Perspective in Language and Culture: A Comparison between English and Korean

DOI: 10.7763/IPEDR. 2012. V51. 39
Perspective in Language and Culture: A Comparison between English and Korean
Kim, Kyung Hwa+
Hanyoung Foreign Language High School
Abstract: Socio-cultural theory of mind assumes that the human mind is socially constructed notably by language and that it is inseparable from the context in which it is used. As English acquires the international status labeled as English as Lingua Franca or World English, so the importance of understanding diverse sociolinguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds increases in order to reduce the level of frustration, anxiety and concern among English speakers. This study explores the cross- cultural difference between Korean and Western cultures and how its difference is reflected on its respective languages. Korean culture exerts the strong interdependent other-centered frame of reference. On the other hand, the independent ego-centered perspective is the distinct characteristics of Western culture. Due to this substantial difference in perspective, it happens that the conversations between the native-Korean English and the native English speakers do not succeed well especially in the linguistic constructions such as yes- no question, the causality-agency construction and various elliptic constructions. Language is the tool with which we become aware of ourselves as one cultural being and of others equally as other cultural beings. Being aware of the logic underlying language will help people understand better their own reasoning and cultural context from which it comes, as well as the other’s viewpoint. This also helps participants in conversation go beyond comprehending the surface meaning of the words to discovering the logic of their interlocutor’s utterances ultimately for better and effective communications. Keywords: Linguistics, Korean, English, Socio-cultural, Causality-agency.
1. Introduction The English language has truly come a long way: it has developed from a native language of the small
tribe, generally known as Anglo-Saxon to the most widely taught, read, and spoken language that the world has ever known (Kachru& Nelson, 2001). It is estimated that nonnative speakers of English will outnumber the number of native speakers by three times worldwide in next 50 years. This rapid spread of the language in diverse sociolinguistic and socio-cultural contexts has raised awareness that in order to avoid unnecessary miscommunication. Consequently, English speakers must be sensitive to the fact that people from different cultures tend to use English differently. This paper tries to show the different socio-cultural assumptions underlying some linguistic forms of native-Korean English speakers.
2. Perspective in Culture The fact there is a significant difference in Western and Eastern cultures is not new in the literature.
Edward T. Hall stated the difference, adopting the term “low vs. high” contexts, the key idea being how a person is perceived in a certain culture. In the Western low-context culture, a person is perceived as a self- bounded, impermeable free agent, while, on the other hand, in the Eastern high-context culture a person is connected in terms of his or her relations to the whole, such as family and society.
Yoon (1964) and Chang (2001) describe the difference in terms of locus of control. It [locus of control] refers to the degree to which individuals perceive the events in their lives as being a consequence of their own actions, and thereby controllable (internal control), or as being unrelated to their own behaviors and, therefore, beyond personal control (external control) (Lefcourt, 1972. Recitation from Chang, 2001)
The key difference between agricultural peoples on the one hand; and hunter-gatherers and modern, independent citizens of modern industrial societies on the other hand has to do with this degree of locus + Corresponding author. Tel.: + + 082-553-5826. E-mail address: [email protected].
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control. Especially East Asian countries whose major economic resource is the water-consuming rice farming show high degree of externalization.
Nisbett (2003) proposes that the profound difference is an inevitable consequence of using different tools to understand the world in that the East and West literally see different worlds.
Geert Hofstede (2001) conducted a massive survey across fifty countries and three regions: Asia, America, and Europe. He scaled these fifty countries, using indexes such as (1) power distance, (2) uncertainty avoidance, (3) individualism/collectivism, (4) masculinity /femininity, and (5) long vs. short term orientation.His research is quite meaningful in that it does not classify cultures dichotomously, but tries to capture the diversity and complexity among the countries and across cultures. His results cover not only cultures and social structures, but also economics, language, and education.
According to Hofstede (2001), South Korea and the United States are opposites in virtually every aspect. South Korea is a collectivistic, feminine society with strong power distance and strong uncertainty avoidance. It means that Koreans are emotionally dependent on more powerful people. They tend to externalize the locus of control, that is, to attribute their success and failure to outer environmental resources beyond personal control rather than due to their own actions. Korean people do not emphasize personal goals or success so much as group goals and coordinated actions. Blending harmoniously with the group (e.g. the family, the clan, the village and the community) is the foremost concern.
