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Cross-Adaptation of Language between Different Genders: The Case of Korean Kinship Terms Hyeng and Enni
... My focus in this paper is not to prove any numerical trends in the increased use of oppa and nwuna in popular culture, nor to establish any correlation with similar trends in spoken language, or other societal changes (such as the increase in yensang-yenha couples). Although these numerical trends will be mentioned, their existence has in large part already been covered in the previous literature (e.g., Kim, 1998;Epstein and Turnbull, 2014) and popular media (e.g., Hwang, 2015). Rather, my focus is on analyzing the discursive content of the popular culture materials, which I treat as one important medium for the "metasemiotic discourses" (Agha, 2015) in which the chronotopic formulations surrounding the use of oppa and nwuna are negotiated. ...
... In the 1980s, the cute and submissive associations of oppa led to a decline in its usage, at least amongst female students on university campuses (Kim, 1998). Instead, male students adopted hyeng 'older brother of a man.' ...
This paper examines the indexical and chronotopic meanings of two Korean kinship terms, oppa ‘older brother of woman’ and nwuna ‘older sister of a man’, as they emerge in South Korean popular culture. These kinship terms are commonly used in South Korean society not just to address siblings, but in a tropical sense to address intimates of superior age to the speaker, extending to romantic contexts. The paper demonstrates that oppa and nwuna become chronotopic spaces for negotiation between traditional Korean morals and gender roles tied up in the status and intimacy indexed by these forms, and new competing discourses of gender equality, free love, consumerism and enlightenment. Crucially, the analysis shows that the underlying kinship metaphors contained in oppa and nwuna play a crucial role in negotiating the balance between modernity and tradition, particularly in the depiction of sex and romance in Korean popular culture. By packaging romance and sex within the idiom of kinship, sexual desires and fantasies are rendered innocent and pure, or obscured altogether, thus allowing Korean popular culture escapes censure for being overtly sexually provocative.
... There have been extensive studies on most Korean personal pronouns, both synchronically in syntax, discourse studies, and sociolinguistics (e.g. Lee, 1978;Lee, 1994;Kim, 1995;Park, 1997;Kim, 1998;Park and Chae, 1999;Yoon, 2003;Sohn, 2005;Son, 2010;Lee, 2020) and diachronically in grammaticalization studies (Kim, 2001;Song, 2002;Heine and Song, 2011). Our current interest is on tangsin, which has undergone an interesting pragmatic extension from a third person reflexive to a second person pronoun. ...
... However, the usage of enni as a general term of address for younger females has been previously noted (e.g. Kim 1998). Vendors also used the contaymal affirmative marker ney/yey at high frequencies interactions with older customers, whereas customers tend to the panmal ung/e (Table 5). ...
This paper analyzes how vendors and customers in Korean marketplaces use three distinct levels of addressee honorifics: the deferential ‑ supnita style, the polite ‑ yo style and the so-called panmal ‘half speech’ style. The frequencies of these forms to some extent pattern with the relative ages of the participants; for example, vendors are more likely to use panmal towards customers who are relatively younger. However, the majority of interactions feature dynamic variation between different styles, which cannot be adequately explained by relative age. Rather, we see that participants use ‑ supnita style and ‑ yo to index that they are speaking in their prescribed roles as “vendors” or “customers”. Meanwhile, panmal was found to index two main forms of social meaning. It was used to mark stages of the interaction that were conversational, playful, or intimate, but also when speakers strategically indexed their authority or power as they tried to take the upper hand in price negotiations. This authoritative use of panmal was accompanied by non-verbal behaviors such as large body postures, high chin positions and the withholding of gaze and bodily orientation. The paper contributes towards a growing body of research adopting an indexical approach to the use of honorifics, and demonstrates the importance of including analysis of multimodal features alongside the honorific forms themselves.
... Kim 2013, Kuwahara 2014, Lee-Nornes 2015, Jin 2016 For example, seeChan-Chi 2010, Lee 2018; for Hungarian context, see Hanó-Németh-Nguyen 2016.3 For example, seeKim 1967, Wang 1988, King 2006, Baik-Chae 2010, Osváth 2016 For example, seeKim 1998;Harkness 2015, Brown 2017 For example, see Pak 1975. ...
One socio-cultural aspect of the Korean language that foreign learners may encounter early is the extensive use of kinship terms in communicative situations. Korean kinship terms are carriers of important cultural information, thus misunderstandings or even breakdowns in communication are likely to happen if one lacks exposure to the cultural conceptualizations of these terms. Following the paradigm shift towards emphasizing intercultural communicative competence development in foreign language classrooms, the present study explores why teaching kinship terms in a Korean language classroom is important. The study presents an overview of the kinship terminological system and its relation to the cultural concepts and value system of Koreans, examines the current teaching situation of kinship terms primarily through language textbooks, and considers specific aspects that may affect the teaching of these terms. The study finds that insufficient attention is given to kinship terms, even though they are one of the most frequently used terms of address and reference. It is proposed that greater emphasis should be given to teaching kinship terms; furthermore, it is suggested that teachers should actively guide students to acquire the essential cultural knowledge about kinship terms.
This paper looks at the way that six female second language learners of Korean (two heritage learners and four non-heritage) at a US college perceived the kinship term oppa 'older brother (of a woman)' and applied it (or avoided its usage) to express various aspects of their identities. Although previous research (such as Siegal, 1994, 1996) suggests that western female learners are likely to avoid linguistic forms that they view as gendered, the findings of the current paper show a more complex picture. Although the learners perceived oppa as “infantilizing,” excessively “cute,” “manipulative,” implying a gender imbalance, and possessing uncomfortable sexual connotations, only one of the six learners avoided its usage altogether. Other learners used oppa within certain restricted contexts, where they perceived the term as indexing more positive meanings (“affection”). In addition, heritage learners used oppa due to pressure from the diasporic community to adopt Korean-style patterns of address. The ways that these learners restricted their usage of oppa to specific fields displayed certain aspects of skillful and strategic language use and expression of identity.
This article examines Northern Thai children's language socialization into the elder sibling/younger sibling relationship, including the communicative practices for inhabiting it, through routinized person-referring practices in their peer groups. Notwithstanding a strong cultural emphasis on hierarchy in this community, children's unmarked practices for self and other reference reflect and create an egalitarian and intimate social space. When children invoke the hierarchical elder/junior relationship through their use of person reference—especially kinterms—it is done as a means of seeking compliance within these play groups. It is argued children's practices of kinterm usage socialize them into the affective and social dimensions of their relationships with siblings and friends.
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