Germans are generally known to be very polite as well… we also have a polite form to address someone, but still from what I've seen from K-dramas, body language plays a much more important part in Korea. It's not archaic to use these symbols of respect and hierarchy there.

(Participant 9, intermediate)

That being said, participants explained that acquiring Korean politeness from non-verbal aspects enhanced their cultural sensitivity toward their origins and the Korean language because a 'polite act' in one language can be an 'impolite behaviour' in another. One participant, for instance, expressed that although avoiding eye contact may seem like a way to express politeness nonverbally, they noted it could in fact create impoliteness in their culture because avoiding eye contact could appear as being impolite or rude when listening to someone. It was also demonstrated in a participant's drawing that, in the English culture, it is natural and often expected to maintain eye contact when talking with other people, especially in a professional setting. While in Korean non-verbal interaction, the participants reported that in order to show respect for elders and seniors in social situations, bowing was expected and there is a tendency for interlocutors not to look into one another's eyes in professional settings (see Figure 5).

Politeness in English manifests to a lesser degree in physical habits than in Korean. So we don't bow, or avoid eye contact with superiors. In fact, avoiding eye contact can be considered rude or inattentive.

(Participant 3, elementary)

**Fig. 5** Being polite - with or without eye contact?

Clearly, the use of body gestures and facial expressions in the non-verbal expressions of the Korean language is ubiquitous and that could be of instrumental value for the 'members' of the K-wave fandom in understanding the Korean language and culture. In particular, from our results, the explicitness of politeness expressed non-verbally from K-dramas and K-films has also prompted participants to consider how appropriate it could be if a similar honorific system was to be applied in their own language and culture.

#### **5 Discussion**

#### *5.1 Interactional Competence through K-Wave: Supplementing Textbook-Based*

#### *Learning*

As globalization advances and technology evolves, the aspiration to become bilingual or multilingual intensifies. This is equally true for Korean language learners, many of whom are driven by their passion for K-wave culture. Despite their enthusiasm and desire to become 'true fans' by mastering the language, these learners often rely on textbooks. Scholars such as Brown (2010), Kiaer (2017b), and Kiaer et al. (2022) have criticized these textbooks as inauthentic, leaving students feeling ill-equipped to navigate real-life conversations about Korean language and culture. Typically, textbooks teach the 'polite form' of Korean, which can create awkward social dynamics when learners use overly formal language with younger Koreans, potentially making them feel uncomfortable. Moreover, genuine communication encompasses both verbal and nonverbal elements that contribute to perceived politeness, challenging students to acquire these complex interpersonal skills through textbooks alone. This situation raises concerns about students' interactional competence, which is essential for effectively adapting linguistic and interactional skills to meet immediate communicative needs.

Interactional competence, as defined by Kecskes (2019), is 'the ability to deploy interactional resources (turn-taking, repair, boundaries, speech acts, etc.) using available linguistic resources to fulfill communicative intentions in actual situational contexts' (p. 69). Young (2011) further explains that interactions are influenced by social, institutional, political, and historical factors. The honorific system in Korean, often emphasized in textbooks, poses additional challenges for learners. Korean dramas and films, however, offer a valuable alternative. They provide learners with semi-authentic settings where they can observe how characters navigate identity resources, linguistic resources, and interactional resources—crucial components of interactional competence, which is distinct from communicative competence often targeted by language curricula. Korean media thus serves as a practical supplement to textbook learning, plunging learners 'into the bathwater' of language use, as will be further discussed in the following section. This approach helps bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world application, enhancing learners' overall ability to communicate effectively in Korean.

#### *5.2 Virtually Bathing in Language*

Politeness is very difficult to teach, but it is essential for learning the Korean language properly. In the case of Korean, it clearly goes beyond words to multimodal components too, as it does in so many Asian and other languages (Kiaer, 2023). As such, it is very difficult to teach this very crucial aspect of the Korean language because it does not fit neatly into standard textbooks and

classroom language teaching practices. However, as K-fandoms have grown and been able to access more and more K-films and K-dramas over time, awareness of Korean politeness has grown. The huge-scale success of *Squid Game* (2021) and *Parasite* (2019) have allowed learners of the Korean language to glimpse how Korean politeness functions. Internationally successful artefacts such as these can also act as 'gateway' content, leading fans to be interested in watching other Korean content, so they do not feel that they are forcing themselves to watch something just because it can help with their language acquisition.

K-films and K-dramas are of course works of fiction. Their significance, however, should not be downplayed. They allow viewers to see how actors, directors, and scriptwriters believe a character *should* behave depending on whether they are trying to be either polite, rude, or intimate (Alvarez-Pereyre, 2011). In seeing these depictions, viewers begin to learn conventional Korean politeness in an embodied way. This means that they learn subconsciously, picking up the significance of different multimodal signs without being explicitly told by a teacher or textbook. Simultaneously, they can learn which multimodal signs should be used in which context. Despite the practical and narrative limitations that generally prevent the full portrayal of activity frames, viewers of Korean media are nevertheless exposed to segments of interactions amongst people of various relative statuses K-viewers nevertheless see at least portions of different interactions between people of a variety of different relative statuses. They see a range of non-verbal behaviours carried out by characters of a range of different genders, age groups, occupations, and personality types. Thus, K-fans can learn much from K-content with very minimal effort. The biggest K-content fans have watched hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of content in the Korean language. As such, they may gain a nuanced and complex understanding of all the non-verbal and multimodal aspects of Korean communication. How this translates into actual production of language, though, remains an open question.

While good for dealing with matters of lexis and syntax, classroom settings deal with language learning in a manner isolated from reality. K-dramas allow for learning in-situ with clear contextual subtext. They show dynamic interactions that allow learners to acquire Korean language skills in a different way. Thus, media-mediated language learning overcomes the barriers of classroom and textbook learning. It uniquely compliments classroom and/or independent learning, providing a taste of what it might be like to actually interact in reality. We would argue that mediamediated language learning can be a beneficial way to acquire intercultural awareness of pragmatic differences.

Media-mediated language learning may also be able to increase foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and thus lessen foreign language anxiety (FLA). Watching K-dramas and Kfilms provides a way for Korean language learners to be exposed to Korean pragmatics without requiring them to respond. There is almost no other situation in which language learners can just observe people of different relational dynamics communicating in such a wide variety of contexts. The lack of pressure on the viewer to make any response means that they can acquire pragmatic awareness without having to worry about offending anyone. What is more, K-dramas and films are entertaining and exist in a wide variety of genres, meaning that viewers can choose content to watch for genuine entertainment. As a result, they acquire knowledge of Korean verbal and nonverbal language without feeling it like a chore. With this gained pragmatic competency and familiarity with *in-situ* Korean interactions, language learners lessen the burden upon themselves when speaking Korean. We believe further research is required, but this approach may probably diminish their potential for FLA.

#### **6 Pedagogical Implications**

#### *6.1 Curriculum Innovation: Media-Mediated Pragmatic Teaching and Learning*

Curriculums matter. As we have seen in this paper, language learners of different levels have different needs, and we need to think about how to accommodate those needs effectively. Korean dramas and films being a strong motivating factor for learners to acquire the Korean language, can also serve as a key role in the curriculum innovation of Korean language teaching and learning.

For the elementary level, our elementary participants showed that our curriculums need to incorporate pragmatics because they were unable to interpret the meanings of verbal and nonverbal signs in the K-dramas that they were shown. As such, a focus on pragmatics in pedagogical settings could help better support their language acquisition. Korean dramas could be a powerful tool to be employed in elementary classrooms, but teachers should be aware of the instruction that they are providing to students. Teachers should not assume that students will be able to understand the underlying pragmatic meanings because students coming from distinct backgrounds may not have possessed adequate pragmatic competence and awareness. Accompanying the video clips from Korean dramas and films, explicit instruction of the meanings conveyed is encouraged in Korean teachers' pragmatic teaching. Our intermediate-level participants showed a good grasp of the non-verbal elements of Korean, but they could benefit from further developing their pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic awareness.

