Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis of Hedges in Chinese and Korean for Korean Teaching: Focusing on the Corresponding Expressions of ‘-(으)ㄹ 것이다’ in the Chinese Language.

Abstract

Although there are many previous studies that examined quantitative fuzzy semantics, the contrastive study of hedges between the Chinese and Korean languages are still undetermined. Whether one is able to accurately use the hedge expressions reflects the pragmatic competence of the foreign language student. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the corresponding expression of the Korean hedges expression ‘-(으)ㄹ 것이다’ in official Chinese speech texts, and the application of the results from this research as a pragmatic approach to the teaching scene of Korean as a foreign language education to Chinese students. In this paper, the author selected eleven official speeches by the heads of the Chinese government and their Korean translations as the base of parallel corpus. By using the corpus, statistical methods and the pragmatic approach, we found 104 corpus pairs of Korean hedge expression ‘-(으)ㄹ 것이다’ in these eleven official speeches. The results of this study show that the Korean hedges expression ‘-(으)ㄹ 것이다’ is the translation of various Chinese expressions from the original speeches. Moreover, 51.92% of them are unmarked Chinese expressions. It shows that not only were the suggestive expressions translated into Korean euphemism, but also the translators used the Korean hedges expression ‘-(으)ㄹ 것이다’ consciously in order to make it suitable for Korean readers. It suggests that we need to demonstrate the hedges expression ‘-(으)ㄹ 것이다’ in Korean teaching context, in order to improve Chinese students’ pragmatic competence and increase the Korean learners and readers’ acceptance of such expressions.