한국언어과학회

This study aims to examine cultural variation in the perception of impoliteness by Korean and English speakers. The data consisted of 100 impoliteness events reported by college students in Korea and the US. For the analytical framework, the ‘rapport management’ approach to impoliteness (Spencer-Oatey’s, 2000) was adopted focusing on quality face, equity rights, and association rights among five categories of the framework. The results showed that both groups of participants featured quality face as the most prominent category and it was by far the most of the frequent impoliteness events in the American data. Furthermore, a difference between the two groups emerged: in contrast to the American data, the Korean data featured both quality face and equity rights the prominently relevant categories and even association rights clearly play an important role as well. The findings offer some explanations for the difference.