A Pragmatic View of Japanese and Korean Automatic translate

Pragmatics studies how speakers use linguistic features in specific situations, not just their formal meaning. This is particularly evident in Japanese and Korean: the choice of endings, particles, vocabulary, and even vocal acoustics constantly signal the relationship between the participants in a conversation, the appropriateness of the utterance, and the degree of engagement of the interlocutors.

Both languages are often described as richly organized systems of politeness and speech levels. Research indicates that grammatical markers of politeness are linked not only to social status but also to discourse style, speaker intentions, and listener expectations. Moreover, the similarity of general categories (respectful/neutral/familiar) is combined with varying degrees of norm rigidity and different strategies for switching between styles in Japanese and Korean speech.

Systems of politeness and speech levels

The Japanese language traditionally distinguishes several layers of politeness, which in modern linguistics are described by the terms " sonkeigo " (respectful), " kenjōgo " (modest, self-effacing), and " teineigo " (standard polite). These layers are realized through specific verb forms, affixes, pronoun choice, and specific syntactic constructions. For example, the verb pairs "iku / irassharu / mairu" reflect varying attitudes toward the subject of the action: from neutral to emphatically respectful toward the addressee or a third party.

The Korean system is more formalized at the level of so-called speech levels. Seven levels are described, distinguished by the set of verb endings and the degree of formality, from highly formal to intimate and informal. Almost every utterance in Korean ends with a marker that simultaneously encodes the type of utterance (narrative, question, or incentive) and the politeness style toward the addressee.

Comparative studies show that Japanese speakers often dispense with explicitly marked honorifics, employing so-called "unmarked utterances," in which the typical formal marker is omitted. In Korean, by contrast, the choice of speech level and its consistent maintenance in conversation are closely tied to the age of the interlocutors, their status, and the formality of the situation. This creates differences in how strictly social hierarchy is reflected in the grammar of a given dialogue.

Addressee politeness and structural positions of markers

In Japanese, politeness toward the addressee is often expressed through the combination of the affixes "-masu" / "desu," a specific set of respectful / humble verbs, and vocabulary, but a sentence can also end without a special discourse particle. The level of formality is largely determined by the combination of the entire predicate morpheme chain and context, as well as by the choice of pronouns and forms of address.

In Korean, politeness markers are systematically positioned at the end of utterances and are embedded in the paradigms of so-called "speech styles." The same proposition can be formed with the endings "-supnida," "-eyo," or "-e/a," which will yield different meanings in terms of distance and respect for the addressee, while the lexical composition of the sentence remains virtually the same. Pragmatically important choices are made precisely at the final stage of morphological formation.

Comparison of Japanese and Korean speech level systems

A study of male dialogues between unfamiliar Japanese and Korean interlocutors shows that in Japanese conversations, speech levels do not always directly reflect age hierarchy: speakers actively use neutral utterances. At the discourse level, however, shifts in style are noticeable, signaling relationship dynamics, intimacy, or, conversely, distance.

For Korean dialogues of the same type, a more consistent correlation between speech level and age and status hierarchies has been observed: a speaker of lower status more frequently and consistently uses polite forms toward a speaker of higher status. A change in level is often perceived as a significant pragmatic event rather than a stylistic device, making the system more predictable but also more rigid in terms of social expectations.

Some studies describe the emergence of "semi-polite" or transitional styles in both Japanese and Korean, where a single utterance combines elements of respectful and neutral phrasing. This hybridity reflects a redistribution of social norms: formal boundaries are softened, while subtle coding of distance remains.

Pragmatic particles and sentence endings

One of the most studied areas of Japanese pragmatics is the final particles "ne," "yo," "yone," "ka," "no," and others. They do not alter the propositional content of an utterance, but they govern the relationship between the speaker and the addressee, as well as the way the utterance is incorporated into the dialogue sequence. The particle "ne" is associated with a request for confirmation or with expressing agreement; "yo" emphasizes the provision of new information for the addressee or expresses the speaker’s confidence; their combination, "yone," can simultaneously assert and verify shared knowledge.

Corpus and conversational studies show that these particles not only perform "attitude" functions but also organize the order of turns, prompting the recipient whether it is appropriate to speak at a given moment. For example, a statement ending with "ne" and a falling intonation can signal the end of a turn, but at the same time express the expectation of gentle confirmation rather than an active objection.

In Korean, word-formation and syntactic processes have led to markers like "-yo," "-nikka," "-na," and others occupying final positions and becoming key indicators of both utterance type and communication style. The particle "-yo" is traditionally described as an indicator of politeness toward the addressee, but a more detailed analysis reveals its connection with discursive parameters: the boundaries of the speech act, the manifestation of politeness, and restrictions on the nesting of such structures.

The "-nikka" form is used not only as a causal marker but also as a self-presentational element; research shows that it can enhance the sense of personal involvement in a situation while simultaneously creating interpersonal engagement. Combinations of final particles in Korean set the tone of a statement — from formal to playful — and are clearly interpreted by native speakers as signals of status and emotional background.

Intonation and particles as a single pragmatic system

Comparative studies of Japanese particles and Korean final tones show that functions distributed between grapheme and intonation in Japanese (e.g., "yo" with a rising or falling melody) are often prosodic in Korean, with a relatively fixed set of morphemes. For Japanese speakers, the combination of particle and intonation contour forms a coherent pragmatic signal, whereas for Korean speakers, a similar signal is more often associated with the type of ending and the overall pattern of the phrase.

Studies of "yo" in both languages highlight the difference: in Japanese, "yo" primarily indicates the relevance of a message, adding an emphasis on its usefulness to the addressee, while in Korean, -yo, in addition to politeness, is associated with the speaker’s position and the structure of the utterance as a higher-level speech act. This difference illustrates how similar elements can serve different pragmatic purposes.

Feedback in Dialogue: Japanese Aizuchi and Korean Reactive Responses

The Japanese system of feedback in conversation is known as "aizuchi." These are short verbal and nonverbal signals ("hai," "ee," "un," "sō desu ka," nods) that indicate attention and support for the other person’s speech. They don’t always indicate agreement, but they confirm that the listener is following your train of thought and maintaining contact.

Studies of the frequency and distribution of aizuchi show that Japanese speakers use such signals significantly more frequently than, for example, English speakers; some cues serve to maintain the speaker’s flow, while others serve to gently change turns and transition to the speaker’s own utterance. Some types of aizuchi (repeating "hai hai," "sō sō sō") are directly related to passing the turn or filling pauses, preventing silence from being interpreted as coldness.

A similar, but not identical, system of reactive signals, often called "reactive tokens," has been described for Korean. They also signal listener engagement, but their frequency and positional distribution within a utterance are somewhat different. Comparative analysis shows that Korean speakers tend to use fewer repeated short responses in a row than Japanese speakers, while relying on a rich prosodic repertoire.

From a pragmatic perspective, both systems serve to mitigate potential threats to the interlocutors’ "face": continuously feeding the conversation with small cues reduces the likelihood of abrupt interruptions and misunderstandings. For language learners, it’s important to note that the absence of the expected aizuchi or Korean reactive tokens is often perceived as awkwardness or inattention, even though such pauses are considered standard in other languages.

Pragmatics of addresses and indication of social status

In Japanese, addressing others and referring to third parties is typically done with suffixes such as "-san," "-sama," "-kun," "-chan," and others. The choice of suffix depends on the level of formality, age, proximity, and status. Furthermore, in many situations, titles (sensei, shachō, etc.) are preferred over personal names, emphasizing institutional relationships and reducing direct personalization.

The Korean language uses a developed system of titles and forms of address, which is closely linked to speech styles. Second-person pronouns are often replaced by forms of address based on job titles or marital status ("seonsaengnim," "hyeong," "nuna," etc.), and the choice of speech level must be consistent with these forms of address. Research shows that when describing forms of address in Korean, it is useful to consider them in conjunction with speech levels rather than separately.

Acoustic studies demonstrate that the address zone, particularly in Korean speech, is where the characteristic features of polite intonation are concentrated: lowered volume, frequency changes, and a distinct timbre. In Japanese, such acoustic "hot spots" are more evenly distributed, but even there, addressing can enhance the effect of deferential style, especially when using formal titles.

Cultural concepts and their relationship with pragmatics

The concepts of "honne/tatemae" and "uchi/soto" are regularly invoked to explain many pragmatic features of the Japanese language. "Honne" describes internal, genuine intentions and feelings, while "tatemae" refers to socially expected external behavior and statements. The conflict between these concepts in literary texts is often framed around the choice between personal attitude and social duty.

In everyday communication, the honne/tatemae distinction manifests itself in the avoidance of outright refusals, favoring veiled assessments and ambiguous formulas that leave room for maintaining group harmony. For example, the polite "sukoshi muzukashii desu" often signifies a genuine denial, but formally sounds soft and allows for various interpretations. This directly impacts the pragmatics of modal expressions and mitigating constructions.

The pair "uchi / soto" (in-group / out-group) describes the distribution of status based on social circle membership — family, company, or group. In language, this is reflected in the choice of pronouns, levels of politeness, and even the direction of polite markers (elevating the status of "insiders" over "outsiders" or vice versa, depending on the situation). Such shifts often present difficulties in translation and teaching, as direct equivalents are lacking in other languages.

Korean pragmatics has long been linked in research to the Confucian tradition, which emphasizes respect for elders and hierarchy in the family and society. This is reflected in the way speech levels are regulated: a junior interlocutor is almost always required to use the polite form when addressing an elder, while a lower level is acceptable. Combined with the system of address, this creates stable speech rituals.

A comparison of Japanese and Korean data shows that despite a general focus on politeness and harmonious interaction, specific cultural attitudes set different priorities: the Japanese system places greater emphasis on the distinction between “internal” and “external,” while the Korean system places greater emphasis on vertical relationships and age hierarchy.

Speech acts, politeness and pragmatic strategies

Pragmatic studies of Japanese apologies and thanks show that formal markers of politeness (respectful forms, additional modal elements) do not always correspond to the actual function of the utterance in context. For example, constructions with "-te shimau," "chotto," and specific introductory expressions can either soften or intensify the "threatening" aspect of the speech act, depending on the situation.

In the service sector, such as the hospitality industry, Japanese speech often revolves around directives (requests, instructions), but is couched in the standard polite register (teineigo), which reduces the risk of perceiving the utterance as a strict order. Corpus data demonstrate a high proportion of directives and expressive forms (compliments, thanks, apologies) with consistent use of polite forms as the primary defense mechanism for the social "face" of both customers and employees.

In Korean, research on imperatives shows that the difference between seemingly similar disrespectful endings is related not only to the degree of rudeness but also to the type of interaction. The "-e/a" form and the "-ela/ala" form are distributed across different scenarios, with the former used in more intimate, familial contexts, and the latter in specific institutional or genre situations. This suggests that speech levels and endings encode not only vertical relationships but also the format of the action.

Indirect questions and partial questions in Korean, formed using the markers "-na," "-nka," and others, can function as gentle directives or expressions of doubt, going beyond their purely informative function. Similarly, in Japanese, the particle "ka" is used both for direct questions and as part of indefinite pronouns, where the pragmatic meaning changes depending on the context.

Prosodic and acoustic parameters of polite speech

Modern cross-linguistic studies point out that politeness in Japanese and Korean is encoded not only morphologically but also through vocal behavior: pitch, volume, and melody variation. The Japanese deferential style has been characterized by "calmer" vocal characteristics: speech becomes quieter and more even, with fewer fluctuations in pitch and intensity compared to neutral.

Similar results were obtained for Korean: polite speech is characterized by reduced loudness and a more even melody, but a more consistent shift toward a lower fundamental frequency was observed for Korean compared to Japanese material. This refutes the popular notion that politeness is automatically associated with high vocal frequencies.

A separate study analyzes so-called "hot spots" of polite acoustics: areas of utterance where the differences between deferential and neutral speech are particularly noticeable. For Korean, the greatest concentration of characteristic features is observed in the address zone and in the accented phrases closest to it. For Japanese, the distribution is less concentrated, but even there, a localized enhancement of acoustic markers is observed at key speech acts (apologies, thanks, addresses).

These data show that the pragmatic meaning of politeness unfolds on several levels simultaneously, from morphology and syntax to acoustics, and that speakers read the overall signal even when individual components provide ambiguous indications.

Pragmatics of syntax and distribution of sentence members

In Japanese, the free order of sentence components, conditioned by case marking, allows for the practice of "scrambling" — the rearrangement of arguments without changing the underlying grammatical structure. Studies of syntactically marked corpora show that such rearrangements have little effect on grammaticality but are associated with pragmatic motives: highlighting the topic, focusing, and updating new information.

