Korean Honorifics and Politeness in Second Language Learning

“This monograph provides an absolutely valuable contribution to research on Korean honorifics and interlanguage pragmatics.”

“The book is a wonderful addition to the field. The author has taken a challenging task of investigating the learners’ use of honorifics and has done a commendable job. It is abundantly clear that the author has invested an enormous amount of time, energy, and effort into this project, from research design to final analysis, trying to tackle one of the most complex and even ‘mysterious’ (from the learner’s point of view) aspects of Korean language learning. The book is theoretically well-grounded, seriously researched based on a sound research design, convincingly argued, and clearly written. The analysis of multiple data sets provides rich information on the participants’ performance behavior and perceptions. References are also extensive, including major studies published both in SLA/FLE/ KFL in English and in Korean. This research undoubtedly has opened a door to further discussion of issues addressed in the study and invites interested readers for further examination of many more related questions on the topic. The book’s contribution to the field of KFL/KSL for the significance of the topic, and its quality and sophistication is evident and the author’s contribution is recognized in serious terms. Personally, it is even more encouraging to see that the book was written by a researcher of ‘Western’ and ‘non-native’ background.”

“The strengths of Brown’s well-implemented work can be summarized at two levels: at the first level, this book presents theoretical contributions to politeness theory, interlanguage pragmatics and Korean honorifics acquisition as well as intriguing findings about its rich data in a concise, lucid and accessible manner. [...] The second level is that the analyses of data from authentic natural interactions are literally the beginning of a new subfield of Korean honorifics research from an emic perspective. [...] This book belongs on the shelves of scholars involved in research on interlanguage pragmatics and politeness as well as textbook writers, syllabus designers and KSL (Korean as a second language) teachers.”