The Role of Second-person Pronouns in Expressing Politeness in Russian and Korean.

Abstract

The article considers second-person singular pronouns in the Russian and Korean languages in terms of functional and pragmatic expression of politeness. The Russian pronouns «ты» (ty) and «Вы» (Vy) are compared with the second-person pronouns in Korean the composition of which is controversial and varies from one to sixty-four according to different authors. The article describes the relationship of secondperson pronouns with the category of politeness in two languages. In Russian, second-person pronouns perform the function of the indicator of one of the two forms of politeness: formal (Vy) and informal (ty) expressing politeness of «rapprochement» and politeness of «distancing». However, the Korean pronouns do not perform such a function. Korean pronouns are among the lexical means of expressing politeness, but they do not indicate the degree of politeness.