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Korean honorifics and politeness in second language learning

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 provided 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: