Between honorifics and non-honorifics: A study of the Korean semi-honorific style and a comparison with Japanese

Abstract

Korean possesses a highly intricate honorific system with six speech styles, each indicating a different degree of respect, intimacy, and formality. While the two styles at the honorific level and the two at the non-honorific level are in daily use, the two styles at the middle level of the six have mostly disappeared due to the shift toward a less hierarchical and less formal society. In this study, using both diachronic and synchronic corpus data, I demonstrate that a new speech style, which I call the “semi-honorific style,” has emerged, partially filling the void created by the two disappearing ones, and I propose the mechanism of the new style’s grammaticalization. Constructed by combining honorific and non-honorific markers in a single sentence, the “semi-honorific style” occupies the space between the honorific and non-honorific levels. I compare this with the Japanese “semi-polite” form, whose rise has been noted by recent studies.