A separate study on the particles "wa," "mo," and "tte" demonstrates that these elements not only mark a topic or contrast but also "project" the subsequent course of conversation: their appearance allows the addressee to predict the type of next action, which influences the order of turn and the form of responses. Thus, the syntactic structure of the sentence and the system of postpositional particles jointly govern the pragmatics of interaction.

While free order is also possible in Korean, research highlights stricter constraints related to sentence type and speech style. Final markers and speech levels bear the primary burden of expressing pragmatic nuances, while argument reordering plays a supporting role. A comparison shows that Japanese more often uses syntactic and information-structural devices, while Korean prefers sentence-final morphology.

Within the Japanese system, the division between "thematic" and "focal" positions is considered important, where the particle "wa" signals a pre-existing background, while the absence of "wa" or the use of other particles indicates focus. In Korean, similar distinctions are more often encoded through order and intonation, not requiring a separate topic particle to the same extent.

Pragmatic particles and epistemic meanings

The Japanese particle "ka" is interesting because it combines several functions: as a question marker, a component of indefinite pronouns, and a conjunction in disjunctional constructions. Formal analysis shows that this polysemy can be described through a single set of semantic and pragmatic parameters, with discrepancies arising at the level of how the sentence is "embedded" in discourse.

The final particles "ne" and "yo" are traditionally interpreted as markers of agreement and informativeness, but more recent works attempt to describe them in terms of their relationship to the general background of knowledge and the relevance of the utterance. "Yo" with a rising intonation, for example, is associated with a message that helps the addressee make a choice or decision, whereas without the particle, the same utterance would sound less purposeful.

In Korean, the system of particles associated with epistemic and modal meanings largely overlaps with the politeness system. Particles marking doubt, conjecture, and a weakened assertion are often combined with specific speech levels, forming stable formulas where changing one element also alters the perception of politeness. This makes the distinction between "purely epistemic" and "purely polite" markers relatively arbitrary.

Examples from spoken corpora show that speakers in both languages actively play with particle combinations and intonation, creating multilayered signals of confidence, readiness to object, humor, and irony. Describing such phenomena requires considering the pragmatic context, not just the dictionary meanings of the particles.

Pragmatics of written and electronic communication

Although many studies focus on spoken language, the pragmatic features of Japanese and Korean are also clearly evident in written language, including emails and text messages. Analysis of Japanese personal correspondence, for example, shows that expressions of apology and gratitude are constructed using the same politeness parameters and "facial" strategies as in spoken language, but in written language, the use of formulas is more prominent. The degree of formality is adjusted by varying the set of cliched expressions and the length of the phrase.

Korean emails and written messages also demonstrate a systematic choice of speech level and forms of address, even in contexts where the technical environment (chat, instant messaging) allows for significant informality. Polite endings and honorifics remain common in messages between juniors and seniors, and their absence in such contexts can be perceived as violating social norms.

For both languages, graphic means of conveying pragmatic information are actively developing in electronic formats: variable vowel length or symbol repetition (" neee," " ㅋㅋㅋ, " etc.), the use of special emoticons and emoji, and changes in letter case. These graphic techniques complement or sometimes partially replace traditional grammatical markers of politeness, but do not negate their importance.

A comparative review of key pragmatic categories

By systematizing the data, it is possible to identify several pragmatic areas where Japanese and Korean languages exhibit particularly noticeable similarities and differences.

First, there’s the relationship between speech levels and social hierarchy. Both languages have a rich inventory of respectful and disrespectful phrasing, but modern Japanese speakers more often resort to marker-neutral utterances and flexibly switch styles, while Korean speakers, on average, more consistently correlate speech levels with age and status.

Secondly, there’s the distribution of pragmatic functions among the components of the utterance. Japanese makes extensive use of postpositional particles and free argument order to express topic, focus, and attitude, while final particles primarily concentrate interpersonal nuances. In Korean, a significant portion of the burden is transferred to verb endings and speech styles, while postpositional markers and word order are relatively less flexible pragmatically.

Third, the acoustic aspect of politeness is significant: both systems use loudness reduction and melody smoothing to express deferential meanings, but the distribution of these parameters within the utterance structure and their relationship to forms of address differ. This influences how speakers interpret subtle differences in voice and the contribution these differences make to overall politeness assessments.

Finally, both linguistic systems are closely tied to cultural notions of group, hierarchy, and harmonious interaction, but embody these notions through different means. The Japanese concepts of honne/tatemae and uchi/soto emphasize the distinction between inner and outer circles and the gap between inner attitudes and public behavior, while the Korean tradition places a stronger emphasis on vertical relationships and proper respect for elders through a consistent choice of speech level.

