The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the choice of speech level and its shift in conversations with an unacquainted party made by Japanese KFL Learners (henceforth, JKL). It is widely known that both Korean and Japanese are replete with senten...
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the choice of speech level and its shift in conversations with an unacquainted party made by Japanese KFL Learners (henceforth, JKL). It is widely known that both Korean and Japanese are replete with sentence-final expressions that determine speech level. While speech level indicates the speaker's attitude toward the listener, it may shift in the course of a conversation.
Until now, research on speech level in KFL has focused on that of individual sentences uttered by KFL learners. In this study, however, voluntary dialogues have been collected for data to be analyzed. Although the main target of this study is the choice of speech level in the Korean language spoken by JKL, dialogues between Korean Native Speakers (KNS) and those between Japanese Native Speakers (JNS) are also collected and analyzed for comparison.
This thesis consists of 5 chapters, and the outline of each chapter is as follows.
In Chapter I, the purpose of this study and its magnitude are articulated. After reviewing previous studies, I will present the research questions to be answered in this thesis. There are 2 research questions. Firstly, does the choice of speech level and its shift in conversations with unacquainted party show difference in dialogues between KNS and those between JKL (=JNS), and those between JKL and KNS? Secondly, if there is a difference, what are the reasons for?
Chapter II outlines the intriguing systems of speech level in Korean and Japanese. Since the current research targets young JKL (=JNS) and KNS as subjects of study, three different speech levels, among all, are identified.
In Chapter III, the research methods, including how to collect conversational data and how to transcribe and analyze them, will be explained.
In Chapter IV, the results of the experimental study will be presented. In dialogues between KNS, polite forms are most frequently used, and their frequency is twice as high as that of non-polite forms. In dialogues between JKL (=JNS), on the other hand, polite forms appear only slightly higher in frequency than non-polite forms. It is noteworthy that three JKL have used non-polite forms more frequently than polite forms. In dialogues between KNS and JKL, polite forms are most frequently used, and their frequency is notably higher than in dialogues between KNS and those between JKL. Indeed, KNS try to speak to JKL more politely than they speak to their comrades. The follow-up interviews with KNS reveal that since they believe that JKL, or Japanese in general, are very polite, they try to avoid being impolite. Simultaneously, JKL also tend to talk to KNS more politely than they talk to their compatriots. There are three reasons. Firstly, JKL believe that they should speak more politely when they speak in Korean. Secondly, they are not sure when and how they can use non-polite forms without being offensive to the listener. Thirdly, they simply avoid non-polite forms when they do not know the age of the listener. This means that JKL know that the party's age is one of the most important factors in the choice of the appropriate speech level in Korean.
Finally, Chapter V summarizes the result of the research conducted in this thesis.
Interestingly, speech level may shift even in a single series of discourse. There have been cases where three different speech levels are employed by one speaker as the conversation proceeds. This indicates the importance of analyzing not just individual sentences but dialogues to investigate the real nature of language use. This study has also revealed that language use is bound by the social and cultural background of the speaker; people's way of thinking affects their language use.