Yu, Kyong-Ae. 2017. “Perceptions and Functions of Korean Mianhada: Comparison with American English Sorry”. The Sociolingusitc Journal of Korea 25(2), 197~224. Sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic conventions for apology vary from culture to culture. While the illocutionary purpose of apologizing in English is “the speaker's sense of social obligation” (Wierzbicka 1987: 215~217) and Japanese sumimasen involves “social-self with a social alter” (Ide 1998: 524), this study argues that Korean mianhada is an apology from the speaker's moral perspective linked with collective-self. Employing Wierzbicka's (1987) Natural Semantic Metalanguage, this study discusses that sorry is a separate concept but mianhada is a nebulous concept mixed with other emotions, e.g., thank and love. In addition, presenting the examples from corpus-based dictionaries, COCA, and the Sejong 21st Century Corpus, this study discusses that sorry is authentically used as indirect and ritualistic apologies while mianhada is used as direct, indirect, ritualistic and substantive apologies. Finally, distinguishing main functions of mianhada into a sincere apology, a pseudo-apology, gratitude, a request initiator, a preclosing signal, and a territory invasion signal to strangers, this study provides cultural and ethnographical explanations.

able to articulate their unfavorable opinions about products, brands and companies by posting complaints on a diverse set of platforms including the firms’ own Facebook brand pages. Such actions enable dissatisfied consumers to disseminate their negative sentiments among a broad audience of negative electronic word-of-mouth (NeWOM) observers (Hong & Lee, 2005). For those observers, negative consumer comments are a valuable source (Lee & Song, 2010). They usually read the NeWOM messages to identify the responsible party and to know what has caused other persons’ problems. This information, in turn, is likely to influence the potential customer’s own attitudes towards the company (e.g., Vermeulen & Seegers, 2009; Willemsen et al., 2011). Such inferences can have critical consequences for a company’s economic well-being. This study investigates how companies can counteract potential threats by means of corporate webcare (i.e., applying appropriate response strategies to counteract latent NeWOM effects). Previous studies focusing on the offline service management context have examined different types of corporate response strategies (e.g., Benoit, 1995; Coombs, 1999). Marcus and Goodman (1991), for instance, classify response strategies into either accommodative (i.e., the company accepts the failure and takes on responsibility for it) or defensive strategies (i.e., the company denies the responsibility for the negative event, attacks the accuser, or shifts the blame to others). In addition, no-action strategies are very popular among companies on the social web (Einwiller & Steilen, 2015; i.e., the company remains silent, makes only meaningless comments or takes no overt action). Furthermore, eWOM literature provides some evidence that consumers are more likely to listen to those who are not affiliated with the company (e.g., Colliander & Dahlén, 2011). On social media platforms, these brand advocates then defend a company from attacks by other consumers. The study at hand investigates the observer-related effects of multiple corporate- and consumer-response styles. More specifically, a one-factor between-subjects design (n = 728) manipulated different responses to a negative comment on a service failure publicized on a corporate Facebook fan page. Findings provide evidence that particularly accommodative online complaint handling can mitigate NeWOM effects and trigger favorable brand attitudes of NeWOM observers. Among alternative webcare strategies, empathetic communication including the acceptance of the failure and a simple public apology is an effective way to respond to negative Facebook comments. However, particularly responses including also an explanation as well as some kind of compensation can turn potential customers in actual customers of the brand. Findings further suggest that companies should perform their own webcare as defensive responses from brand advocates do not always leave a good impression. From a practical perspective, companies should consider webcare as a means not only to help current customers with their problems, but also to provide an outward-directed cue for the company’s customer-orientation.

1).Thisstudy aimstoexaminethe use ofEnglish borrowed politeness markers ttaengkyu ‘thank you’and ssori‘sorry’inKoreans'everydayconversation.A closeexaminationofa sociolinguisticsurvey revealsthattheEnglish borrowingsttaengkyu and ssoriand their Korean counterparts are used differently in connection with therelation between speakersandsettings.They donotappearto havemuchdifferenceinmeaning.However,ttaengkyuandssorioccurin informalsettingsandareusedtojuniorsorinferiors,whiletheirKorean counterparts are used to seniors or superiors in formalsettings.As motivations for using ttaengkyu and ssori,modernization and English educationinKoreaareconsidered