Children’s acquisition of pragmatic norms

The pragmatic systems of Japanese and Korean begin to develop in children long before school age, but the different components mature at different times. Experiments with Japanese preschoolers show that sensitivity to violations of the maxims of relevance and truthfulness emerges earlier than to more subtle violations of quantity and ambiguity in utterances. In other words, children react earlier to obvious incoherence or falsehood than to excessive brevity or ambiguity.

Age-related shifts are also noticeable in politeness. Research shows that six-year-olds are closer to adults in recognizing impolite forms and violations of politeness expectations, while four-year-olds often fail to notice such nuances. This is consistent with observations about the gradual acquisition of speech levels and forms of address — at first, children use them situationally, imitating adults, and then they master the systematic association of forms with the roles of the participants in communication.

In Japanese culture, the concept of "tachiba" — the speaker’s "position" in a given situation — is particularly important. Research shows that this perception of one’s place in the hierarchy and the network of relationships greatly influences the choice of polite forms, and its awareness gradually develops during school age. Korean data, although less detailed on this aspect, indicate a comparable role for seniority and status in children’s early speech experiences.

Ambiguity and politeness in Japanese and Korean

The Japanese language is often viewed as a system in which ambiguity and vagueness of expression are closely linked to politeness. Research devoted specifically to "aimaisa" describes a set of lexemes and constructions that, in responses to invitations, create a space of uncertainty between acceptance and refusal. Such expressions avoid a direct "no," preserving the opportunity for both parties to save face.

A corpus analysis of apologetic constructions shows that elements like "chotto," "-te shimau," and conditionals ending in "-tara" can strengthen or soften the assessment of behavior in terms of (im)politeness depending on the context. For example, adding "chotto" before a negative assessment often softens it, but in some situations it is perceived as an insufficiently clear or even ambiguous apology. This emphasizes that the same form is not rigidly embedded in a single-valued politeness scale.

The question of why Japanese speakers so frequently resort to obscure and veiled expressions has been discussed in detail in a number of studies. Researchers attribute such strategies to a focus on internal group harmony and a reluctance to initiate direct conflict. However, the authors themselves emphasize that such conclusions are based on limited corpora and interpretations, rather than a comprehensive description of all registers of Japanese speech.

In Korean communication, ambiguity is also used as a means of mitigating the threat of "face," but the formal means are somewhat different. Modal endings and specific speech level choices are more frequently employed; vague lexemes and grammatical constructions are combined with clearly marked politeness. This "double" signal can simultaneously convey respect and allow room for interpretation of the substantive meaning.

Strategic Uncertainty in the Digital Environment

A noticeable increase in strategic ambiguity has been observed in digital communication, with participants deliberately using vague language to smooth over refusals, shift commitments, or avoid direct criticism. In the Japanese and Korean internet, similar trends have been described through an analysis of typical phrases in messaging apps and social platforms, although detailed comparative data are still limited.

Ambivalence is a consistent component of politeness strategies. However, research highlights that excessive vagueness can lead to misunderstanding and frustration, especially in cross-cultural situations. This is particularly noticeable when Japanese or Korean speakers interact with interlocutors accustomed to more direct statements.

Silence, pauses and the rhythm of conversation

Silence and pauses in Japanese and Korean communication serve complex functions that differ from those common in many European languages. Research on intercultural communication has documented instances in which Japanese speakers use long pauses as a form of reflection and respect, while interlocutors from other cultures perceive this as a lack of response or implicit disagreement.

In the context of Japanese aizuchi, it is described that the speaker often "directs" the listener’s use of feedback signals, structuring the utterance through pauses and weakening of the voice. A pause before a potential aizuchi position invites a brief response, while the absence of such a pause precludes the right to continue the monologue. Research on distance learning of Japanese confirms that mastering this rhythm is difficult for language learners.

In Korean colloquial speech, pauses also play a role in turn-taking, but are more often accompanied by a pair of short beeps or a change in melody than in Japanese. This creates a somewhat different auditory pattern in the dialogue. In both cultures, a prolonged pause in an inappropriate place can be interpreted as awkwardness or a lack of engagement, but the length and acceptable positions of such pauses differ.

