This study examines prefabricated multi-word expressions in Korean that perform some pragmatic functions in certain communicative contexts of everyday conversation, which we call pragmatic phraseologisms. Our aim is to make a didactic list of these ex...
This study examines prefabricated multi-word expressions in Korean that perform some pragmatic functions in certain communicative contexts of everyday conversation, which we call pragmatic phraseologisms. Our aim is to make a didactic list of these expressions and classify them according to their communicative functions for use in teaching and learning Korean as a Foreign Language (KLE). Using five criteria such as language register, semantic opacity, situational dependence, utterance independence and syntactic completeness, we identified 159 candidate expressions from previous research in Korean linguistics, Korean expression dictionaries and KFL textbooks. They were then evaluated for their applicability to the teaching of KFL, through a survey of their subjective frequency of use by 158 native Korean speakers and through evaluations of their didactic necessity and importance by 5 expert KFL teachers. This process resulted in a final list of 106 expressions considered suitable for teaching and learning KFL.
The 106 expressions were classified into five types according to their communicative functions, such as expressive type, phatic type, metacommunicative type, directive type and situationally dependent type. The expressive type includes expressions that convey emotions, feelings or attitudes of the speaker. The phatic type mainly helps to maintaining social bonds between individuals, such as greetings, thanks, apologies, and wishes. Metacommunicative type expressions manage the flow of communication, such as changing topics, pausing, and emphasising points in speech. The directive type involves giving orders, advice, or requests, and the situationally dependent type is characterised by its strong dependence on the specific communicative context. This study is significant because it is the first to systematically categorise pragmatic phraseologisms in Korean language and to propose detailed types for KFL teaching. This categorisation provides a basic resource for improving KFL learners’ pragmatic, or more precisely, lexicopragmatic competence. Overall, this study lays an important foundation for integrating pragmatic phraseologisms into the KFL teaching context, with the aim of improving foreign learners’ pragmatic competence by providing a structured and detailed framework for teaching these expressions.