Essay On Korean Language

Language is an important tool for people to express their thought and emotion through communication. When a language is being used there are some variables that will affect a person in his/her way to talk such as gender, age, social class and geographical region etc. Lakoff (1973) claimed that women make more precise discriminations in naming colors than men do. Colors like lavender, beige, aquamarine, and so on, women can state more clearly than men do. Put simplistically; in color vocabulary women can distinguish different color precisely and narrowly. This is because women and men do not speak in the same way even they experience the same thing. In every speech community women and men speak differently in social and cultural reason. (Holmes, 2013) Gender differences affect the way of people speak and this paper is to discuss the features of woman’s language in Korean language. More specifically, it mainly focuses on how Korean women speak in daily life through the use of unique features in Korean.

In South Korea, people were influenced deeply by Confucianism once introduced in Joseon Dynasty. “Confucianism is reflected not only in the way Koreans think and behave but also in the way the Korean language works in terms of both vocabulary and grammar.” (Song, 2005) Under the influence of Confucianism, men are superior to women in terms of social status and women are subservient to men. In the male-dominant society women prefer to use overtly prestigious forms and men prefer to use vernacular form in order to distinguish the social status between women and men in Joseon Dynasty. Although Confucianism has less influence in today’s South Korea society, we still can find some features when women talk. “Some forms and expression are m...

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...of grammatical or lexical forms.

To conclude, Korean women tend to use tag question, indirect words and expressions, and negative expression to avoid being conclusive and try to avoid being the dominant of the whole conversation and show the concern about the feeling of addressee. To a small extent, these features of woman’s language in Korean seem to regard as a polite strategy of conversation but features like the use of honorifics are just a deference of grammatical or lexical forms. Although Korean women tend to use tag question, indirect words and expressions and negative expression, it does not mean that they do not use vernacular forms. Therefore, we still are not sure whether Korean women is really use less vulgar forms and more polite than Korean men. Undoubtedly, more research on women’s language in Korean need to be conducted for further understanding it.