This study explores the aspects observed from the actual speech act of request performances by North Korean exiles. The main point is to confirm whether they are good at utilizing the indirect speech act. The analysis was carried out using three varia...
This study explores the aspects observed from the actual speech act of request performances by North Korean exiles. The main point is to confirm whether they are good at utilizing the indirect speech act. The analysis was carried out using three variables to investigate North Korean exiles' speech act of request. Three variables are familiarity, characteristics of request situation, and the length of their stay in South Korea. Language data used for the analysis were natural speeches of 10 female exiles in their 20s and 30s, which were recorded and dictated in their entirety while the participants and researcher were performing daily activities together.
Before the analysis, the scope of speech act of request and indirect speech act was limited. ‘Speech act of request’ request the listeners' action but do not have any coercive effect upon the listeners. Moreover, direct speech act, indirect speech act, and different types of indirect speech act were categorized depending on whether the inference of 'keyword,' 'predicate,' 'sentence pattern' was necessary to understand the speakers' intention. One peculiar point is that a new speech act type called "ellipsis (of final ending) speech act" was established in addition to direct and indirect speech act. Although this type was never covered in existing Korean speech act research, due to its frequent usage in actual speech, it was introduced as a separate type.
The aspects of North Korean exiles' speech act of request analysis is as follows. First, relatively diverse type of speech acts were used when the familiarity between the speaker and the listener was high, whereas more indirect speech acts were used with low familiarity. This result seems to support the idea that high familiarity lessens the pressure to ask for something, which leads to more free and liberal speech without being restricted by speech act types. Furthermore, the request was done directly and in shorter forms when the speaker and listener were familiar to each other, while additional devices such as adverbial phrases, auxiliary speech act, hesitant way of speaking were used to express politeness when the familiarity was low.
Second, the aspects of speech act depending on the different characteristics of request situation are as follows. To begin with, there was only nominal difference between the cases of official request and private request. However, direct speech act was used when the result of the request was beneficial to the listener and both direct and indirect speech acts were used when the request was beneficial to the speaker. Rather, aforementioned politeness devices such as adverbial phrases, auxiliary speech act, and way of speaking showed clear differences depending on the situational variable. When the request situation was more advantageous to the speaker and harmful to the listener, more politeness devices were utilized.
Third, the aspects of speech act depending on the length of the North Korean exiles' stay in South Korea are as follows. It was shown that the short length of stay does not equate the exiles' inability to use indirect speech act. Surprisingly, typical indirect speech acts such as interrogatives were used more frequently by those who is in the early stage of settlement, along with the usage of direct speech act, various types of indirect speech act, and ellipsis speech act. On the other hand, speakers who have longer length of stay in South Korea used more direct speech acts and less politeness devices. This seems to be based on their familiarity with the listener. Additionally, no stammering or slurring the end of the sentence was observed from the speech of those who stayed in South Korea for a long time, while relatively less confident and more indirect tone was used by the participants who have settled down not too long ago.
This study proves that the North Korean exiles utilize indirect speech acts without much difficulty based on empirical speech data. Moreover, by discovering and establishing a notion of ellipsis speech act which was not dealt in existing literature, speech acts were successfully categorized based on real-life speech data. This is also significant in its confirmation of the fact that indirectness does not guarantee politeness in North Korean exiles' language. The unevenness of the participants' gender, age, and region of origin, however, limits the scope of this . Further research targeting participants with diverse demographical background and their speech data will be necessary.
Key words: North Korean exiles, refugees, speech act, speech act of request, request, indirect speech act, ellipsis speech act, politeness, face
본 연구는 실제 발화를 통해 북한이탈주민의 요청화행 수행 양상을 살피고자 한다. 특히 본고는 북한이탈주민이 간접화행을 잘 사용하는지를 확인하는 것에 초점을 두고 논의를 진행한다. ...
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