When grammaticality is intentionally violated: Inanimate honorification as a politeness strategy

This paper examines the use of honorification for inanimate subjects in Korean, a linguistic phenomenon that, although traditionally ungrammatical, has been increasingly used in recent years. Despite negative perceptions and deliberate national campaigns to discourage it, its continued use requires a systematic investigation. Thus, to explore its social and linguistic functions, we conducted a questionnaire and a self-paced reading experiment. The questionnaire results suggest that native Korean speakers are well aware of the grammatical irregularity of such expressions. Nonetheless, these expressions are rated more positively only in the presence of an honorifiable addressee, indicating speakers’ sensitivity to the social nuances of inanimate honorification within interpersonal relations. The self-paced reading experiment further suggests that this sensitivity is particularly pronounced during real-time language processing, as no processing difficulty was observed for sentences with inanimate honorification when the addressee was honorifiable. The findings indicate that the contemporary use of inanimate honorification in Korean likely serves as a politeness strategy, where speakers intentionally deviate from grammatical norms to convey respect and garner positive evaluation from their interlocutors.