“Koreans Are Always Nodding or Bowing”: K-Wave Fandom’s Perception and Learning of Non-verbal Politeness

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter shows how K-wave viewers’ exposure to dramas and reality TV shows informs their perception and understanding of politeness. In particular, we focused on how participants in K-wave fandom acquire the notion of non-verbal honorifics and politeness. We adopted a multimodal qualitative design by including learners in a multilingual Korean classroom in the United Kingdom to express their perceptions on non-verbal politeness through a think-aloud protocol, as well as creating a multimodal text to express the mental thinking process of their notion on politeness through non-verbal acts. Findings show how different levels of learners perceive non-verbal politeness differently. For instance, beginners were unaware of Korean pragmatics and the significance of semiotic resources. Although intermediate participants demonstrated a better understanding of non-verbal behaviour, it still lacked nuance, whereas advanced participants understood it well. Also, the paper reveals how watching K-dramas and K-films provides insight into pragmatics learning without the need to exert much effort on the learners’ part and supplement traditional textbook-based classroom teaching. The chapter also sheds light on how media integration into language learning syllabuses could prove particularly beneficial for Asian languages, which have a different pragmatic system than European languages.