The aim of this study is to analyze and interpretate the refusal speech acts of two generations of Korean women: mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. To be specific, it examines if daughters-in-laws use of strategies were dependent on the age difference/ hierarchies and to see if there was any difference in the type of strategies used by daughters-in-law depending on whether mothers-in-law have social power or not. The data were collected from three soap operas. Compared with previous data collection methods, such as discourse completion tests or role-plays, this data collection method has advantages for a pragmatics study.
The results indicated that age is a critical factor in choosing polite refusals in Korean language, but social distances far outweigh age differences among family members. Korean daughters-in-law usually followed indirect or implicit strategies to turn down their mothers-in-laws request or suggestion. The mostly common strategy used by Korean women, both mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, was circumlocution with excuses, explanations, or reasons. Findings indicated that yo-form and honorific suffix are typically used when daughters-in-law are refusing to their mothers-in-law.
To see whether the daughter-in-law varies her refusals as a function of the partner being the mother-in-law, this study also compared interactions between the daughter and her mother-in-law and the daughter with her mother in the dramas. Daughters tend to shift downwards, from polite speech level to intimate or plain speech level, but rarely upwards in their interaction with their mothers. Finally, in daughter-in-laws refusals, whether or not mothers-in-law have social power does not seem to have a strong effect on the daughters-in-laws polite linguistic behavior, and vice versa. Findings revealed that various contextual factors play a role in the selection of the polite form chosen and actual utterance is not always consistent with gender stereotypes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-05142013-103916 |
| Date | 06 June 2013 |
| Creators | Han, Saem |
| Contributors | Hegarty, Michael, Bridwell-Bowles, Lillian, Oetting, Janna, Brody, Mary, Loretta, Pecchioni |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-05142013-103916/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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