Mastering Japanese and Korean pragmatics as a foreign language

Interlinguistic pragmatics between Japanese and Korean demonstrates that even with a relatively high level of grammatical skills, language learners often struggle with selecting appropriate speech levels, forms of politeness, and feedback. A study of Javanese learners of Japanese revealed that many are unable to adequately relate speech forms to social context, especially in the absence of a strong tradition of hierarchical speech levels in their first language.

A study of Indonesian Japanese learners found a lack of mastery of the concept of "tachiba," or awareness of one’s position in a specific communication situation. Students often use "keigo" forms grammatically correctly, but err in choosing the degree of politeness, underestimating the status of the interlocutor or the formality of the situation. These findings highlight that simply memorizing forms is insufficient without cultural and social interpretation.

For Korean, a detailed study of the honorific system in second-language learning reveals that even advanced learners use endings and suffixes differently than native speakers. These discrepancies stem not only from errors but also from speaker identity: some deliberately avoid overly hierarchical forms, perceiving them as incompatible with their own views on interpersonal communication. This creates a distinct layer of "foreign" pragmatics that doesn’t fully align with either L1 norms or the standards of native Korean speakers.

Mastering aizuchi and reactive cues

Research in Japanese as a foreign language classrooms shows that even advanced students often use aizuchi less frequently than teachers and native speakers. Students tend to place feedback after completing a grammatical structure, while native speakers readily signal attention mid-sentence. This leads to differences in the rhythm of conversation and can create a sense of "sparse" responsiveness.

Distance learning projects involving Italian students and Japanese native speakers also demonstrate that mastering the combination of aizuchi and "ma" pauses requires time and dedicated practice. In Korean settings, similar difficulties arise with the frequency and variety of reactive tokens: students either overuse one or two patterns or omit expected responses. All of this underscores the importance of teaching not only grammar but also the rhythmic and pragmatic features of speech.

The Pragmatics of Criticism, Refusal, and Request

Directive speech acts — criticism, refusal, and requests — are particularly sensitive to pragmatic norms. A study of the Japanese workplace shows that direct criticism is rarely used, especially in horizontal relationships and when communicating among colleagues at the same level. Indirect strategies are more common: suggestions, questions, and recommendations that are not formally labeled as criticism but contain a reference to the need for behavioral change.

In Japanese requests ("irai hyōgen"), language learners often misjudge the degree of imposition with the choice of form: they may use a polite but overly direct construction when the risk of threatening the interlocutor’s face is high. Research shows that learners’ perception of the "burden" of a request does not always translate into a more lenient formulation; instead, they vary other elements, such as adding explanations or softening introductory words.

Comparative studies of apologies and thanks in Japanese email correspondence emphasize that fixed formulas like "sumimasen" combine the meanings of apology, gratitude, and request, and their pragmatic effect depends on the context and accompanying expressions. Similar overlaps are also present in Korean when the same politeness marker is combined with different illocutionary forces, for example in greetings, farewells, and thanks.

Honorific suffixes and objects of respect in Korean

Korean studies devotes considerable attention to the suffix "-si-," traditionally described as a marker of "subjective" respect. However, recent studies show that this explanation oversimplifies the situation: the suffix is not always oriented toward the grammatical subject and can refer to another participant who is considered the closest based on the pragmatic parameter of proximity. This parameter describes the relative importance of the referent in a particular situation.

The authors propose interpreting "-si-" as the result of the interaction of semantic and pragmatic factors, rather than as a purely syntactic agreement. In a number of examples, it is the social context, not the sentence structure, that determines who is affected by the suffix’s deferential effect. These findings demonstrate that even a formally "morphological" marker is closely linked to the assessment of relationships between participants in a conversation.

Neurocognitive experiments with Korean speakers confirm that the processing of honorifics depends simultaneously on grammatical expectations and social information. Violations of the "consistency" between context and the choice of honorifics elicit specific patterns of brain activity that are distinct from responses to purely syntactic errors. This confirms the close connection between pragmatic and grammatical processes.

Historical notes on the grammatical description of politeness

The first European descriptions of the Japanese politeness system were 17th-century grammars and dictionaries compiled by missionaries. One of the early grammars already recorded specific verb forms and particles designated as "honorific," with the authors attempting to correlate them with Latin categories. This required the creation of new terminology, as the concepts familiar to the European grammatical tradition did not cover the observed phenomena.