This study focuses on the non-verbal aspect of politeness in Korean pragmatics, but both verbal and non-verbal communication are often interrelated in all languages: we could not only focus on either verbal or non-verbal aspects. Possessing an adequate grip of honorific systems in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic capability, students should be provided opportunities to practise an authentic engagement with the Korean language by incorporating the non-verbal elements in pragmatics. For example, students can engage in role plays where they have to perform the use of the honorific appropriately not only in the verbal aspect but also the non-verbal aspect to display a thorough understanding of how 'politeness' actually works in authentic communication. An interesting pedagogical approach will be incorporating a Korean film or drama into the role-play teaching by giving each student a character. Students will receive the character card with the person's demographic information including age, job title. The teacher will invite students to walk around the classroom and stop after a minute, and they have to find a partner who is close to him/her. They then have to show the card to each other and decide what honorific style they should adopt in their communication. Students are encouraged to use not only the polite or plain form of honorific in their communication, such as adding '-yo', but also employ the appropriate non-verbal acts in their communication. Meanwhile, teachers should provide feedback to students on both verbal and non-verbal aspects to students' practice and they should also maximise the possibility of using non-verbal features, making students' learning meaningful and authentic.

Our advanced-level participants gained a good pragmatic understanding. In response, teachers could facilitate more spoken practice with other advanced learners and L1 Korean speakers so that their students would be able to employ pragmatics spontaneously and with ease. It should be noted that our aim is not to promote 'native-speakerism'—as language belongs to anyone. Students should be motivated to use suitable non-verbal features in their conversation, but teachers should not judge their usage only on the basis of whether or not 'native' speakers will use it in their daily communication. Teachers should provide feedback based on context appropriateness so students' verbal and non-verbal acts will create effective communication and

will not hinder the listener's understanding. Meanwhile, Korean drama and film will serve as a supplement for students to further explore and interpret the rationale of using non-verbal behaviours in relation to Korea's history, culture, and tradition.

#### *6.2 Education Equity: Affordable and Enjoyable Language Learning Experiences*

As teaching moved toward a focus on communicative competence during the 1970s and 1980s, it was recognised that immersion may be the best way to acquire a language. As Snow et al. assert, 'language is learned most effectively for communication in meaningful, purposeful social and academic contexts' (1989, p. 202). Immersion contexts aligned with natural approaches to language acquisition, and language learning can be more effective when it was integrated with content. Lo (2022, 2024a, 2024b) also found that motivation was found to be the most significant factor when content and language are learned simultaneously.

It is not always so easy to travel, as we have learnt much from the COVID-19 pandemic. Language immersion requires money and time, too. For ecological reasons, flying across the world for language acquisition may not be some people's first choice. These issues lie at the heart of why media-mediated language learning can be useful. It moves beyond input-poor environments, such as classrooms, and introduces embodied learning at a very little cost, time, or effort.

With the rapid development of Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), there is also the possibility of integrating media-mediated language learning into them. For example, students may create their own avatars and may communicate in the metaverse (Kiaer & Lo, 2025). Teachers may also set the context as in the Korean dramas or films and ask students to come up with a solution to tackle the conundrum that appeared in the dramas or films, using the appropriate verbal and non-verbal features. An authentic task engagement and an enjoyable learning environment would allow for further immersion and possibly even greater reduction of FLA, which has been found to have a negative correlation with learning performance—the more anxious students are, the worse the learning performance (Zhang, 2019).

#### **7 Conclusion**

This paper has looked at how different proficiency levels of K-wave language learners displayed an increased awareness of non-verbal politeness cues and were more adept at explaining politeness. Through a workshop with Korean learners of a range of levels, we assessed their awareness of Korean politeness, and its non-verbal aspects, using scenes from two Korean films. Our findings demonstrated that their awareness of Korean pragmatics was not high at the beginner level, especially at the beginner level. At the intermediate level, their understanding of more noticeable non-verbal behaviours was seen, but it still lacked nuance. Our advanced participants had a thorough understanding, but this raises the question as to whether the knowledge of non-verbal politeness is an advanced feature of the language. Considering how crucial pragmatics and politeness are to successful communication in Korean, students should be learning about these non-verbal features from the very start. Teachers may protest that these features are too confusing and complex to learn as a beginner, but this paper has highlighted that watching K-dramas and Kfilms can provide insight into pragmatic learning without learners having to make any special effort. Media-mediated language learning allows language learners of any level to gain familiarity with Korean politeness, requiring only minimal effort. Overall, greater integration of media into language learning syllabuses could prove greatly beneficial, especially for Asian languages.

#### **8 Future Research**

This study has preliminarily proven that watching media is beneficial for the acquisition of intercultural and pragmatic competence. To further verify these findings, it would be necessary to undertake an intervention study with a control group. For example, researchers may divide participants with the same proficiency into an experimental group and a control group. Before the study is conducted, a pre-test set including a language proficiency test, an intercultural awareness questionnaire, and a scenario-based pragmatic competence assessment (e.g. What would you do in this situation?) can be taken by participants. The experimental group will then receive Korean dramas or films as input to their pragmatic learning. A post-test can be administered to see if there may be differences within and between groups to further reveal how effective Korean drama and films could facilitate students' intercultural and pragmatic competence. In addition, there would also be a need to look at other languages and their specific pragmatics. Outside of this, a study into other effects of media content on language acquisition could also be useful. Media may not only teach pragmatic skills and cultural competence, but other skills and capabilities too. As Kiaer and Lo (forthcoming) note, students who are engaged in the K-wave fandom would find themselves more joyous in language learning, thus sustaining their language learning motivation. A longitudinal study tracking and tracing students' intercultural and pragmatic development supplemented by media content is strongly recommended.

#### **References**

Hong, J. O. (2009*). A discourse approach to Korean politeness: Towards a culture-specific Confucian framework* [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Nottingham Trent University.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Negotiating Age, Epistemic Stance, and Category Memberships in Korean Talk Shows**

#### **Mary Shin Kim and Jaehyun Jo1**

**Abstract** This chapter examines an integral part of Korean politeness—age. Prior research has focused on investigating age as a key determining factor that influences speakers' choice of speech styles, address terms, and word choices. On the other hand, this study explores what speakers do with age and how age is relevant to them at the moment of their interaction. The focus of the study is on media talk as it reveals how age is represented, negotiated, and utilized by social members in public discourse. The study identifies a categorial practice related to age by utilizing Stokoe's (2012) five guiding principles for membership categorization analysis (MCA). A collection of data segments from various talk show interviews shows that the speakers routinely evoke age while displaying an epistemic stance, such as in claiming or disclaiming their epistemic rights, to the matter being discussed. Moreover, speakers classify themselves and others into age categories (Stokoe, 2012; e.g., the old, the young, *acessi*) based on their epistemic status or rights. These categories are determined not by the speakers' chronological age, which is external to the interaction, but are rather spontaneously formulated in the local context of the interaction, which are subject to challenge, resistance, and negotiation by speakers. The study reveals how speakers use age as an interactional tool to negotiate their epistemic stance and category membership.

**Keywords** Age Category Membership Epistemic stance Epistemic status Identity Talk shows

M. S. Kim ()

e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
J. Jo

Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, USA.

#### **1 Introduction**

Age is an integral part of everyone's identity.2 The age status between interlocutors is particularly important in Korean, an honorific language with a rich repertoire of detailed and elaborate honorific and politeness linguistic resources (Sohn, 1999). Depending on the speakers' relative age difference, social status, and relationship, they design their utterances with different speech styles, address terms, and word choices. Accordingly, if the relative age status is unclear or unknown, Korean speakers seek to clarify the much-needed demographic information (Cho & Jo, 2022), as exemplified in the question and answer sequence from a talk show interview (Excerpt 1).

The interaction involves a group of co-hosts and a team of four Korean national fencing members as guests. As soon as the talk starts, one of the hosts inquires who is the oldest guest (line 1). In response, the guests and another co-host verbally and nonverbally explain that they are seated by age order: from the oldest member seated closest to the hosts to the youngest member seated further away (lines 2–6 and Figure 1). This brief introduction clearly demonstrates how age is a crucial factor in determining the social and physical positioning of the participants (cf. Kjaer & Krummheuer, 2018). 3 Age overrides the guests' other possible identities,4 such as being a world champion by professional rank, as shown in lines 8–11.

