A Study on the Obligatory Grammatical Categoricity and Indexical Functions of Korean Addressee Honorifics: Focusing on the “Thinking for Speaking” Framework

doi:10.18627/jslg.41.4.202602.451

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2026 Vol.41, Issue 4 Preview Page Next Page

Research Article

A Study on the Obligatory Grammatical Categoricity and Indexical Functions of Korean Addressee Honorifics: Focusing on the “Thinking for Speaking” Framework 한국어 상대높임의 필수적 문법 범주성과 지표적 기능 연구: 말하기를 위한 사고(Thinking for Speaking)를 중심으로: 김현효^1*
Kim, Hyun Hyo^1*; ¹국립공주대학교

¹Kongju National University

28 February 2026. pp. 451-469

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Abstract

This study argues that Korean addressee honorific sentence-final endings, such as -supnita and -yo, constitute an obligatory grammatical category. Unlike previous studies, it focuses on grammatical categoricity within Slobin’s “Thinking for Speaking” framework. While indexicality-based approaches explain interactional meanings, they often overlook why Korean speakers must determine relations prior to an utterance. This study demonstrates that the grammatical obligatoriness of sentence-final marking forces speakers to establish a ‘relational boundary’ before producing an utterance. The alternation between endings is analyzed as a grammatically constrained reorientation of relational attention, rather than a purely pragmatic strategy. By introducing BOUNDARY and ΔBOUNDARY, this study accounts for these alternations as a recalculation of relational judgment. A comparison with English highlights Korean’s typological significance, where relational judgment is grammatically mandated.

Keywords

Korean honorifics

sentence-final endings

Thinking for Speaking

obligatory grammatical category

relational boundary

References

박지순. 2014. 한국어 상대높임법 실현의 영향 요인 연구. 새국어교육, 98. 290-324.10.15734/koed..98.201403.290
안현정, 권연진. 2014. Honorific Expressions and Registers in Korean. 인문과학연구, 41. 강원대학교 인문과학연구소, 573-592.
이익섭, 채완. 1999. 국어문법론강의. 서울: 학연사.
정경재. 2016. 20세기 구어 자료에 나타난 명령형 어미의 실현 양상 변화. 한국어학, 72. 227-255.
홍종선, 김서형. 2016. 국어과 교재의 상대 높임 화계 설정과 구어 현실. 국어교육학연구, 51.3, 47-68.
Boroditsky, L. 2001. Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and English Speakers’ Conceptions of Time. Cognitive Psychology 43.1, 1-22. 10.1006/cogp.2001.0748
Brown, R. and Gilman, A. 1960. The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity. In Style and Language, T.A. Sebeok (ed.), 252-282. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.1515/9783110805376.252
Brown, L. 2015. Revisiting “polite” -yo and “deferential” -Supnita Speech Style Shifting in Korean from the Viewpoint of Indexicality. Journal of Pragmatics 79, 43-59.10.1016/j.pragma.2015.01.009
Choi, S. and Lantolf, J. P. 2008. Representation and Embodiment of Meaning in L2 Communication: Motion Events in the Speech and Gesture of Advanced L2 Korean and L2 English Speakers. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 30.2, 191-224. 10.1017/S0272263108080315
Choi, Y. S. 2011. The Obligatory Marking of the Hearer’s Social Status in Korean and its Consequences for L2 Acquisition. Cognitive Linguistics 22.4, 823-855.
Jakobson, R. 1959. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. In R. A. Brower (ed.), On Translation. 232-239. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.10.4159/harvard.9780674731615.c18
Lee, J. and Brown, L. 2022. Honorifics in the Marketplace: A Multimodal Indexical Analysis. Korean Linguistics 18.1, 76-119. 10.1075/kl.20007.lee
Leech, G. 2007. Politeness: Is there an East-West Divide? Journal of Politeness Research 3.2, 167-200.10.1515/PR.2007.009
Levinson, S. C. 1996. Language and Space. Annual Review of Anthropology 25, 353-382. 10.1146/annurev.anthro.25.1.353
Levinson, S. C. 2003. Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity, Vol. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511613609
Lucy, J. A. 1997. Linguistic Relativity. Annual Review of Anthropology 26, 291-312.10.1146/annurev.anthro.26.1.291
Lyons, J. 1977. Semantics, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Phillips, W. and Boroditsky, L. 2003. Can Quirks of Grammar Affect the Way You Think? Grammatical Gender and Object Concepts. Proceedings of the 25th Annual Cognitive Science Society 25.25, 928-933.
Silverstein, M. 1976. Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description. In K. H. Basso and H. A. Selby (ed.), Meaning in Anthropology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 11-55.
Silverstein, M. 2003. Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life. Language & Communication 23, 193-229.10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00013-2
Slobin, D. I. 1996. From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking.” In J. J. Gumperz and S. C. Levinson (ed.), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. 70-96. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Slobin, D. I. 2003. Language and Thought Online: Cognitive Consequences of Linguistic Relativity. In D. Gentner and S. Goldin-Meadow (ed.), Language in Mind. 157-192. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/4117.003.0013
Slobin, D. I. 2004. The Many Ways to Search for a Frog: Linguistic Typology and the Expression of Motion Events. In S. Strőmqvist and L. Verhoeven (ed.), Relating Events in Narrative: 2. Typological and Contextual Perspectives, 219 -257. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Sohn, H. 1999. The Korean Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sohn, H. 2013. Topics in Korean Language and Linguistics. Seoul: Korea University Press.10.978.897641/8326
Strauss, S. and Eun, J. O. 2005. Indexicality and Honorific Speech Level Choice in Korean. Linguistics 43.3, 611-651.10.1515/ling.2005.43.3.611
Talmy, L. 1991. Path to Realization: A Typology of Event Conflation. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society: General Session and Parasession on The Grammar of Event Sturucture. 480-519.10.3765/bls.v17i0.1620

