Korean relative honorifics are realized through sentence-terminating endings and designations. Nevertheless, the study on the Korean relative honorific system has so far been mainly concerned with the relative honorifics of sentence-terminating endings, has described whether to honor or not by disclosing the function of ‘-이-‘ and ‘-습-‘, forms of relative-honorifics of sentence-terminating endings, and has described the usage of relative-honorifics of sentence-terminating endings on the basis of up- and down- social factors. However, the social characteristics and social norms that determine the Korean relative honorific system reflect not only social factors such as up and down but various social factors. By the way, since these social factors are not realized in the grammatical form and specific social norms can be different according to groups or individuals, the usage of relative honorifics has not been described in active association with social norms.
Social norms that determine the usage of Korean relative honorifics determine the usage of designations and sentence-terminating endings that reflects the relative honorifics. However, the usage of designations indicates social norms related to the relative honorifics better than sentence-terminating endings. Considering this, if we associate the usage of relative honorifics in designations with that in sentence-terminating endings,
then we can understand better the usage of Korean relative honorifics.
There are many different types of Korean designations. A variety of types of designations are due to the fact that there are various social norms dealing with the opponents in Korean. Social norms that are reflected in designations are established according to social factors such as whether they are acquaintances, relatives, ups or downs, adults, men or women, and intimacy with them. These social factors can be the semantic characteristics that determine the usage of relative honorifics. However, the usage of relative-honorifics of designations and sentence-terminating endings are realized variously according to social norms which may be accepted differently by individuals. It is because they may treat the opponents as their relatives or strangers at their own discretion. In any case, however, each case reflects the social norms that individuals accepted. Therefore, the relative-honorifics of designations and sentence-terminating endings according to social norms are described under certain rules.
The social norms that determine the relative honorifics vary from society to society. Social norms in the agricultural society where people lived in the clan-centered form in the past are different from those in the industrial society where people live with others in the city-centered form like today. This indicates that the change of usage of relative-honorifics of designations and sentence-terminating endings is also associated with the change of social norms.
This essay thinks that the in consideration of the above, Korean relative honorifics reflect social norms and these social norms determine the usage of relative honorifics of designations and sentence-terminating endings, and describes the usage of relative honorifics of designations and sentence-terminating endings by associating it with social norms. In this essay, aforementioned seven (7) social factors were treated as social factors determining the Korean relative honorifics. In that case, social norms formed by seven social factors are as follows:
First, strangers should be honored. In other words, if people do not know each other, they should honor their opponents.
Second, the superior should be honored. The criteria for up and down are age, position, order of generation, etc.
Third, others, if they are not relatives, should be honored. Someone, if he is an acquaintance but not a relative, should not be treated arbitrarily.
Fourth, adults should be treated as adults. Even though they belong to younger generation, they should be honored.
Fifth, if they are others other than relatives, women should be treated better than men.
Sixth, you should distinguish public matters from private ones, but in public relations, public factors should take priority over private ones.
Seventh, social norms will be weakened if people become very intimate each other.
And the change of designations and sentence-terminating endings used in modern Korean can be also explained by the change of social norms. As the age changes, social factors such as whether they are acquaintances, adults, men or women have weakened while social factor of intimacy has been strengthened. The changes of the usage of relative honorifics due to the change of social norms formed by the social factors changed like this are as follows:
First, as social norms weak for treating them differently depending on whether they are acquaintances or not, such social norms have changed into ones under which others should be also treated the same as acquaintances and thus people also use for strangers the kinship- or position-terminologies which are designations that are used only for acquaintances in general and also use a ‘해’ style if they consider the opponents as not their superiors at the sentence-terminating endings.
Second, as social norms weak for treating them differently by distinguishing adults and minors when people treat their juniors, people do not use designations used for adults and also rarely use a ‘하게’ style at the sentence-terminating endings.
Third, as social norms weak for treating men better than women by distinguishing between them, the designations and sentence-terminating endings used differently for men and women are being uused without distinction of gender. This can be confirmed by the words that are exchanged between husbands and wives.
Fourth, as social norms weak for lowering oneself to opponents, especially superiors or others, social norms have been formed that aimed to treat the opponents as intimate relations. This can be confirmed by the fact that the accents at the designations are softened or the designations using vocative postpositions increases and, in addition, the non-formal styles increase compared to formal ones at the sentence-terminating endings.
However, considering the words used in younger generation these days, the usage of Korean relative honorifics seems to be changing very rapidly and is likely to become very simplified in the future. Probably, in the future, there will remain only social forms according to ‘the up- and down- relationship with the opponents’, centering on the speaker while other social norms may gradually disappear. When we see the reality that most relative-related words other than ‘mother, father’ among the kinship terminology designations are also used for others and children consider their grandparents as relatives other than families, it can be recognized that social norms become simplified to determine the usage of relative-honorifics.