Excerpt 1. Who's the oldest?

```
01 H1: → 여기:는 누가 제일 (.) 형 큰 형,
          yeki:-nun nwuka ceyil(.)hyeng khun hyeng,
          HERE-TOP WHO:NOM MOST BROTHER BIG BROTHER
          'Here, who (is) the oldest, (.) the big brother?'
02 G1: → [%저요.]
          %ce-yo.
          ME-POL
          'Me.'
          %raises and keeps his hand up-->
```
2 Raymond (2016a, 2016b) differentiated the 'identity status' (i.e. "more or less settled aspects of individuals' identities") and the 'identity stance' (i.e. "the moment-by-moment invocation of one or more of these identities") in talk-in-action. In this paper, we analyze identity stances that speakers select for themselves and attribute to others in connection with age.

3 Kjær and Krummheuer (2018) discuss how the bodily positioning of healthcare professionals enables or limits the agency of the other participants.

4 When the rank overrides age (for instance in the workplace), precursor phases are used which permit interlocutors to verbally license the 'oddity' (e.g., 'Since we are in the same rank, I will speak comfortably (despite our age difference)').

'In this (order)' g4 +swirls both hands to display their age order+ g1 ->%

```
09 잘 생겼는데, 펜싱도 [잘 하구:,]
          calsayngkye-ss-nuntey, pheynsing-to [cal ha-kwu:,]
          HANDSOME-PST-AND FENCING-ALSO WELL DO-AND
          '(He's) the youngest. Wow, the youngest(.) is so
          handsome, and also very good at fencing, and'
10 H2: [일 위- 일위시- 세계 랭킹 일위시죠?
           [il wi- il wi-si- seykyey layngkhing il wi-si-cyo?
           ONE RANK ONE RANK-SH WORLD RANKING ONE RANK-SH-COMM:POL
           '(You) are No. 1-, No. 1- No. 1 world ranking right?'
11 G4: 예.
          yey.
          'Yes.'
```
Upon specifying the relative age of speakers, age may be considered only as contextual information. However, as the subsequent interaction from the same interview with the fencing team members shows (Excerpt 2), age is constantly present in the interaction ("omnirelevance," Fitzgerald et al., 2009; following Sacks, 1995), particularly when it comes to the participants' epistemic domain. After introducing the fencing team members as guests, the host (H1) is curious to know how the members came to start fencing. According to the host, fencing is an uncommon sport that is not as accessible as other sports, such as kendo, which used to be common and accessible to the public (lines 1–9).

Excerpt 2.  OUR YOUNG-PST-RL TIME KENDO.GROUP-TOP EXIST-PST-IE 'When we were young, there was a Kendo group (at school).' 07 H2: 아 그렇지. a kuleh-ci. OH BE.SO-COMM 'Oh, that's right.' 08 H1: 검도는:, 좀 흔해 가지구:, kemto-nu:n, com hunhay kacikwu:, KENDO-TOP A.LITTLE COMMON BECAUSE 'Because kendo was pretty common,' 09 쉽게 할 수 있었는데, >학원도 많았구.< swipkey hal swu iss-ess-nuntey,>hakwen-to manh-ass-kwu.< EASILY ABLE.TO.DO-PST-BUT SCHOOL-ALSO MANY-PST-AND '(we) could easily try and also there were many (kendo) schools.' 10 G1: → 모래시계 (.) 그 당시에 이정재 씨 때문에. molaysikyey (.) ku tangsiey icengcay ssi ttaymwuney SANDGLASS THAT AT.THAT.TIME NAME MR. BECAUSE.OF '*Sandglass* (.) at that time, because of Lee Jung Jae (on the drama)' 11 H3: 아:

13 (0.2) 14 G1: → 아- %저 나이 되게 많아요.% a- %ce nai toykey manh-a-yo.% OH I AGE VERY.MUCH MANY-IE-POL 'Oh- I am quite old.' %points at himself%

During the host's contrast between kendo and fencing, observe how Guest 1 (G1), the oldest member of the fencing team, adds his knowledge of the popularity of kendo at the time which the host refers to. G1 mentions Lee Jung Jae (line 10), an actor who practiced kendo in a popular Korean drama, "Sandglass" (aired in 1995), which led to the popularity of kendo. Rather than acknowledging or accepting G1's additional information, the host asks for confirmation on the guest's knowledge of the drama (line 12, '(You) know (the drama) *Sandglass*?'). Despite knowing the matter to bring up, G1 does not confirm his knowledge with a yes response. This request for confirmation is a negatively valenced question (Kim, 2021) which displays the host's doubt or disbelief that G1 knows the drama. The question is designed with the object particle ('sandglass'+*l*) (Kim & Kim, 2014) and accompanied by the host's head tilted movement (Figures 2-1 and 2-2), which all serve to display the host's doubt or disbelief toward G1's knowledge. Take note of how the guest responds to this question that challenges G1's knowledge level: he asserts that he is quite old (line 14). G1's response indicates that he believes the host does not think G1 is old enough to know the drama that aired in the mid 90's. Speakers routinely display what they know and how they know it by encoding evidentiality (e.g. Chafe & Nichols, 1986; Heritage, 2012a, 2012b; Kärkkäinen, 2003), the source of or evidence for their information (e.g., sensory experiences, hearsay, inference, etc.). Instead of disclosing the source of information, in Excerpt 2, the speaker discloses his age as a basis for warranting or justifying his epistemic status and rights.

This study is interested in investigating how age is evoked as a locally situated device or practice during the unfolding interaction, as seen in Excerpt 2. The paper examines what speakers do with age and how age is relevant to the speakers at the moment of their interaction. The study is particularly interested in studying media talk as it reveals how age is represented, negotiated, and utilized by social members in public discourse. The study will deploy conversation analysis (Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 2007a), which will help us reveal what actions and activities participants perform with age through their turn designs and turn-taking and sequence organization. Additionally, the study utilizes membership categorization analysis (Sacks, 1995; 1972a, 1972b, 1979; Stokoe, 2012) to unveil how participants categorize each other and how these categorization practices are essential for understanding how identities are co-constructed in situ.

The findings of this study will first show how speakers routinely evoke or allude to age while displaying an epistemic stance, such as in claiming or disclaiming their epistemic rights to the matter being discussed. Age serves as an account or license for having access to certain knowledge or lack thereof. The study will further show how speakers classify themselves and others into age categories (e.g., the young, the old, *acessi*, grandpa) based on their epistemic status or rights regarding certain matters. The categories are determined not by the speakers' chronological age or stages in their lives, but by their knowledge or lack thereof of certain matters. These categories are spontaneously formulated in the local context of the interaction and

are subject to challenge, resistance, and negotiation by speakers. Overall, the study will reveal how speakers use age as an interactional tool to negotiate their epistemic stance and category membership.

#### **2 Data and Methodology**

This study utilizes conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA) to investigate participants' orientation to age as an interactional device for managing epistemics and category membership in public talk. In particular, the study follows Stokoe's (2012) five guiding principles to examine both categorization and sequential aspects of interactions, which derived from Sacks' and subsequent MCA work (Evans & Fitzgerald, 2017; Fitzgerald & Housley, 2015; Hester & Eglin, 1997; Housley & Fitzgerald, 2002; Schegloff, 2007b). Through such systematic analysis, we will demonstrate how and when participants locally orient to age or age group and position themselves and others into different membership categories.

Stokoe's (2012) five guiding principles for MCA (Modified):

1. *Collect* data across different sorts of settings and interactions depending on the focus of the study (i.e., diverse talk show interviews)

2. *Build* collections of explicit mentions of categories (e.g., *acessi* 'old man', *halapeci*  'grandfather', etc.); membership categorization devices (e.g., *nai* 'age') and category descriptions (e.g., the descriptions 'I'm quite old.' 'In my days, ….', 'You need to hang out with a young person.')

3. *Locate* the sequential position of each categorial instance with the ongoing interaction

4. *Analyze* the design and action orientation of the turn in which the category, device or resonant description appears.

