What do Korean speakers know about politeness?

This chapter explores how Korean speakers understand and talk about “politeness” and related metaconcepts. Data is drawn from qualitative interviews with 20 Korean speakers (10 students in their 20s and 10 professors aged 40 and above). We asked them to provide their own personal definitions of six metaconcepts: yeyuy paluta ‘possess correct civility’, yeyuy epsta ‘lack civility’, concwunghata ‘be respectful’, musihata ‘be disrespectful’, chincelhata ‘be courteous’, and pwulcincelhata ‘be discourteous.’ We analyse how the participants defined these six concepts, and then look at four other important metalexemes that emerged in the data: phyenhata ‘comfortable’, thayto ‘embodied attitude’, paylye ‘consideration’ and inceng ‘recognition’. Through analysis of these different concepts, we are able to construct an emic (participant-oriented) picture of what politeness means across two different generations of Korean speakers. We conclude by discussing how the results compare to previous descriptions of politeness in Korean, and also to the models of politeness offered in previous politeness theories.