On the other hand, the United States is an individualistic masculine society with weak power distance and weak uncertainty avoidance, where challenge, advancement and self-realization are more often concerns. This strong sense of individual identity viewing oneself as a unique individual with distinctive attributes and goals accompanies the sense of personal agency. In this society, causality is internalized as due to properties of the object, or as due to the result of one’s own actions in relation to the object.
Koreans and Americans do differ profoundly, at least, substantially on the average in their systems of thought - their worldviews and cognitive processes - then in their attitudes and beliefs and in their values and preferences. The Korean society has the interdependent collectivistic “we” perspective, while the American culture reveals the independent individualistic “I” perspective.
Perspectives or ways of thinking as the cultural heritages of societies are reflected in collectively held values of the members of a particular society and are reinforced and transmitted from generation to generation through basic institutions such as the family, the school, and the state. In the next chapter I will discuss how these different perspectives are reflected on languages.
3. Perspective in Language There are two thousand to five thousand languages in the world. Each of these languages has its own
idiosyncrasy and grammar. Having to express oneself in another language means having to adopt someone else’s frame of reference. However, adopting someone else’s frame of reference is not so easy because language exerts a strong mutual influence on underlying way of thinking of its speakers. As a result, when cross-linguistic differences arise, they are accompanied by concomitant differences in underlying representations of both participants in the conversation. Here are some examples from my personal experiences and observations which prove it is the case.
3.1. Yes-no Questions Below is the real conversation between a librarian and me, Kyung Hwa.
(1) K.H.: Excuse me. I’m looking for this book. But it wasn’t there it’s supposed to be. Librarian: Wasn’t it there? K. H.: Yes, it wasn’t there. Librarian: (confused) wasn’t it there? K.H.: Yes, it wasn’t there. Oh, no no, it wasn’t there. Librarian: Was it there? K.H.: No, it wasn’t there.
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For Yes-No questions, if someone asks a positive question, Koreans answer as native English speakers do. However, if the question is negative, the confusion comes in. Koreans answer “Yes, it wasn’t there” instead of “No, it wasn’t’ there,” or “No, it was there” instead of “Yes, it was there.”
This contradiction between the first yes-no response and the following statement’s assertion bewilders native English speakers. What happens? Koreans’ yes and no has different functions compared to that of English native speakers. The native English speaker’s yes and no is to confirm his/her statement, that is, what he or she will say next, whereas the Korean’s yes and no reveals quite a different reference. Its first communication goal is to respond to what the other participant said, that is, to signal that “I“ followed well what “you” said up to now. Koreans’ yes and no is the other participant ”you”-centered, whereas English yes and no is the speaker “I”-centered. This parallels what Nisbett (2003) says,
Focusing on feeling and social reactions, as Asian parents tend to do, helps children to anticipate the reactions of other people with whom they will have to coordinate their behavior. The relative degree of sensitivity to other’s emotions is reflected to tacit assumptions about the nature of communication (Nisbett, 59).
3.2. Agency Construction According to Choe (2011), when Korean speakers create a sentence to express an event, they tend to ask
who or what the event is about, while on the other hand, English speakers ask what motion or changes occur in the event and what is involved in it. The initial planning of an English sentence is devoted to the identification of arguments based on transitivity, unlike in Korean where the initial step is the identification of a topic, that is, “What is going on.”
Two sentences below convey the same argument that the speaker bought a toaster which did not work and the speaker wants the money back. (2) (a) I bought this toaster yesterday, but it doesn’t work. I want a refund.
(b) You sold me this yesterday, but it doesn’t work. I want my money back. In terms of agency, the sentences (a) and (b) convey different meaning in that (b) is stated with
implication that the shopkeeper made some mistakes. My Korean acquaintance confirmed that he/she would never say (b) under any circumstances especially in the beginning of conversation even if it is very clear that the shopkeeper tried to cheat.
For Koreans, a “face”-threatening situation has to be avoided at whatever costs. They do not give much importance to the correctness or exactness of the description of the events in terms of causality-agency. Their process of attention, perception and reasoning is focused on establishing harmonious, at least, neutral relationship between the participants. Confrontation and debate are undesirable. Instead of pinpointing who does what, Koreans feel satisfied that his/her intention is well carried out by indirect statements. However, this kind of indirect speech often leaves Westerners – especially Americans - quite frustrated. English is “agentive” in the sense that the language conveys “The self [subject of sentence] has operated on the world. Korean language is in general “non-agentive.” (2) (c) I lost the key.
