입사지원서에서의 체면관리와 공손전략

Abstract

Politeness is asymmetric by nature. The utterance which keeps a speaker's face threatens an addressee's face. In this view application cover letters are potential face-threatening acts. A speaker needs to maximize his face to achieve his performative goal and to minimize an addressee's face threatening risk. This paper aims to examine face management and the choice of politeness strategies in application cover letters. The study tries to answer following three questions. Is the degree of politeness equal to the degree of face threatening risk? In application cover letters the values of Brown & Levinson's three variables, social distance, power and imposition are the same among the applicants. So if there exists any difference in the degree of politeness, what variable makes the difference? In application cover letters the speaker needs to meet his/her positive politeness needs as well as the addressee's negative politeness needs. How does the speaker manage the conflict, achieve his performative goals, and enact politeness? The research shows that speaker's gender, age, nationality and the experience in Korea affect the length of sentences, terms of addressee, the expression of application motives, and the types of requests. The research also shows that men, older people, non- American native speakers and the people with more experience in Korea use more indirect and more polite expressions than women, younger people, American native speakers and the people with less experience in Korea respectively. The research also indicates that Asian -American speakers show some limit in the expression of application motives, which seems to be a part of speaker's mother tongue transfer.