Strategically Acknowledging Roughness: The Tale of the Two Preemptive Discourse Markers in Korean

Abstract

Korean has two mitigating discourse markers sharing the source lexeme mak ‘coarse(ly)’, i.e., makilay and makmallo. The DM makilay, literally meaning ‘X rashly says like this’, presents a negative comment on the speaker’s own statement, thus signaling that they are aware of the inappropriateness of their own utterance (Rhee, 2013). Similarly, the DM makmallo, literally ‘with crude words’, prefaces an unrefined expression, conveying the message: ‘I already know my word choice in the following statement is crude, so don’t criticize me’, the strategy being to preempt criticism from the addressee who would likely find the question or statement too extreme and inordinate (Rhee, 2019). The development of these DMs reveals intriguing cognitive and discursive strategies: (i) meta-discursive strategies in which the speaker is monitoring their own utterances, (ii) shifted perspectivization wherein an imaginary third-party’s negative evaluative viewpoint is adopted, (iii) rhetorical strategies of presenting assertions or questions that are extreme to the point of inordinateness but thus more forceful and persuasive, and (iv) elaborate intersubjectification in that the speaker is attenuating their own talk in a face-threatening act via self-deprecation.