Historical accounts emphasize that even early observers noted the connection between social relations and the choice of linguistic forms, although their interpretations relied on limited data and the cultural assumptions of their time. Modern research draws on significantly larger corpora and more rigorous analytical methods, but the boundaries of the category "politeness" remain controversial.

Pragmatics and corpus studies of Japanese and Korean

The development of large annotated corpora has enabled significant advances in the empirical description of pragmatic phenomena. For Japanese, corpora with detailed syntactic annotation have been created, making it possible to test hypotheses about the frequency and distribution of constructions related to argument permutations and information structure. Such data reveal which word orders are truly typical in real-world usage, while others are rare and found in specific genres.

Certain corpora focus on the study of politeness, apologies, and other speech acts, allowing for the identification of stable combinations of indices (morphemes, particles, lexemes) associated with (im)politeness. For Korean, similar resources are used to analyze the distribution of speech levels in various genres — from news to online forums — and to assess how the frequency of honorifics varies depending on the addressee.

Multilingual politeness corpora, such as TyDiP, include Japanese and Korean, among other languages, and allow for comparison of automatic politeness classification based on markers and context. Results show that machine learning models often rely on formal features (final markers, specific lexemes) but perform less well in analyzing strategies based on ambiguity and the occasional failure of explicit politeness indices.

Pragmatics in language technologies and models

With the development of natural language processing systems, researchers have begun to study how language models handle politeness categories in Japanese and Korean. Analysis shows that such models can reproduce gender and social stereotypes, associating polite style with certain roles and groups. Specifically, in the Japanese and Korean corpora, female characters are more often accompanied by high levels of politeness and certain speech clichés, while male characters are more variable.

Cross-linguistic style research shows that automatic politeness metrics developed in English do not always transfer well to Japanese and Korean due to differences in marker systems and strategies. For example, the absence of an explicit honorific ending in Korean does not necessarily indicate informality if other features (vocabulary, address) indicate a polite style. Similarly, in Japanese, a formally neutral utterance in a given context can be perceived as quite polite.

These observations call for caution when it comes to automated assessments of "politeness" and "impoliteness" in Japanese and Korean language processing systems. Correct interpretation requires a combination of formal features, taking into account discourse context and social background, which remains a challenging task for algorithms.

Pragmatic aspects of intercultural communication

Intercultural communication involving Japanese and Korean speakers reveals sensitive areas of disagreement. A study of Japanese business negotiations in English revealed that Japanese participants actively use clarification requests as a way to maintain clarity and avoid misunderstandings, but these requests themselves have a complex pragmatic structure. They serve not only as a clarifying tool but also as a means of demonstrating attentiveness and respect for the other party.

Studies on distance communication (online courses, telecollaboration) emphasize that the characteristics of aizuchi, pauses, and speech level influence the overall impression of the interlocutor and the effectiveness of the interaction. For example, a low level of aizuchi in a foreign participant may be perceived by a Japanese interlocutor as coldness, even though such behavior is normal in the partner’s culture.

For teaching Japanese and Korean as foreign languages, these results indicate the need for systematic work on pragmatics: modeling real dialogues, analyzing authentic recordings, and explicitly discussing politeness strategies, ambiguity, and feedback. Sociopragmatic skills are just as important as grammatical ones, and they often determine successful communication in real-life situations.

Diversity of approaches to describing politeness

Linguistic politeness in Japanese and Korean is described from different theoretical perspectives. Some studies rely on the universalistic models of Brown and Levinson, interpreting strategies as options for managing the participants’ "face." Other authors propose viewing Japanese and Korean politeness as a system of "discernment," where knowledge of norms and the ability to adhere to them are crucial, rather than individual calculations of benefits and losses.

In Japanese tradition, the term " kēi hyōgen " is used to describe expressions that focus primarily on mutual respect rather than rigid hierarchy. In Korean literature, the emphasis sometimes shifts to discussing hierarchical aspects associated with the Confucian model of society, although modern cities demonstrate a variety of strategies that do not always fit within the classical model.

Contemporary studies emphasize that no single theory exhausts the diversity of pragmatic practices among Japanese and Korean speakers. When analyzing specific phenomena — from the use of the particles "ne," "yo," or the suffix "-si-" to the distribution of aizuchi — researchers rely on combined approaches that combine semantic, pragmalinguistic, sociolinguistic, and corpus analysis.