Pejoratives in Korean

Hyun Jung Koo | Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

Seongha Rhee | Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

This paper analyzes the patterns of pejoration-marking in Korean. The speaker’s pejorative attitude is realized as diverse morpho-syntactic devices (Koo 2004). The most common devices of pejoration-marking fall under the following six categories classified according to the semantics of the source lexemes and constructions: (i) topographical periphery, (ii) insignificance, (iii) lack of sophistication, (iv) undesirable events/actions/postures, (v) feigned repetition, and (vi) lack of specification. Grammatical categories of these markers encompass prefixes, suffixes, particles, auxiliary verbs, and discourse markers. Of particular interest is the fact that their grammaticalization processes involved diverse conceptual motivations such as metaphor, discursive strategies such as the use of pseudo-quotatives, and socio-cultural motivation involving different uses of linguistic forms depending on the relative statuses of the discourse participants.

Keywords: feigned repetition, insignificance, periphery, sophistication, specification

Published online: 31 March 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.228.13koo

Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog & Seongha Rhee

2019. In World Lexicon of Grammaticalization,

Rhee, Seongha & Hyun Jung Koo

2017. Multifaceted gustation. Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 23:1 ► pp. 38 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 january 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.