Information

Publisher :The Modern Linguistic Society of Korea
Publisher(Ko) :한국현대언어학회
Journal Title :The Journal of Studies in Language
Journal Title(Ko) :언어연구
Volume : 41
No :4
Pages :451-469
DOI :https://doi.org/10.18627/jslg.41.4.202602.451

[1] 박지순. 2014. 한국어 상대높임법 실현의 영향 요인 연구. 새국어교육, 98. 290-324.10.15734/koed..98.201403.290

[2] 안현정, 권연진. 2014. Honorific Expressions and Registers in Korean. 인문과학연구, 41. 강원대학교 인문과학연구소, 573-592.

[3] 이익섭, 채완. 1999. 국어문법론강의. 서울: 학연사.

[4] 정경재. 2016. 20세기 구어 자료에 나타난 명령형 어미의 실현 양상 변화. 한국어학, 72. 227-255.

[5] 홍종선, 김서형. 2016. 국어과 교재의 상대 높임 화계 설정과 구어 현실. 국어교육학연구, 51.3, 47-68.

[6] Boroditsky, L. 2001. Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and English Speakers’ Conceptions of Time. Cognitive Psychology 43.1, 1-22. 10.1006/cogp.2001.0748

[7] Brown, R. and Gilman, A. 1960. The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity. In Style and Language, T.A. Sebeok (ed.), 252-282. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.1515/9783110805376.252

[8] Brown, L. 2015. Revisiting “polite” -yo and “deferential” -Supnita Speech Style Shifting in Korean from the Viewpoint of Indexicality. Journal of Pragmatics 79, 43-59.10.1016/j.pragma.2015.01.009

[9] Choi, S. and Lantolf, J. P. 2008. Representation and Embodiment of Meaning in L2 Communication: Motion Events in the Speech and Gesture of Advanced L2 Korean and L2 English Speakers. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 30.2, 191-224. 10.1017/S0272263108080315

[10] Choi, Y. S. 2011. The Obligatory Marking of the Hearer’s Social Status in Korean and its Consequences for L2 Acquisition. Cognitive Linguistics 22.4, 823-855.

[11] Jakobson, R. 1959. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. In R. A. Brower (ed.), On Translation. 232-239. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.10.4159/harvard.9780674731615.c18

[12] Lee, J. and Brown, L. 2022. Honorifics in the Marketplace: A Multimodal Indexical Analysis. Korean Linguistics 18.1, 76-119. 10.1075/kl.20007.lee

[13] Leech, G. 2007. Politeness: Is there an East-West Divide? Journal of Politeness Research 3.2, 167-200.10.1515/PR.2007.009

[14] Levinson, S. C. 1996. Language and Space. Annual Review of Anthropology 25, 353-382. 10.1146/annurev.anthro.25.1.353

[15] Levinson, S. C. 2003. Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity, Vol. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511613609

[16] Lucy, J. A. 1997. Linguistic Relativity. Annual Review of Anthropology 26, 291-312.10.1146/annurev.anthro.26.1.291

[17] Lyons, J. 1977. Semantics, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[18] Phillips, W. and Boroditsky, L. 2003. Can Quirks of Grammar Affect the Way You Think? Grammatical Gender and Object Concepts. Proceedings of the 25th Annual Cognitive Science Society 25.25, 928-933.

[19] Silverstein, M. 1976. Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description. In K. H. Basso and H. A. Selby (ed.), Meaning in Anthropology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 11-55.

[20] Silverstein, M. 2003. Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life. Language & Communication 23, 193-229.10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00013-2

[21] Slobin, D. I. 1996. From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking.” In J. J. Gumperz and S. C. Levinson (ed.), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. 70-96. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

[22] Slobin, D. I. 2003. Language and Thought Online: Cognitive Consequences of Linguistic Relativity. In D. Gentner and S. Goldin-Meadow (ed.), Language in Mind. 157-192. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/4117.003.0013

[23] Slobin, D. I. 2004. The Many Ways to Search for a Frog: Linguistic Typology and the Expression of Motion Events. In S. Strőmqvist and L. Verhoeven (ed.), Relating Events in Narrative: 2. Typological and Contextual Perspectives, 219 -257. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

[24] Sohn, H. 1999. The Korean Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[25] Sohn, H. 2013. Topics in Korean Language and Linguistics. Seoul: Korea University Press.10.978.897641/8326

[26] Strauss, S. and Eun, J. O. 2005. Indexicality and Honorific Speech Level Choice in Korean. Linguistics 43.3, 611-651.10.1515/ling.2005.43.3.611

[27] Talmy, L. 1991. Path to Realization: A Typology of Event Conflation. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society: General Session and Parasession on The Grammar of Event Sturucture. 480-519.10.3765/bls.v17i0.1620

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