Seoul Uncle: Cultural Conceptualisations Behind the Use of Address Terms in Korean

Abstract

This chapter explores address terms in Korean from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics. Cultural conceptualisations are utilised as an analytical framework to examine the Korean cultural schema of jangyuyuseo [There must be order between seniors and juniors] and its extension into the cultural metaphor of community members as kin. A dataset of approximately 540 minutes of conversation was collected from the Korean reality TV show, The return of superman. The findings reveal that the schema of jangyuyuseo governs Koreans’ choice of address terms by rigorously identifying the addresser’s relative position in the Korean hierarchical social structure. It is also observed that the schema of jangyuyuseo prohibits a lower-status speaker from using first names or pronouns when referring to a higher-status addressee. Consequently, terms of address are finely encoded in person deixes with a highly stratified set of linguistic codes, including the employment certain cultural categories (kinship terms, teknonymy and geononymy) as a means of precisely designating individuals such as ‘Seoul uncle’. The findings suggest that Korean linguistic practices in constructing address terms are closely drawn from Korean cultural conceptualisations, and offer implications for a potential cause of misunderstanding between Korean and non-Korean interlocutors.