Language socialization of politeness in a Korean preschool
Ahn June-hui. 2016. “Language socialization of politeness in a Korean preschool”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 24(1). 175~211. This paper examines language socialization practices regarding politeness in a Korean preschool. In particular, it analyzes linguistic and paralinguistic features of politeness that teachers emphasize in their everyday discourses with children, and examines the ways that children reproduce or reconstruct these features and other linguistic resources in their peer talk. The analysis of teacher-children discourses shows that teachers emphasize pragmatic features of politeness such as polite forms of request, politeness routines, soft voices, high pitch, and rising intonations while not correcting inappropriate and ungrammatical uses of honorifics. Moreover, the analysis of children's peer talk demonstrates that children strategically use various linguistic and paralinguistic features of politeness to address goals of their culture-laden peer worlds such as pursuit of power and authority, alliance formation, or evasion of adult control. These findings are discussed in relations to language socialization research, studies on Korean politeness, and research on peer talk.