5. *Look* for evidence that, and of how, recipients orient to the category, device or resonant description; for the interactional consequences of a category's use; for co-occurring component features of categorial formulations, and for the way speakers within and between turns build and resist categorizations.

Using these guidelines, we observed cases in which age was made relevant or crucial during media talk. Then, we gathered instances from various talk show interviews and identified a categorial practice.

The data collection comes from 11 different episodes of four popular Korean talk show programs: *You Quiz on the Block*, *Dolsing Fourmen* 'Return to Single Four Men', *Shinkwa Hamkkey* 'Along with the Gods', and *Jessiwauy showterview* 'Showterview with Jessi'. The participants are either public figures or experts from various fields. Their ages ranged from their twenties to their seventies. The data collection contains 23 instances where age is present in the local, sequential context of the interaction moment. The next section examines cases that are representative. Gail Jefferson's (2004) transcription conventions for CA are used to transcribe

talks. When relevant to data analysis, Mondada's (2018) multimodal transcription is used to represent embodied actions.

#### **3 Age and Epistemics**

Speakers' knowledge is the essential element in interaction. Speakers constantly position themselves and others with respect to what they know and what they don't know, and their rights to the matter being discussed ("territories of knowledge," Heritage, 2012a, 2012b; Heritage & Raymond, 2005). In this section, we will examine how age is intricately tied to speakers' epistemic rights in Korean media interaction. The following excerpt from a different talk show interview than Excerpts 1 and 2 also shows this point.

Excerpt 3 is taken from an interview between the two hosts and an actor who played a role in a renowned drama. In response to the main host's request to explain the storyline, the guest begins her explanation by stating that the drama is based on a famous novel written by a Korean-American writer.

Excerpt 3. How do you know such things?

While constructing her response, the guest struggles to find the appropriate version of the word 'Korean-American' in Korean as there are variations (lines 5–6). The guest eventually comes up with *chaemi tongpo* (line 8). However, as one of the co-hosts comes up with the word *chaemi kyopo* (line 9), the guest quickly accepts the host's choice of word (line 10). Interestingly, note how the guest immediately invokes age to explicate or excuse herself for the reason for her earlier choice of word (line 11, 'Back in my day, we used…').5 The guest's swift adoption of the host's word choice, followed by her age-resonant explanation, suggests her awareness of the significance of age in word selection. It also implies that she perceives the host's choice as more in line with current trends.

5 Similar to *wuli ttay-nun* 'In our/my days', there is another frequently used expression, *na ttay-nun maliya* 'back in my day'. This expression represents the way older generations like to talk about how it was back in the old days. Older generations are frequently ridiculed for using this expression and it has evolved into a pun *latte-nun maliya*.

Take note of how age continues to be an important factor in the ongoing interaction. When the co-host validates the guest's earlier word choice and discloses his knowledge of her word choice (lines 12–13), the guest displays surprise to his knowledge and asks for an explanation for his epistemic status (line 15, 'How do (you) know such things?'). The speaker's question here resonates with age. The guest, now in her 70s, has just shared her word choice from her youth period. She does not expect the 30-year-old host will be familiar with the word. In response, the co-host explains that his knowledge stems from exposure to such words from an early age through the media (line 17). Similar to Excerpt 2, the speaker's doubt about the recipient's knowledge arises from their age difference, and the recipient challenges this assumption by citing another age-related account. The epistemic domain and age are interwoven in the interaction between speakers. After uncovering the latest term with the help of the co-host, the guest returns to address the main host's initial question about the drama's storyline, employing that term (lines 22-23).

Excerpts 2 and 3 above have shown how speakers invoke age when claiming and justifying one's knowledge. The following excerpt illustrates how speakers attribute the speaker's lack of knowledge to age.

Excerpt 4. You need to hang out with young people.

The interaction takes place during a talk show interview between four co-hosts and a guest. While one of the co-hosts, H1, distributes drinks to everyone, he mentions that he made *avala* specifically for the guest (G1). H2, another co-host, displays that he is unaware of the meaning of the word *avala* (line 2), which is a newly coined short word for ice vanilla latte. In response, H1 and the guest tease him for not knowing the word (lines 3–4). Note how the guest invokes age in the immediately following turn as she suggests hanging out with younger people (line 5). This recommendation presupposes that H2 does not know the term *avala* due to his age and his epistemic status can be rectified through interaction with younger age groups. Age is oriented to as an essential factor in people's epistemic status.

Not knowing something can be treated as problematic by the participants, as seen in Excerpt 4. On the contrary, knowing certain matters can also be a problem as it is conventionally associated with certain age groups, such as old people. In Excerpt 5, the speakers actively deny their knowledge. As the four co-hosts wait for the guest of the day to arrive, they begin conversing about the pastries on their table for the guest. One of the co-hosts notices that the prepared pastries are old-style baked goods (line 7). This observation evolves into a comparison between pastries and black-and-white television, a relic of the past (lines 12–15). The discussion about the old-fashioned pastry then piques their curiosity about dating culture at bakeries in the past. Before asking H1 about the bakery dating culture (lines 19–20), take note of how H3 explicitly denies his and another co-host's knowledge due to age. There is no way that H2, the youngest co-host, would know about this, and even someone at H3's age would not understand the matter (lines 16–17). It is interesting that this prompts all other co-hosts to actively deny their knowledge of the past dating culture at bakeries (lines 21–22). Participants not only disclaim and disassociate themselves from the matter, but even display relief for not knowing such culture (line 23).

Excerpt 5. I don't know either, luckily.

05 우리는 알고 있지만 시청자분들은

'Woomin would absolutely have no idea (about this), and' 17 내 나이 때도 이해가 안 되는 게:, nay nai ttay-to ihay-ka an toy-nun key:, MY AGE TIME-ALSO UNDERSTANDING-NOM NOT BECOME-RL THING:NOM 'it is something which at even my age,(I) do not understand' 18 H4: (뭐가요?) (mwe-ka-yo?) WHAT-NOM-POL '(What?)' 19 H3: \*예전에는:, 그렇게 빵집에서 만나요? \*yeyceney-nu:n, kulehkey ppangcip-eyse manna-yo? IN.THE.PAST-TOP LIKE.THAT BAKERY-AT MEET:IE-POL 'In the past, why (did people) date at bakeries?' \*looks straight at H1 -> 20 [그게 뭐야:? \* kukey mwe-ya? THAT.THING-NOM WHAT-BE:IE 'What's the deal?' -> \* 21 H4: [아:: 저도 >아니에요 아니에요.< [a:: ce-to. >aniey-yo aniey-yo<. AH I-EITHER NOT.BE-POL NOT.BE-POL 'Ah: neither neither (do) I (know).' 22 H2: 저는 티비를 통해서 알았어. ce-nun thipi-lul thonghayse al-ass-e. I-TOP TELEVISION-ACC THROUGH KNOW-PST-IE 'I learned it through the television' 23 H3: 나도 아니야. =다행히. na-to ani-ya. = tahaynghi. I-EITHER NOT.BE-IE LUCKILY 'I don't know either.=Luckily.'

What is the reason for speakers ardently disclaiming this age-resonant knowledge and what are they collectively and collaboratively doing during the interaction? In the next section, we will discuss these questions further through the lens of MCA.

#### **4 Age and Membership Categorization**

We have observed speakers' invocation or orientation towards age or age group in regards to their own and others' epistemic status and rights. In this section, we will examine what speakers do regarding age and its relevant epistemic status and rights (knowledge and authority over the

age-resonant matter). Raymond and Heritage (2006) demonstrate that claims of knowledge are closely linked to membership categorization practices. Their study demonstrates how the identity of a speaker as a 'grandparent' is highly relevant and important in producing assessments about her grandchildren. The following excerpts will show that the way speakers assert or deny knowledge is intertwined with the process of categorizing them as either young or old.

