Speech Acts of Kkunhta ‘Hang Up’ in Korean Telephone Conversation Closings

The present study investigates the speech acts (Searle 1979) of the four forms of the kkunhta exchange (i.e., kkunhnunta, kkunhulkey(yo), kkunheya(ha)keyssta, and kkunhca) in telephone conversation closings in Korean. It demonstrates that the four cannot be simply lumped together with kkunhe(yo) let alone the annyeng exchange. First, kkunhnunta in telephone conversation closings serves either as an assertive or a commissive (the latter being far more likely). Its subject restriction and sentence type prevent it from functioning as a directive. Second, kkunhulkey(yo) serves only as a commissive. Its subjection restriction and sentence type as a “promissive-assurance” define its speech act as such. It thus formes the “notice/commissive-(silent) acceptance” pair or the “inform-(silent) acknowledge” pair. Third, kunheya(ha)keyssta operates either as a commissive when the elliptical subject is the speaker or as a directive when it is the addressee, bearing some resemblance to kkunhe(yo). However, even as directives, their functions are not identical. Last, kkunhca as a terminal proposal lies between a directive and a commissive. Also, even as a directive, its subject restriction (i.e., first-person plural) differs from that of kkunhe(yo), and accordingly, the adjacency pairs that it belongs to differs from those that kkunhe(yo) does. Overall then, the present study illustrates that the four forms of the kkunhta exchange are functionally distinct from the kkunhe(yo) and annyeng exchanges. Each of them performs different speech acts and belongs to different adjacency pairs.