Language, Culture and Curriculum

ISSN: 0790-8318 (Print) 1747-7573 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlcc20

Korean honorifics and politeness in second

language learning

Andrew Sangpil Byon

To cite this article: Andrew Sangpil Byon (2012) Korean honorifics and politeness in
second language learning, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 25:2, 205-207, DOI:
10.1080/07908318.2011.625620

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2011.625620

Published online: 24 Oct 2011.

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Language, Culture and Curriculum
Vol. 25, No. 2, July 2012, 205– 214

BOOK REVIEWS

Korean honorifics and politeness in second language learning, by Lucien Brown,

Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA, John Benjamins, 2011, 311 pp., US$149.00 (hardback),
ISBN 978-90-272-5610-2

Korean is one of the most difficult languages for adult English native speakers to learn. For
instance, the Defense Language Institute of the USA groups foreign languages into four
different categories according to difficulty levels. Category I languages that include
Spanish, Italian and French are the easiest, while Category IV languages that include
Korean, along with Arabic, Chinese and Japanese, are the most challenging to learn. For
instance, to reach the advanced proficiency level, Category I languages need 480 class
hours, whereas Category IV languages need 1320 hours (Association of the United
States Army, 2010).
One aspect of Korean that makes the language unique and also difficult to learn is its
complicated honorifics system. The popularity of Korean as a foreign/second language
(KFL) is a recent phenomenon (Byon, 2008). Consequently, the number of studies that
explore and document the acquisition of the Korean honorifics system by KFL learners
has been very limited. In this regard, the recent volume of Lucien Brown is a very
welcome contribution to the existing KFL literature.
Brown explores how advanced KFL learners with a ‘western background’ (either
having English as their first language or having had education and socialisation experiences
in western societies such as the USA, UK and Canada) appreciate, use and acquire the
Korean honorifics system. Twenty advanced KFL learners who resided in Korea at the
time of data collection participated in the study. In addition, 40 Korean native speakers pro-
vided first language (L1) data. Several types of cross-sectional research data are presented,
deriving from discourse completion tasks, role-play, recordings of natural conversation,
learners’ stories and introspective interviews. Each data set was then subjected to either
quantitative (e.g. based on inferential statistics) or qualitative (e.g. using conversational
analysis tools) analysis.
The book offers many interesting and insightful results. First, in spite of their advanced
proficiency level, the learners often displayed non-conventional honorifics usage patterns.
The author attributes the occasional divergence of honorifics use to the learners’ politeness
ideology. For instance, the learners’ egalitarian cognitive value orientation influenced them
to avoid using the two extremes of the honorifics system (e.g. the use of referent honorifics
and/or panmal ‘plain speech style/non-honorific usage’). In addition, the author remarks on
the Korean native speakers’ different expectations and/or discriminatory attitudes towards
the learners’ honorifics usage. The author comments that the Korean native speakers have
double standards when it comes to foreigners using the honorifics. That is, they might not
expect or want foreigners to use the honorifics as native speakers do. As the author writes:

Korean interlocutors did not always perceive it as appropriate for non-Koreans to apply modes
of honorifics use that were tied up with Korean ingroupness or that indexed hierarchical

ISSN 0790-8318 print/ISSN 1747-7573 online

http://www.tandfonline.com
206 Book reviews

relationships. It was pointed out that neither Koreans nor the L2 speakers themselves necess-
arily expected L1-L2 interactions to follow the hierarchical modes of Korean social interaction,
even when the setting was Korea and the language being used was Korean. (p. 248)