Let's take a look at Excerpt 6 which shows the interaction that occurred after Excerpt 5. The discussion of old-fashioned bakery goods led participants to split into two groups based on their knowledge asymmetry (Raymond & Heritage, 2006), those who know the bakery dating culture and those who do not. This categorization is not just about their knowledge state but is also deeply linked to their age or age group. Host 3's mention about age in line 17 invokes the association of the knowledge of such dating culture with someone who is old or from an older generation. Interestingly, the participants tacitly invoke such membership categories without using any specific categorial labelling, such as 'old.' However, participants understand its association with being old and eagerly disassociate themselves from such a category. While they deny having knowledge of the matter, they identify the oldest host, Host 1, as someone who belongs to the category. Interestingly, without using any categorial term, they cast this category to H1 via speaker selection (Butler & Fitzgerald, 2010) through eye gazes and verbal cues (lines 19–20), explicitly asking him to explain the culture for the younger.

Excerpt 6. You're the storytelling grandpa.

However, speakers can challenge one another. Host 1 actively denies having such knowledge, resisting categorization (line 24). Others continue to challenge Host 1 and request him to provide an answer by identifying him as the sole member who can possibly tell them about the 'old' bakery dating culture (lines 25–26). Despite Host 1's continuing resistance (line 27), other speakers ultimately name the host as a storytelling grandpa, an age category, which justifies for his role and responsibility to answer the question (line 28). Just like how other hosts categorize Host 1 and assign him to carry out the ascribed activity, Host 1 recasts the category and expected activity to the guest, someone who has gone through the old times and can answer the age-resonant question (line 29). Although the guest is not yet present on the interview set, Host 1's gesture of pointing to the empty seat where the guest will be seated demonstrates his action of ascribing this category to the guest even before she appears on the show. Here, it is important to note that the disagreement between H1 and other co-hosts on H1's categorization is not a serious one. It is produced in the context of teasing and laughing contributing to the creation of humor (Okazawa, 2021). Despite H1's repeated resistance to categorization, he eventually engages in the category-bound activity ascribed to him, which is to tell what he knows about the past of bakery dating culture (lines 30–32). This activity resumes again when the guest finally appears on the interview set (data not shown here).

As previously shown, age plays an important role in how Korean speakers construct interactional identities, establish shared understandings of knowledge expectations, categorize members, and position themselves in relation to one another. What is interesting is that they tacitly categorize members into different age groups without referring to their physical age. The display of knowledge or lack thereof of certain information or knowledge situated in a particular time is a way for speakers to represent themselves. Similar to Excerpt 5, Excerpt 7 also shows how speakers portray themselves as young or younger groups. However, in this case, speakers ardently display their knowledge to represent themselves as a young person.

Excerpt 7. I know (the word). I am not an *acessi*.

This talk is derived from an interview with five singers in their 30s and four co-hosts in their 40s and 50s. When guests mention the latest newly coined words they use (lines 1–3), the co-hosts display different responses. H1 reveals his lack of knowledge by asking for the meaning of the newly coined words, which G2 finds surprising (lines 4–5). On the other hand, H4 selfselects to take the turn and discloses his knowledge (line 6). Interestingly, he immediately categorizes himself as not being an *acessi*, a reference term used for middle-aged men. He justifies that he is not a typical middle-aged man by claiming to have knowledge of the newly coined word. Although H1 and H4 are similar in physical age, H4 disassociates himself from H1, thereby indirectly categorizing H1 as an *acessi*. G1 is impressed by H4's explanation of the word meaning (lines 7–9), which indicates that speakers are highly valued or expected to keep up with new or up-to-date knowledge and information of younger or youth cultures. The association of the category 'young' with new trends was also observed in Excerpt 4, wherein one speaker recommended another speaker to hang out with young people to keep up with newly coined words, such as *avala*.

Above excerpts demonstrate that speakers do not simply categorize members based on their chronological age, but they create categories based on their knowledge of certain timeresonant matters locally in and through interaction. What is noteworthy is that the connection between the category (e.g., old, young) and the activity (e.g., bakery date, *avala*) is contingent on the interaction but not predetermined by a prior condition. Accordingly, due to these contingencies, these categories are subject to negotiation and challenge.

As shown in Excerpts 6 and 7, speakers seek to identify themselves as belonging to a certain category, such as a youthful group. Speakers may not always want to be a part of a

younger group. In Excerpt 8 (a continuation of Excerpt 2), when the hosts discuss the popularity of kendo back in their days, Guest 1 (G1) discloses that he shares the same knowledge associating himself with the host group. As 39-year-old, G1 deems himself to be quite old, at least old enough to share the same knowledge with the co-hosts (lines 14–16).

Excerpt 8. You're mimicking to be a big brother.

As previously mentioned, categorization can be subject to resistance. As the youngest person in the host group is 47, the hosts reject G1's categorization of himself as old (lines 17– 21).  Note that the negotiation and disagreement of the membership categorization between the speakers is produced jokingly in the context of teasing and laughing creating spontaneous humor in this excerpt again as previously shown in Excerpt 6.

It is striking to observe how consistently speakers in Korean media discourse categorize members into specific age or age-related categories based on their knowledge or lack thereof. Furthermore, speakers publicly display either embarrassment or pride regarding their age-related knowledge and affiliations.

#### **5 Conclusion**

In this chapter, we thoroughly investigate a crucial aspect of Korean politeness, which is age. While previous research has concentrated on age as a fundamental factor that shapes speakers' decisions regarding speech styles, address terms, and vocabulary selection, our study takes a distinct approach. We aim to uncover how speakers actively engage with the concept of age and its relevance in the very moments of their interactions. The media talk data examined in this paper are particularly good sources to observe the interplay between age, epistemics, and

identities in interactions. The data shows that Korean speakers frequently reference or indirectly refer to age while expressing their epistemic stance, whether by asserting or disavowing their right to knowledge about the subject under consideration. Age effectively acts as a justification or qualification for possessing or lacking access to specific information. We have discussed that there is also the interactional need to (re)categorize members and position themselves to one another based on their knowledge or lack thereof of certain age sensitive information at various moments of talk.

Prior studies have shown that speakers' claims of no knowledge or forgetfulness serve as means for various purposes: to avoid potential blame and responsibility (Drew, 1992; Hutchby, 2002), and to encourage another knowing speaker's participation in the conversation (Goodwin, 1987). Interestingly, our data show how speakers claim no knowledge to represent themselves as the young or younger group or generation (Excerpts 5–6, bakery dating culture). On the contrary, speakers can claim to be young or younger by actively claiming knowledge as well (Excerpt 7, I am not an *acessi*). Epistemics play a crucial role in shaping our interactional identities and our understanding of one another.

This paper contributes to our understanding of what speakers do with age and how age is relevant to the speakers' epistemic rights at the moment of their interaction in Korean. These findings inform us that the epistemic domain and age are tightly interwoven in the interaction among Korean speakers, which becomes procedurally consequential to the relevant interactional and membership categorization practices of the participants.

The results of this study highlight an interesting contrast in how politeness is practiced by Korean speakers when it comes to age. In Korean culture, there is a strong tradition of showing respect and politeness to individuals older than the speaker. However, when we look at media talk shows, a different pattern emerges. In this context, speakers openly express discomfort or tension when they are perceived as older during interactions, which is considered undesirable, similar to many other cultures (Jolanki, 2009). Future research could delve deeper into how speakers manage, reconcile, or navigate these dual aspects of politeness and age. One way we have observed in the current data was through teasing and laughing contributing to the creation of spontaneous humor (Excerpts 4-7). Further explored age discourse in the Korean content will confirm a collaborative process of establishing the asymmetric age dynamic, which reveals a tacit yet powerful cultural understanding by the speakers.

#### **Abbreviations**

#### **References**

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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## **Exploring Frames and Negativity Strategies in the News during an Election Campaign**

#### **Ji Young Kim1**

**Abstract** This study aims to investigate news frames and the use of negativity in the mainstream news coverage during a presidential election campaign. From a strategic communication perspective, the messages' cognitive and emotional (affective) attributes have been explored per time and political orientation of the media to discuss the implications on the campaign strategies.

**Keywords** Frames Negativity Impoliteness Emotion News Election

1 J. Y. Kim ()

Communication Program, School of Communication & Information, College of Social Sciences, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu, USA e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### **1 Introduction**

In political public relations, the role of practitioners' strategic communication has been emphasized in affecting news media stories, and the effects have been explored regarding the frames and emotions that refer to the cognitive and affective attributes (i.e., Curtin, 2009; Froehlich & Rüdiger, 2006; Kiousis et al., 2015; Turk, 1986). In the context of the 2022 presidential election in Korea, this study examined news frames and the negative remarks in the news coverage of the two mainstream newspapers.

