It is well known that in Korean, an agglutinative language, there are various sentence enders (s-enders) that are selectively used according to the honorific speech levels between the speaker and the hearer. In other words, depending on the status dif... It is well known that in Korean, an agglutinative language, there are various sentence enders (s-enders) that are selectively used according to the honorific speech levels between the speaker and the hearer. In other words, depending on the status differences between the speaker and the hearer, different forms of s-ender are used. Among them, ‘-nya’ and ‘-ni’, interrogative ending forms, are interesting in that they can largely be used interchangeably as plain speech level endings. However, it does not mean they are really in free variation relationship with each other. Their actual distribution in different contexts shows some systematic variations that can be explained by their sociolinguistic factors, which further leads us to some clues to the understanding of their semantic and pragmatic features. The purpose of this study is to investigate the distribution and different usage of the two s-enders focusing on the sociolinguistic variables that affect their usage. 3,492 utterances that contain the enders were collected for this purpose. They are transcriptions extracted from 27 soap operas. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted on the collected data. For quantitative analyses, cross-tabulations including various variables were provided focusing on the identification of the role of each variable in their respective uses, and as a way to show the interactive effect of the variables. Correspondence analysis (CA) is also provided, which nicely shows general tendency of and trends in the usage of the s-enders in question. However, not all the important factors that might affect the distribution of ‘-nya’ and ‘-ni’ could be quantified, and in order to complement the quantitative aspect of their usage, qualitative analyses were also provided focusing on some cases that show their marked usage. Based on the correlation analysis of dependent variables, usage between ‘-nya’ and ‘-ni’ were shown to be influenced by ‘the speaker's gender’, ‘the speaker's age’, and ‘the hearer's gender’, in that order. In using the two forms, the social status (P) and social distance (D) were the two variables found to be the most influential based on the case study. As a result of the statistical and case study analyses, it was found out that the speaker’s gender is not the only factor affecting the usage of ‘-nya’ and ‘-ni’. It is also influenced by the speaker’s age and the hearer’s gender and other sociolinguistic factors. ‘-nya’ was found to be used twice as much as ‘-ni’ overall, and it was preferred to ‘-ni’ in all age and gender groups. On the contrary, ‘-ni’ was considerably strongly affected by sociolinguistic factors than ‘-nya’. In the case of men, the interrogative sentence ender ‘-ni’ is frequently used by those who belong to the age bracket of 30, when having a conversation with women. Women speech showed the similar pattern to that of vernacular usage. The teenager women seldom use the interrogative sentence ending ‘-ni’ in their speech but the usage rises gradually as the age increases. Women in their 40s to 50s has the highest statistical usage of ‘-ni’ in their speech while 60s and older tend to use more ‘-nya’ and less ‘-ni’ in their utterances compared to middle-aged groups. This behavior can be analyzed in connection to women speech style described as ‘polite’ and ‘demeanor’. A typical example would be the speakers of high status, especially female ones, that exclusively use the s-ender ‘-ni’. Gender is the chief factor in using ‘-nya’ and ‘-ni’ but the variation is also determined by other sociolinguistic factors, the speaker’s attitude toward the hearer and so on. Solidarity rather than power can also be said to be influential in the usage of ‘-nya’ and ‘-ni’ since the two s-enders represent the same plain level of speech in Korean. The variation of the s-enders can be determined with the help of semantic/pragmatic features. Both ‘-nya’ and ‘-ni’ share the features [-RESPECT] and [/LOWER]. However, these two also are of different features in terms of their semantics and pragmatics: ‘-nya’ has [/INTIMACY], whereas ‘-ni’ has [-INTIMACY], [/KIND], and [/GENTLE]. These features restrict the register of the two interrogative sentence endings. The s-ender ‘-nya’ can be used in all registers except in cases where the hearer’s power (P) is relatively high and the solidarity (D) is low, while the s-ender ‘-ni’, when the speaker factor is suppressed, can be used only in relation where the hearer’s power and the solidarity is low. This study found out that interrogative sentence enders ‘-nya’ and ‘-ni’ are not in free variations but are used by speakers selectively on account of their different semantic/pragmatic features. ‘-nya’ is the ‘default’ interrogative ending at the plain speech level, whereas ‘-ni’ substitutes for ‘-nya’ employed as a kind of ‘pragmatic strategy’ based on speaker's consideration on context such as sociolinguistic factors or attitude. As a pragmatic strategy, ‘-ni’ functions as 1) negative politeness to keep the distance from the hearer and mitigate face threatening acts, 2) positive politeness to express positive attitudes toward the hearer such as consideration or kindness, and 3) the indexical device to show the speaker's own demeanor. The ending ‘-nya’ also has the strategic function as positive politeness to express closeness, which makes it possible to be used even for interlocutor who should be originally respected beyond the plain speech level in terms of its marked usage.
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