Jeeweon Shin

language Gender politeness discourse strategies request speech acts

The subject of language and gender has long been one of the central problems for linguists and social scientists, yet the study of Korean language and gender has until now been largely undeveloped. This study contributes to that neglected area of Korean language and gender by examining how working women in positions of power employ politeness in their request speech acts and what type of discourse strategies they utilize to enact their authority in non-traditional domains. This study compares the use of various speech levels and honorifics by both male and female superiors as observed in two Korean television dramas. Results show that female superiors use fewer polite directives than male superiors and that female superiors modify and defeminize their speech in order to enact their authority as powerful figures. Using such discourse strategies, female superiors embody the status difference with their subordinates whereas male superiors minimize an asymmetrical alignment with their subordinates through the use of more polite directives. These findings should be understood in relation to various social variables involved in the interaction such as social distance, age, and status of the interlocutors. The study, thus, shows that the context of interaction is the key to explaining why members in one sex group utilize more polite directives than the other and that the sex of the speaker is only a partial determinant in the language choices made by women and men.