태국인 한국어 학습자의 화용적 표현 인식 연구

A Study on Awareness of Pragmatic Expressions among Thai Korean Learners: Based on Grammatical Expressions and Conversation Expressions

The purpose of this study is to examine awareness of pragmatic expression; grammatical expressions and conversation expressions, and to look for possibilities of pragmalinguistic failure that occurs due to differences between Korean and Thai languages. This study observes if Thai Korean Learners(TKL) perceive Korean pragmatic expressions like Korean Native Speakers(KNS). For this purpose, the pragmatic expressions were categorized into a) grammatical expressions, and b) conversational expressions. We surveyed samples of 45 TKL and KNS each on the awareness of pragmatic expressions, and carried out a Chi-squared test on their differences. Results showed that the pragmatic awareness of TKL was not much different from KNS when the speaker and listener are in equivalent social positions. However, when the listener is in a higher social position, TKS perceived the grammatical expressions as appropriate whereas KNS answered such expressions inappropriate to be used to someone in a higher social position. Moreover, the groups of TKS and KNS did not differ in awareness of conversation expressions. This may imply that the TKS acquired the non-literal meaning of conversation expressions, but post interviews with 5 learners showed that TKS made literal interpretations of non-literal meanings. The results of this study show that even though TKS are aware of the basic meanings of grammatical expressions, little know that they should be used differently according to the context and many try to literally interpret conversational expressions. Therefore, although beginners are taught the basic meanings of grammar and vocabulary, more explicit teaching on the expanded meaning or the situational use should be given to intermediate and advanced learners.