Negativity has become a popular campaign strategy in today's election contexts due to its benefit of gaining media and public attention. Previous studies showed that negative messages obtained increased media attention and further engaged the public (Druckman, Kifer, & Parkin, 2010; Druckman & McDermott, 2008; Theilmann & Wilhite, 1998). This study aims to explore whether the media in Korea would cover negative and aggressive messages and what types of negative remarks are popular in the Korean context.

During the election campaign, Korea has experienced several political scandals, and people called this one of the most unfavorable elections in the country's history (Gallo, 2022). Candidates tried to associate their opponents with negative aspects, and campaign rhetoric focused on the disagreement and differences between the two major candidates on several social issues, including economy, gender, and foreign affairs. Through analyzing news stories, this study explored how the news media portrayed the campaign message strategies.

#### **2 Literature Review**

Political communication scholars have studied media portrayals of campaign messages to explore the effectiveness of their strategic communication efforts. For example, during an election campaign, practitioners provide several types of information subsidies—such as news releases or social media messages—to the journalists hoping their campaign messages are picked and portrayed in the media (i.e., Conway, Kenski, & Wang, 2015; Fountaine, 2017; Nadeau, Pétry, & Bélanger, 2010; Tedesco, 2001).

In the context of the 2000 presidential primaries, scholars analyzed the relationships between the candidates' news releases and network news stories regarding the issues and frames, and found strong correlations between them, particularly for Republican candidates (Tedesco, 2001). A content analysis study also showed that government communication practitioners successfully drew media attention to a certain issue (health care) during the 2000 Canadian federal election through the party's campaign materials (Nadeau, Pétry, & Bélanger, 2010).

Not only traditional news releases but also social media messages, such as Facebook or Twitter, also became important strategic communication tools for practitioners. A study shows that young women politicians used Twitter as a strategic communication platform during New Zealand's 2014 general election to increase their visibility and manage their campaign frames (Fountaine, 2017). An intermedia agenda-setting relationship was also found between the candidates' Twitter feeds and the nation's top newspaper stories during the 2012 presidential primary, meaning that candidates successfully set the traditional news' media agenda on certain issues (Conway, Kenski, & Wang, 2015).

This strategic communication effort has been a main domain of the political public relations field, and scholars often use the agenda-building theoretical framework to explore the relationships between the practitioners, media, and the public (i.e., Curtin, 2009; Froehlich &

Rüdiger, 2006). Public relations practitioners use information subsidies to influence the media agenda for their clients—such as political parties or candidates—and consequently to affect the public agenda (Curtin, 1999; Turk, 1986). Because of the agenda-building process, practitioners communicate and highlight certain aspects of issues, hoping to earn public understanding and support (Froehlich & Rüdiger, 2006).

#### *2.1 Agenda building and news frames*

Transferring the salience of certain issues (or the interpretations of the issues) between the media and public was the traditional agenda-setting theory's main conceptualization (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Expanding from the classic model, scholars have developed and applied an agendabuilding theoretical framework in the numerous political communication contexts, highlighting the public relations practitioners' strategic role of communication (i.e., Kiousis et al., 2015; Turk, 1986).

Several content analysis studies have explored the relationships among the practitioners, media, and the public regarding the agenda salience (i.e., Sweetser & Brown, 2008; Roberts & McCombs, 1994). Scholars found strong correlations of issue agendas between political advertising and newspapers in the 1990 Texas gubernatorial campaign context (Roberts & McCombs, 1994). Moreover, scholars have analyzed the salience relationships between multiple sources (practitioners, media, or public) on the three different levels—object, attribute, and network associations (i.e., Guo, 2012; Kiousis et al., 2015; Schultz et al., 2012).

On the first level, scholars explored the transfer of object salience between different agendas regarding the issues, candidates, parties, or organizations (i.e., McCombs & Shaw, 1972; Turk, 1986); while the transfer of attribute salience has been explored on the second level (i.e., Entman, 1993; Sheafer, 2007). For example, issue attribute refers to the certain aspect of issues—regarding the frames (Entmans, 1993) or evaluative tones (Sheafer, 2007). These attributes affect how the media and public interpret the issues. Moreover, scholars proposed a concept of associative frames referring to the third level (i.e., Guo, 2012; Schultz et al., 2012). Due to the complexity of reality, the issues or attributes easily intertwined with each other so that the association should be explored simultaneously (Guo, 2012). During an election, candidates try to associate themselves with positive attributes while associating their opponents with negative attributes to earn voters' trust and support (Kiousis et al., 2015).

Scholars have highlighted the studies of frames, saying that it is important to study how individuals understand an issue and perceive it in a certain way (Froehlich & Rüdiger, 2006) and certain condition (Myslik et al., 2021). The framing process selects certain aspects of issues more salient than others in the messages (Entman, 1993) with a hope that the particular aspect of the issues becomes more salient on other media or public agendas (Froehlich & Rüdiger, 2006). Frames are one of the popular examples of cognitive attributes of issues under the agenda setting/building framework (i.e., Entman, 2007).

There are different types of frame categorizations identified from previous content analysis studies (Kim & Wanta, 2018). Popular news frame examples are conflict, human interest, responsibility, and economic consequences. That is, whether a news item contains conflict between individuals or groups (conflict frame), an individual's story or emotional evaluations (human interest), an attribution of problem (responsibility), or economic effects (economic consequences) (i.e., de Vreese, Peter, & Semetko, 2001; Neuman, Just, & Crigler, 1992; Valkenburg, Semetko, & de Vreese, 1999).

To explore news frames for a particular social issue, scholars also suggest other types of frames such as thematic or horse race (Kim & Wanta, 2018). Different from an episodic news frame (e.g., illustration of an individual case), the thematic frame illustrates an issue in a larger social context that considers its history or effect on the community (Iyengar, 1996). The thematic frame would help readers/viewers to understand the issue more in-depth. In contrast, the horse race frame focuses more on who is winning in a campaign context (Kim & Wanta, 2018).

Froehlich and Rüdiger (2006) also explored two levels of framing—thematic and position—linking frames to political players' strategic role in the framing process. Practitioners use thematic frames to highlight certain aspects of subtopics of an issue to guide public how to interpret the issue in a certain way. Moreover, position frames illustrate political players' solutions or actions connected to the subtopic of an issue. Practitioners aim to earn public support by telling them how an issue/problem would be solved (p. 19).

#### *2.2 Frames and Message Negativity*

Considering the role of players (e.g., political parties, candidates, or media professionals) in the framing process—from the strategic communication perspective—scholars also examined frame patterns the media or parties' ideology creates. In the context of the Smolensk plane crash, scholars analyzed Polish and Russian government messages along with the event's media coverage and found that the government's strategic communication success may differ by a medium's political ideological profile—pro-government, mainstream, or opposition (Myslik et al., 2021).

In the context of European politics, a content analysis study showed an effect of populist communication on the party's visibility in the media coverage (Schmidt, 2020). Populist messages contain the factors equivalent to the traditional news values emphasizing in-group community and social elites' critique (Schulz, 1976 in Schmidt, 2020). In nature, populist messages are more negative and hostile, and consequently, those messages have a higher chance of the media covering them (Schulz, 1976 in Schmidt, 2020).

Negative campaign is one of the popular campaign message strategies to obtain increased media attention and to engage voters with the candidate's rhetoric (Druckman, Kifer, & Parkin, 2010). In the previous studies, scholars explained that challengers generally use rhetoric that is more negative with the hope that their message will receive increased attention from the public (i.e., Druckman & McDermott, 2008; Theilmann & Wilhite, 1998).

In a hypothetical experiment, scholars tested a theoretical model, adopted from Skaperdas and Grofman's conceptualization (1995), asking practitioners whether they would use negative advertising when their candidate is leading or losing in the campaign (Theilmann & Wilhite, 1998). Study results show that practitioners would use negative advertising more when the race is getting close or when their challengers gain ground. When their own candidate is winning far ahead, practitioners said they would not use negative advertising at all and may just use positive advertising strategies.

