Linguistics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Linguistics - Essay Example Single BMCC student. 4) Jun-ho (Male, 28) – Single City college student 5) Jun-gil (Male, 28) – Married. LaGuardia Student, part time worker at a bar, 6) Hye-jung (Female, 27) – Single Culinary school student Throughout our conversation, we spent most of the time talking about work and family, but also about language. This made sense since we were all Koreans and often had to use English. Also, work and family are two of the most important things for all of us. If we attentively listen to the transcription, Choong-hoon spoke the most. His co-worker, Jun-gil, also spoke often. The reason for such might be because Choong-hoon is the eldest among the men in the party. Although everyone made fun of Jun-gil for only speaking to Choong-hoon, he actually spoke a lot as well. Besides, he probably talks to Choong-hoon a lot since he is just a guest who does not know everybody yet. So, we all wanted to know more about him to help him relax a bit. On the other hand, Hye-jun g, who is the youngest among the women at the party, spoke the least. It might have been because people often made fun of her Korean pronunciation. Since then, she kept quiet for quite a while. In addition, if we listen carefully at the transcription, then it becomes evident that there are some patterns. For instance, people were all polite to Jun-gil, who was not a member of the group before. So they asked him polite questions about his family and job. Between most of the other people, the style of the discussion was a lot more different. Conversations were often filled with jokes, for people were more familiar with each other. Even if this was the case, the polite conversation markers like oh-bba, were sometimes used. Interestingly, they often seemed to be used to making jokes, for they weren’t taken personally. Furthermore, there were some rules for how to interrupt or disagree with someone. Disagreement or interruption usually goes along with the gender of the people pres ent. For instance when, Hye-jung did not speak clearly, another girl said something about it first. Choong-hoon then did say he thought so too, but he did not say it so straight forward as compared to the girl’s comment. Also when Jun-gil was talking about whether he was working during his wife's labor, Jun-ho, another male, is the one who interrupts him. However, there were no fixed rules for bringing up a new topic. It was just done when we had all finished talking about something, but the most notable feature was that Choong-hoon and Jung-yeon, the eldest among the men and women in the party, usually brought up the new topic. Given the aforementioned scenario, let’s take a look at the linguistic principles and concepts in the discourse. First, we’ve learned the various properties of human language in class, and one of them is cultural transmission. Languages are influenced in by their culture; hence these languages are not so easy to understand without a suff icient cultural background. In the discourse, we used the words oh-bba, hyeong and nu-na, because in Korean, unlike in English, there are different ways of saying things like â€Å"you†, depending on how people are related socially, such as the age gaps of people. There are even different verbs for extremely polite situations. In our conversation, Jung-yeon said to Jun-gil, â€Å"It’s really difficult to speak to you in an informal way, even though you are younger than me.† That’s because it was the first time Jun-gil and Jung-yeon met, so