Yu, Kyong-Ae (2017). Perceptions and functions of Korean mianhada: comparison with American English sorry. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 25(2), 197-224.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.14353/sjk.2017.25.2.07 / Open access
Abstract:
Sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic conventions for apology vary from culture to culture. While the illocutionary purpose of apologizing in English is the speaker’s sense of social obligation and Japanese sumimasen involves social-self with a social alter, this study argues that Korean mianhada is an apology from the speaker’s moral perspective linked with collective-self. Employing NSM, this study discusses that sorry is a separate concept but mianhada is a nebulous concept mixed with other emotions, e.g., thanks and love. In addition, presenting the examples from corpus-based dictionaries, COCA, and the Sejong 21st Century Corpus, this study discusses that sorry is authentically used as indirect and ritualistic apologies while mianhada is used as direct, indirect, ritualistic and substantive apologies. Finally, distinguishing main functions of mianhada into a sincere apology, a pseudo-apology, gratitude, a request initiator, a preclosing signal, and a territory invasion signal to strangers, this study provides cultural and ethnographical explanations.
More information:
Only Kim (2008) has analysed the semantic differences in cultural perceptions between Australian sorry and Korean mianhada using NSM, but the analysis proposed here for Korean mianhada is different.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
