Korean speakers’ perception of (im)politeness across speech acts of agreement, compliment, disagreement and criticism.

The present research hypothesises that speech acts can serve as a fundamental device of (im)politeness, potentially outweighing the significant contribution of honorifics, including speech levels. Specifically, it argues that agreeing with interlocutors and paying them compliments are closely related to the realisation and perception of politeness in Korean speech. Although the literature notes the deep engagement of speech acts in Korean (im)politeness, scholars have primarily focused on ‘polite refusal’ or ‘polite request’ as speech acts that explicitly threaten the hearer’s ‘face’ (Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987). However, other speech acts, such as agreement, disagreement, complimenting and criticism, can also significantly affectﾠthe perception of (im)politeness across the spectrum of linguistic behaviours. Through a survey asking native Korean speakers to assess the degree of (im)politeness perceived from different utterances, the current study explores how several factors, including addressee, modality, speech level and speech acts, are complicatedly but distinctly involved in Korean speakers’ perceptions of (im)politeness. While the results confirm the impact of honorifics and ‘negative face’ on the speakers’ assessment of (im)politeness, they also indicate that positive politeness together with negative politeness needs to be more actively included in the discussion regarding how (im)politeness is perceived in actual speech practices. This comprehensive approach aims to capture the full spectrum of linguistic behaviours observed in actual speech practices, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of (im)politeness in Korean speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]