Moreover, scholars also proposed a different pattern in using positive or negative campaign strategies between the two parties (Theilmann & Wilhite, 1998). The Republican consultants relied more on the negative advertising strategies than did the Democratic consultants. In other words, Republican voters are more open to the attacking strategies while the negative strategies influenced Democratic voters less. In their discourse analysis, Khajavi and Rasti (2020) also found that Romney, the Republican Party candidate, used more negative representation in his strategy than Obama, the Democratic Party candidate, in 2012 election

campaign speeches. Positive self-presentation or negative presentation of others (i.e., Dijk, 2005) has been a useful tool to analyze the rhetorical characteristics of political messages.

Negative or offensive remarks often appear in today's political discourse, particularly connected to the populist communication strategies. Culpeper (2011) uses the term "impoliteness" to describe all types of offensive remarks against social norms or expectations (e.g., what ought to be) (p. 23). This message strategy can be easily found from the speeches of the former U.S. President Donald Trump or former Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi (Wodak, Culpeper, & Semino, 2021). Analyzing their official press conference messages and comments on the YouTube videos, scholars concluded that both politicians may intentionally violate social norms as a part of populist communication strategies, and their explicit and implicit impoliteness may contribute to increasing their authenticity (Wodak, 2021; Wodak, Culpeper, & Semino, 2021).

Moreover, Wodak (2021) also explained that this impolite behavior would be accepted in today's political discourse and proposed a new normal, using the term, "shameless normalization" (p. 6). When former president Trump made some remarks violating traditional norms (such as insults) without apology, a substantial amount of people's comments on YouTube videos were even positive (Wodak, Culpeper, & Semino, 2021).

In a democratic society, political disagreement or dispute is inevitable (Mutz & Reeves, 2005). The more important question concerns the manner of how to show the public that disagreement. Mutz and Reeves's (2005) experimental study showed some paradoxical findings: People reacted negatively toward the uncivil political discourse, but at the same time, they also enjoyed watching it (p. 13).

Previous studies have proposed different types of incivility categorizations. Sobieraj and Berry (2011) coded outrage media content with 13 modes including insulting, name calling, verbal fighting, mockery, or conflagration (p. 28). Incorporating some revisions from his previous work (Culpeper, 1996), Culpeper (2016) summarized the following strategies: bald onrecord impoliteness, positive impoliteness, negative impoliteness, off-record impoliteness, withhold politeness, sarcasm, or mock politeness (p. 425).

#### *2.3 Effects of Emotional Messages*

In the strategic communication perspective, framing effects (on public opinion or the decisionmaking process) research has focused mostly on the cognitive understanding of the issues. However, in today's political campaign contexts, emotions or evaluative tone can also play a significant role in the framing process (Druckman & McDermott, 2008). Scholars explored the effect of emotion on framing results (e.g., voters' risk assessment) and found that emotions significantly affected individuals' decision-making process (Druckman & McDermott, 2008). When the cognitive information in a message is the same, the emotional representation (e.g., positive or negative) of the information can lead to different reactions from the individuals (Druckman, 2004).

Moreover, scholars also examined the effects of several emotional orientations on judgment beyond a valence (positive–negative) such as enthusiasm, distress, or anger (Lerner et al., 2003, p. 144). For example, hostility or anger produced an optimistic assessment about future outcomes and people took more risks (with the hope to revenge in the future), while distress or fear produced pessimistic assessment leading toward risk-aversion decisions (Lerner & Keltner, 2000; Lerner et al., 2003).

In their campaign strategy study, Maier and Nai (2020) found that candidates who used a more negative campaign tone and more emotional appeals received greater media attention. Particularly, a negative campaign message with the use of fear appeals attracted the most media coverage (Maier & Nai, 2020). Fear (nervousness and horror), sadness (sympathy, neglect, shame, disappointment, sadness, and suffering), and anger (torment, envy, disgust, rage, exasperation, and irritation) are the common negative emotions drawn from previous studies (i.e., Culpeper et al., 2014, p. 74; Shaver et al., 1987).

Scholars (Klinger et al., 2023) explained that the use of negative emotions is part of political parties' campaign strategies because negative campaigning can bring more user engagement and reach a wider network. Klinger et al.'s (2023) quantitative content analysis study of the 2014 and 2019 European Parliament Election campaigns showed that on social media, more negative emotional posts yielded higher engagement—likes, shares, or comments than other posts.

#### *2.4 2022 Presidential Election in Korea*

On March 9, 2022, Korea had its 20th Presidential election. Among the final twelve candidates, the two major candidates were Yoon Suk-yeol (conservative, People Power Party) and Lee Jaemyung, the governing party's candidate (progressive, Democratic Party) (Choe, 2022). Voters were almost evenly split during the campaign, and Yoon won against Lee by less than 1 percentage point; his single five-year term began last May. Previously, Yoon served as the country's top prosecutor with no political experience.

During the campaign, the most salient social issues in the country were economic growth, housing prices, and income inequality (Lee & Kim, 2022). In addition, voters expected that the election results would affect Korea's future foreign relations with North Korea, China, or the U.S. (Choe, 2022; Lee & Kim, 2022).

With nonstop scandals and negativity during the campaign period, voters called this election the "election of the unfavorable" (Lee & Kim, 2022). Some concerned that this hostile and negative campaign would tire voters and would deter them from voting. However, this election recorded one of the highest voting rate—almost 77% voting rate among the registered voters.

Voters in their 20s were the major target swing group in this campaign, considering they are less ideological than the older generations are (Lee & Kim, 2022). Moreover, the campaign's youth strategy was becoming increasingly sophisticated with divided subgroups between men and women: feminist/anti-feminist rhetoric was one of the main campaign message strategies (Kang, 2022).

Hence, in the context of 2022 Presidential Election in Korea, news frames and negativity strategies in the two mainstream media coverage were explored with the following research questions:

RQ1: What news frames were presented in the mainstream media coverage in Korea about the 2022 Presidential election?

RQ2: What negativity strategies were presented in the mainstream media coverage in Korea about the 2022 Presidential election?

RQ3: How the frames and negativity strategies in the mainstream media coverage in Korea about the 2022 Presidential election differ by media's political ideology?

RQ4: How the negativity strategies connect to the frames presented in the mainstream media coverage in Korea during the 2022 Presidential election period?

#### **3 Method**

This study conducted a qualitative content analysis to identify thematic frames and campaign emotion discourses in the news coverage about the 2022 Presidential election.

#### *3.1 Samples*

Two mainstream newspapers in Korea were selected to gather news articles about the presidential election and to review the media portrayals of the presidential candidates' strategic communication efforts. First, considering newspapers' perceived political ideology, the following two newspapers were selected to study: 조선일보 *(Chosun Ilbo)* and 한겨레 *(Hankyoreh)*. Among the top daily newspapers in Korea, 조선일보 *(Chosun Ilbo)* is considered right-leaning and 한겨레 *(Hankyoreh)* is considered left-leaning (Lee et al., 2022). Previously, a number of scholars have shed light on the impact of the political orientation of the media on the strategic communication outcomes (i.e., Ban, 2018; Lee et al., 2022; Myslik et al., 2021). In the context of Korea's superintendent election in 2014, Lee (2014) conducted a comparative study of news contents between the two newspapers and found different patterns based on the political disposition of the newspaper organizations.

In this study, news articles were collected from each news outlet's main website (chosun.com and hani.co.kr) using a search function. Three search keywords were '대선 (presidential election)' and the names of the two leading presidential candidates—'윤석열 (Yoon, Suk-yeol)' and '이재명 (Lee, Jae-myung).' Between February 1 and March 8, 2022, all available news articles were selected excluding visual-only contents or irrelevant stories. The official election campaign began on February 15 and the election happened on March 9. A total of 485 (out of 683) and 401 (out of 518) articles were analyzed from 조선일보 *(Chosun Ilbo)* and 한겨레*(Hankyoreh)*, respectively.