The author argues that such a discriminatory expectation by Korean native speakers can
be an implicit and invisible barrier for KFL honorifics acquisition.
Moreover, the author argues that KFL teachers’ unwillingness to explicitly point out
and correct the learners’ pragmalinguistic shortcomings, as well as the inappropriate
description of honorifics usages found in most KFL textbooks, may negatively affect lear-
ners’ honorifics acquisition. As pedagogical implications, the author calls for increasing
awareness among KFL instructors and textbook writers of how inadequate descriptions
of honorifics usage in KFL textbooks can increase learners’ adoption of inappropriate hon-
orifics. Moreover, he highlights how politeness ideologies and identity issues of the learners
can complicate their acquisition of the honorifics system.
Overall, the book is commendably well written and clearly organised. The title of the
manuscript accurately represents the contents. In addition, the literature review is relevant
and thorough. In particular, the comprehensive review of studies published in South Korea
is impressive. This, of course, was possible due to the author’s extensive stay in South
Korea as a resident scholar. The goals and research questions are clearly stated and they
have strong rationales. The description of the complex Korean honorifics system is
concise, appropriate and accurate. Moreover, the author describes the system in a way
that will be accessible and understandable even to those readers with no Korean language
background. The author devotes four entire chapters (i.e. Chapter 5 through Chapter 8) to
presenting, analysing and discussing each type of data set in depth. The application of both
quantitative and qualitative research methods is rigorous and exemplary.
Of course, no published work is perfect and every work has areas that leave some room
for improvement. The first concerns the relatively small sample size on which the study is
based. Note that the findings are derived entirely from 20 KFL learners residing in Seoul.
Moreover, although they all have had ‘western’ education/socialisation experiences, their
ethnic background, occupation and first languages are not uniform. For instance, among the
20 participants, there are 10 Korean heritage learners, while the other 10 have different
national and ethnic backgrounds, such as Caucasian, Japanese, Chinese, Ukrainian and
so forth. Moreover, their occupations differentiate them even further. Some are exchange
students, some are graduate students and some are professional workers. A study that incor-
porated a larger participant pool would be valuable.
Second, while the author’s arguments regarding how learners’ different politeness
ideology and identity issues affect their honorifics learning experience are striking
and persuasive, the voices of Korean native speakers should have played a greater
role in the analysis. For instance, the author reports that some Korean native speakers
do not expect to use or apply honorifics when talking to foreigners. However, there may
be vast individual differences even among Korean native speakers in their preferences
and expectations regarding the use of honorifics by foreigners. In future studies, it
would be interesting to find out how the Korean general population would actually
think and respond to the KFL learners’ identity issues as well as to their politeness
ideology.
Third, the author’s argument that the teachers rarely provide learners with explicit feed-
back regarding inappropriate honorifics usage is solely based on learners’ subjective
responses – the voices of the teachers are not reflected in the study. It would be very
useful in the future to have a longitudinal empirical study that described the instructional
 Language, Culture and Curriculum 207

interactions that take place in actual KFL classrooms and explored how KFL teachers
themselves perceive and react to KFL learners’ honorifics usage.
Lastly, the author remarks that certain social variables, such as age and the social pos-
itions of professionals, influence the learners’ honorifics usage (e.g. avoiding non-honorific
panmal). However, it must be stressed that this very same principle applies to L1 speakers
as well. For instance, while it appears to be conventional to use the non-honorifics style for
a close friend in Korean society, in reality it is not common even for an L1 speaker to switch
to panmal if the addressee is a friend with whom the speaker first became acquainted after
they became adults or married and so forth.
Brown’s (2011) book is a valuable contribution to the KFL literature, interlanguage
pragmatics and politeness studies. As noted earlier, there are relatively few studies that
investigate the acquisition of the Korean honorifics system. However, there has been a
growing interest in this topic among scholars and applied linguistics students recently.
Hence, this book is a great asset to the field and will be enthusiastically welcomed. I
strongly recommend it and look forward to seeing more book-length studies of this topic
in the future.

References
Association of the United States Army. (2010). DLI’s language guidelines. Retrieved August 3, 2001,
from http://www.ausa.org/publications/ausanews/specialreports/2010/8/Pages/DLI’slanguage
guidelines.aspx
Byon, A. (2008). Korean as a foreign language in the USA: The instructional settings. Language,
Culture and Curriculum, 21(3), 244 –255.

Andrew Sangpil Byon

East Asian Studies Department
State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA
abyon@albany.edu
# 2012, Andrew Sangpil Byon
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2011.625620

Voices, identities, negotiations and conflicts: writing academic English across cultures,
edited by Phan Le Ha and Bradley Baurain, Bingley, UK, Emerald, 2011, xxi + 220 pp.,
£62.95 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-85724-719-3

In their introduction to this edited collection, Phan Le Ha and Bradley Baurain do indeed
whet our appetites (p. xvii) for the chapters to follow. ‘This book’, they tell us, ‘features a
diverse array of methodologies and perspectives that sift, problematize, interrogate, and
challenge current practice and prevailing writing and publishing subcultures’ (p. xiii).
The book also claims that it seeks to ‘break new ground’ (p. xiii) in its examination of
what the book’s subtitle names as ‘writing academic English across cultures’ and to
‘broaden conceptions of academic writing in English’ (p. xiii). Before proceeding to
examine these claims in more detail, let me briefly describe the overall structure and organ-
isation of the book. Following on from the editors’ introduction titled, ‘Problematizing and
enriching writing academic English’, Part I: ‘Pedagogical and psychological journeys’