Social work Services (SNS) are widely used these days and many people tend to communicate with each other on SNS. When communicating on SNS, people can use screen names or nicknames. Therefore, it is reasonable to predict that people will either at...
Social work Services (SNS) are widely used these days and many people tend to communicate with each other on SNS. When communicating on SNS, people can use screen names or nicknames. Therefore, it is reasonable to predict that people will either attempt to be more polite, or less polite, on the basis of not knowing their interlocutors. It can be expected that, when communicating on Twitter and Facebook, people use different politeness strategies related to ‘face’ in different contexts. This study aims to analyze what types of politeness strategies are used in English and in Korean in Twitter feeds and on Facebook and to compare the differences in both languages on both SNSs. Two American and Korean politicians’ Twitter feeds and Facebook pages were chosen for the research.
Using Brown & Levinson’s (1987) methods of identifying politeness strategies in public discourse, the study examined all messages and tweets directed at, or in response to, two American and two Korean politicians. The reasons for choosing the well-known politicians’ Facebook and Twitter sites were to collect a large variety of messages and also due to the accessibility of Facebook. To see other people’s Twitter profiles, only the following function is needed, but most Facebook pages are open to everyone, although there are limits to what one can see on certain pages. It is known that celebrities’ SNS are frequently accessed and get a variety of messages.
The data that was collected covered the period between December 15th and December 31st of 2013. The English Facebook and Twitter accounts examined belonged to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican and potential candidate for President in 2014, and Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York state. The Korean public figures were the mayor of S City, Park, and the mayor of D City, Yum. The former is a member of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy, while the latter belongs to the Saenuri Party.
411 English and 350 Korean tweets were chosen and 223 English and 410 Facebook messages were chosen and analyzed in terms of message context. The tweets and the Facebook messages were divided into five categories. In each category, each tweet and each Facebook message were analyzed based on Brown & Levinson’s (1987) politeness strategies.
The results show that in tweet messages in both languages, the highest category is Expressing Support & Praise. However, the Opposing & Criticising was second on English Twitter and Questioning & Asking was the second most common strategy on Korean Twitter.
On the other hand, in the Facebook messages, differences were found in both languages. On English Facebook, the Opposing & Criticising category was the highest and the Expressing Support & Praise category was placed third. However, on Korean Facebook, the Expressing Support & Praise category(Park: 79.16%, Yum: 88.37%) was the overwhelmingly highest and Questioning & Asking was in second place leaving Opposing & Criticising in third place. The results show that on English and Korean Twitter, people used positive politeness strategies more when expressing support or praising. On the other hand, the negative politeness strategies were the highest strategy in the Opposing & Criticising and Questioning & Asking categories.
The results also show that on English Facebook, people used positive politeness strategies more when opposing and criticising. There is not much difference with Korean Facebook in regard to the use of politeness strategies compared to Korean Twitter. From the research, it can be shown that it is difficult to engage in Face Threatening Acts(FTA) even though people have relative anonymity when communicating on-line through SNS.
There were a number of distinct characteristics that highlighted the differences between the American and Korean social networking communications, including the frequency of response on the part of Park and Yum’s offices as compared to their American counterparts, who principally used Facebook and Twitter to make announcements. In terms of the public’s use of Facebook comments, and Tweets, there were both similarities and differences in the content and the strategies employed by people communicating with the governors and mayors.
One conclusion that can be reached through the research and analysis conducted is that Brown and Levinson’s model, which has been highly influential in the field of linguistics, is not entirely compatible with communication norms in Eastern Asia. Because of its largely Western-oriented outlook, the strategies of politeness put forward by Brown and Levinson do not entirely apply to the Korean language. First, among the ten sub-categories that make up negative politeness, Giving deference is among them. This would include Facebook replies and Tweets that address the American politicians as Mr. Governor and the implications are that titles separate and alienate individuals from each other.
In Korea, however, language is built around honorifics and age and social titles are critical in communications between individuals. The intention of these language uses are to bring people together, while in Western culture this is seen as being a separation. Another issue involved the sub-category strategy of positive politeness, Giving or asking for reasons. When having conversations, giving or asking reasons are not always considered as a means of protecting the hearer or speaker’s face. In this research, it was often the case that messages with giving reasons often appeared to reinforce some distances between participants. This phenomenon especially occurred on Facebook since the messages are longer(there is no limit to the number of letters or characters). As such, not all of the principles put forward by Brown and Levinson are applicable to Korean Social working Sites and the strategies that people using them employ.
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