Discussion Post #5

[Raymond Luo]

This article is pretty thought-provoking for me to learn more about the deep meanings and functions of languages. One of the main things I notice is communicative competence which is the aspect of languages that enables people to convey and negotiate meanings within specific scenarios. Also, one of the competences defined by Canale and Swain's work is sociolinguistic competence which means that individual has to be familiar with the social context and rules of specific language to better communicate and make appropriate negotiations of meanings. For my target language, Korean, one of the aspects I find most related to this is the informal and honorific languages in Korean. When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer must indicate the subject's superiority by using special nouns or verb endings. Generally, someone is superior in status if he or she is an older relative, a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, an employer, a teacher, a customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if he or she is a younger stranger, a student, an employee or the like. The use of wrong speech levels or diction is likely to be considered insulting, depending on the degree of difference between the used form and the expected form. All verbs and adjectives can be converted into an honorific form by adding the infix -시- (-si-) or -으시- (-eusi-) after the stem and before the ending. For example, 가다 (gada, "to go") becomes 가시다 (gasida) and 형 (hyeong, "a male's older brother") becomes 형님 (hyeongnim). It's with these different forms of words that enable people in Korean society to better understand each other in a polite and respectful way and these transformations should be memorized to communicate with Korean people within their social context.