(c)’ The key disappeared. (d) He dropped it. (d)’ It fell from him. Koreans prefer (c)’ and (d)’ to (c) and (d) respectively. Chang (2001) argues that these sentences show
Koreans’ externalization of locus of control. However, let’s consider the sentences. (2) (e) I did my hair yesterday.
(e)’ I did my hair done yesterday (f) Let’s paint the wall tomorrow. (f)’ Let’s have the wall painted tomorrow. In English, these sentences are totally different with relation to agency, unlike in Korean where these two
sets of sentences are freely interchangeable. Koreans do not differentiate sentences in terms of agency. When we introduce the difference between the two cultures into the picture (one as having an analytic view focusing on salient objects and their attributes, the other as having a holistic view focusing on continuities in substances and relationships in the environment) (Nisbett, 82), Koreans’ underlying cognitive process
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becomes clear. For Koreans, “who did what” is not important. The more important thing is “what happens how” since their society has a norm, “The peg that stands out is pounded down.”
3.3. Ellipsis, to Leave It in the Air According to Confucian teaching, the stability of society is based on unequal relationships between
people (e.g. master-follower, father-son, elder brother-younger brother, husband–wife, and senior-junior). These relationships are based on mutual and complementary obligations. According to Hofstede (2001), the Korean society exerts strong power distance. In this context, it is quite natural that Koreans do not necessarily feel their competence as decision makers is on the line when they have to make a choice. In contrast, Westerners teach their children to communicate their ideas clearly and to adopt a “transmitter”
orientation, that is, the speaker is responsible for uttering sentences that can be clearly understood by the hearer, and understood, in fact, more or less independently of the context. It’s the speaker’s fault if there is a miscommunication. Asians, in contrast, teach their children a “receiver” orientation, meaning that it is the hearer’s responsibility to understand what is being said (Nisbett, 60).
The most common way of refusing for Koreans is by not completing utterances. “Omission of main clauses is a productive mechanism for performing indirect speech acts in Korean since main clauses usually carry the speaker’s assertion”( Byon, 2005. Recitation from Lee (2011)). However, this discrepancy often leads to misunderstanding. As Nisbett (2003) explains,
Westerners-and especially Americans- are apt to find Asians hard to read because Asians are likely to assume that their point has been made indirectly and with finesse. Meanwhile, the Westerner is in fact very much in the dark. Asians, in turn, are apt to find Westerners – perhaps especially Americans - direct to the point of condescension or even rudeness (Nisbett, 61).
What is going wrong here? The reality tells a rather different story. For Koreans [Asians], to leave the conversation unfinished in the air is one way to show politeness and respect for the other participant. It is a token of deference (see Hwang, 2000). Koreans consider it to be rude to have the participant take the final decision without room to add his own decision or thought: remember that in Asian societies, debate is not recommended because it shows disharmony is on the line. Confrontation and dissent in opinion should be avoided. Let’s see a toothpaste commercial on Korean T.V. (3) Interviewer: What do you think after applying this product?
Interviewee 1: It seems that I feel clean. Interviewer: Teeth became clean! Interviewee 2: It is as if the smell disappeared. Interviewer: The smell is gone!
The underlying strategy is clear: The interviewees transferred their authority decision makers or saying the ultimatum to the interviewer. For Westerners, it could be construed as hesitation or a kind of manipulation to avoid the answer. In Koreans’ point of view, it reveals speakers’ consideration and concern for the listeners, the other participant in conversation. Furthermore, for the Korean viewers, the strategy to leave it the air enhances the truthfulness of the interviewees’ statements.
4. Conclusion People hold the beliefs they hold because of the way they think, and they think the way they do because
of the nature of the societies they live in. The human mind is socially constructed notably by language, and people make linguistic choices to make meaning in the social context of use. Understanding what the other participant the in conversation said required sensitivity to both linguistic forms and their underlying socio- cultural roots. Linguistic choices become more complicated when participants are anchored by different socio-cultural and linguistic backgrounds. English has the international precedence of LinguaFranca or World English, which means that its speakers are not limited to just one country and cultural differences are almost always involved. The importance of understanding diverse sociolinguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds increases even more than ever.
5. References 185
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