the givenness and subjecthood of the elliptical co-referent play a crucial role. However, the ellipsis in two languages also has differences in many ways. Above all, in the Polish texts of colloquial and informal style, a theme is likely to be elliptical and the coreferential relation reaches to an extra-sentential antecedent, while the ellipsis in analysed Russian texts in most cases requires coordinate, subordinate or relative clauses, and the elliptical co-referent tends to have an intra-sentential antecedent. The ellipsis of the theme-subject is unmarked in Polish, where every verbal form has an ending denoting person. Unlike formal style which often allows explicit noun subject, Polish text of colloquial and informal style prefer null form of the subject in most cases. If Polish sentences have explicit theme-subjects, they disambiguate intervening and main themes, and indicate the contrast, the focus, the introduction of new narratives or the change of speaker's point of view. Sometimes direct speeches and deictic pronouns also need explicit theme-subjects in Polish sentences. On the other hand, the ellipsis of the theme-subject is marked in Russian even in colloquial and informal texts. The theme-subject can be deleted in Russian colloquial and informal texts, if the subject is a form of the first or the second person, or if the aspect and the tense of the antecedent sentence's verb are the same as those of the given sentence's verb and both the antecedent and the coreferential word have the nominative case.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.75-91
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• 2021

In this study, most of the previous researches on the analysis of apology are limited to comparative study of apology in different countries from the perspective of cross-cultural communication and analysis of apology in daily life. Therefore, by introducing pragmatics on apology strategy and cultural interpretation theories, this study tried to analyze apology and apology strategies in the seventh season of American TV series Desperate Housewives. Specifically speaking, based on Trosborg's classification of apology strategies, this study sorted out, classified and counted apology strategies in the seventh season of Desperate Housewives, and then 200 apology strategies were randomly selected and analyzed in detail. The statistical results showed that 'expression of apology' strategy was used at the highest frequency of 64.0%, followed by 'explanation or account' and 'minimizing the degree of offence'; 'Acknowledgement of responsibility', 'offer of repair' strategy, 'expressing concern for hearer' and 'promise of forbearance' were used relatively less frequently. The results can be interpreted by America's high individualism, low power distance and low-context culture having great influence on the frequency of American apology strategy. This study can increase understanding of apology and culture, reduce offence in communication with Americans, and make cross-cultural communication smooth, and meanwhile it is expected to enrich the research scope of TV drama art by analyzing language in TV drama art.