한국 대학생들의 사과화행 인식과 평가: 공손성의 범문화적 비교 가능성의 탐색

Abstract

Since Brown & Levinson(1978), studies on apologies have focused on linguistic forms and apology strategies and less focused on recipients’perceptions and evaluations of apologies from different cultural backgrounds (Chang & Haugh 2011). As Bergman & Kasper (1993) point out, the members of different cultures may perceive offense contexts differently and these different perceptions and evaluations of apologies may be reflected in output strategies of apologies. In other words, the same apology may be perceived as over-polite, polite, less polite or impolite between intercultural interlocutors in the same offense context. This study followed the same methodology as in Bergman & Kasper (1993) and Maeshiba et al. (1996) in order to quest intercultural comparability of politeness and discusses how contextual factors influence to the assessments on offense contexts and perceptions of apologies, comparing Korean data with Thai, American and Japanese results from the two previous studies. The results of this study indicate that two context external factors (i.e. social distance and power) and four context internal factors (i.e. severity of offense, offender’s obligation to apologize, likelihood for the apology to be accepted, and offender’s face-loss) are not independent factors in Korean, unlike in Bergman & Kasper (1993) whose results support to Brown & Levinson’s (1987) idea of the mutual independence of contextual factors. My data open the possibility that the contextual factors are interrelated and affect the perceptions and evaluations of apologies in Korean, which lead to choose different apology strategies in intercultural communications.

Since Brown & Levinson(1978), studies on apologies have focused on linguistic forms and apology strategies and less focused on recipients’perceptions and evaluations of apologies from different cultural backgrounds (Chang & Haugh 2011). As Bergman & Kasper (1993) point out, the members of different cultures may perceive offense contexts differently and these different perceptions and evaluations of apologies may be reflected in output strategies of apologies. In other words, the same apology may be perceived as over-polite, polite, less polite or impolite between intercultural interlocutors in the same offense context. This study followed the same methodology as in Bergman & Kasper (1993) and Maeshiba et al. (1996) in order to quest intercultural comparability of politeness and discusses how contextual factors influence to the assessments on offense contexts and perceptions of apologies, comparing Korean data with Thai, American and Japanese results from the two previous studies. The results of this study indicate that two context external factors (i.e. social distance and power) and four context internal factors (i.e. severity of offense, offender’s obligation to apologize, likelihood for the apology to be accepted, and offender’s face-loss) are not independent factors in Korean, unlike in Bergman & Kasper (1993) whose results support to Brown & Levinson’s (1987) idea of the mutual independence of contextual factors. My data open the possibility that the contextual factors are interrelated and affect the perceptions and evaluations of apologies in Korean, which lead to choose different apology strategies in intercultural communications.