#### *3.2 Analysis*

First, the collected articles were reviewed to identify the frames used in news stories. Some of the most common news topic frames found in previous media studies were conflict (e.g., disagreement between two or more individuals or organizations), human interest (e.g., individual and personal aspects), responsibility (e.g., attribute of responsibility for causing or solving a problem), economic consequences (e.g., cost, expense, or financial loss/gain), campaign strategies/process (e.g., management of campaigns—how to attract target voters and collaborate with other political leaders), issue policy (e.g., candidate's issue position and decision-making process), or personality (e.g., candidate's personality, manners, style, education, and experience) (i.e., de Vreese et al., 2001; D'Angelo et al., 2005; Valkenburg et al., 1999).

To understand news frames in the Korean election context, this study analyzed phrases or terms used in each article and then classified similar patterns into the groups, and this qualitative thematic approach allows researchers to find context-based frames directly from the data (Gioia et al., 2013; Linneberg & Steffen, 2019; Van Gorp, 2007, 2010). The identified news frames

from the news stories would help us to understand the main themes or major issues of Korean society related to the 2022 presidential election in Korea.

Moreover, two-leading presidential candidates' speech quoted in the news articles were analyzed to review the use of negative campaign strategies during the election period. In the previous communication discourse studies, scholars defined impoliteness as a communicative strategy to attack others' face causing social conflicts intentionally (strategically) (Culpeper, Bousfield, & Wichmann, 2003, p. 1546). In political debates, for example, 'conflictive talk' (see Culpeper, Bousfield, & Wichmann, 2003, p. 1545) is a part of communicative discourse strategies of the candidates. Scholars also proposed a few substrategies: positive impoliteness (e.g., ignore, exclude, disassociate, disinterested, obscure language, or calling names) and negative impoliteness (e.g., frighten, ridicule, invade the other's space, or interrupt) (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Culpeper, 2016, p. 425). These categorizations are neither mutually exclusive nor complete yet (Culpeper, 2016). From the news articles, a full length of debate is not available, so instead of the conversation between the candidates, quotations by the two-leading candidates were separately analyzed if presented in the news stories.

In this campaign context, the official election campaign period began on February 15, 2022, and we compared results between Time 1 (prior to February 15) and Time 2 (February 15 until election day) to ascertain how news frames and other characteristics were different before and after the main campaign.

This study also explored how specific negative patterns in the news about the Korean presidential election are different from previous studies and how emotional remarks are associated to news frames. Finally, the frames and negative strategies found in the news media coverage were compared between the two news media outlets to discuss the impact of the political orientation of news organizations on strategic communication outcomes.

#### **4 Results**

A qualitative content analysis was conducted to explore the frames and negativity strategy discourses in the 2022 presidential election news coverage. Two mainstream newspaper stories were collected for a month-long period prior to the election. The results of a qualitative content analysis summarized into the nine election news frames and emphasized three main negativity remarks from the candidates (i.e., Culpeper, 1996, 2016). Moreover, the results were compared by time and the mediums' political orientations.

The first research question was proposed to examine the news frames. *What news frames were presented in the mainstream media coverage in Korea about the 2022 presidential election?*

The most common news frames found in media coverage were conflict, strategy, issue position, public engagement, race, announcement, investigation, personal story, and critique (i.e., de Vreese et al., 2001; D'Angelo et al., 2005; Valkenburg et al., 1999). In addition, most news stories were either neutral or negative.

Similar to the previous studies, the most popular news frame was conflict. During election campaigns, candidates argue on many social issues (e.g., special prosecutor, media freedom, family risk, or COVID-19 risk) based on their political ideologies: "*Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party of Korea's candidate, said on the 18th that Yoon Suk-yeol, the People Power Party's candidate's Gwangju shopping mall complex proposal is 'far-right populism dividing*

*sides'*" *1* (*Chosun Ilbo,* February 19, 2022: para.1), or "*Presidential candidates who will lead the next government said that they will prepare a policy to manage microplastics; however, they differ on the use of mandatory measure implementation*" *2* (*Hankyoreh,* February 20, 2022: para.1).

The strategy frame focuses on the management of campaigns. Results also show that it is important to deal with an opponent's negative advertising or scandalous messages: "*With the dramatic unification of the People Power Party's presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol and People's Party candidate Ahn Cheol-soo six days before the election day, it has become the biggest question whether it will change the election situation*" *3* (*Chosun Ilbo,* March 4, 2022: para.1), or "*Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party of Korea's presidential candidate, toured the Gangnam area in Seoul on the 6th to spread support.… [and] emphasized a 'country of opportunity for the youth'*" *4* (*Hankyoreh,* February 16, 2022: para.1).

The issue position frame describes the political issues and candidates' political decisionmaking processes. Some of the main political issues in this campaign period were housing prices, labor, gender, and economy. Candidates explained their positions on these issues by telling the media and public how they would solve related problems: "*Both Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party of Korea's candidate, and Yoon Suk-yeol, the People Power Party's candidate, criticized the Moon Jae-in government's quarantine policy that focuses on business restrictions.… If elected, I will stop unnecessary excessive quarantine policy and will allow business to remain open until midnight for those who have received booster shots*" *5* (*Chosun Ilbo,* February 21, 2022: para.1), or "*The two leading candidates' [Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party of Korea's and Yoon Suk-yeol of the People Power Party] economic policy has three main differences*" *6* (*Hankyoreh,* February 07, 2022: para.1).

The public engagement frame describes campaign activities during which candidates meet supporters and deliver speeches. Candidates run nationwide election campaign tours with their campaign teams and interact with voters: "*20th presidential election candidates' campaign style has become an issue*" *7* (*Chosun Ilbo,* February 17, 2022: para.1), or "*On the 15th, when the official campaign for the 20th presidential election began, both ruling and opposite candidates rushed into their 22-day campaign period*" *8* (*Hankyoreh,* February 15, 2022: para.1).

The race frame is also a popular political news frame during an election. Simply, news stories present who is winning or losing based on public opinion polls. The 2022 election was one of the most competitive elections in the country's history: "*Yoon Suk-yeol, the People Power Party's candidate, was 35% and Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party of Korea's candidate, was 31%*" *9* (*Chosun Ilbo,* February 08, 2022: para. 1), or "*Lee Jae-myung was 32.6%, and Yoon Suk-yeol was 38.8%*" *10* (*Hankyoreh,* February 07, 2022: para. 1).

The announcement frame shares candidates' campaign schedules, such as press conferences, debates, and other public activities. Furthermore, it includes election schedules, such as voter registration, early voting, and overseas voting: "*Candidate Lee went on a relay campaign that started in Suncheon, Jeollanamdo, and toured the Honam region for two days and two nights*" *11* (*Chosun Ilbo,* February 19, 2022: para.1), or "*The official campaign for the 20th presidential election begins on the 15th*" *12* (*Hankyoreh,* February 14, 2022: para.1).

The investigation frame focuses on the official actions of investigating and attributing responsibility when scandalous or illegal accusations are made against candidates. Investigation results may affect voters' risk assessment of each candidate: "*In the second TV presidential*

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Translations are italicized.

*debate on the 11th, controversy around the spouses of Democratic Party candidate Lee Jaemyung and People Power Party candidate Yoon Seok-yeol became the main issue*" 13 (*Chosun Ilbo,* February 12, 2022: para.1), or "*The Daejang-dong [development project corruption] scandal backfires not only on the Democratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung but also on Yoon Seok-yeol*" *14* (*Hankyoreh,* March 7, 2022: para.1).

The personal story frame highlights candidates' individual and personal aspects. Candidates' social media channels become important sources for this frame: "*The official presidential election campaign began; however, spouses of candidates did not appear publicly at campaign events*" *15* (*Chosun Ilbo,* February 19, 2022: para.1), or "*A controversy erupted when People Power Party's presidential candidate Yoon Seok-yeol posted a photo on his social networking services (SNS) of a tangerine with an angry face along with a post supporting Ukraine*" *16* (*Hankyoreh,* March 2, 2022: para.1).

Finally, the critique frame is used when a political elite or public figure evaluates candidates' qualifications or morals: "*About 40 people, including former and current Democratic Party officials, members, and national delegates, declared their support for People Power Party presidential candidate Yoon Seok-yeol.… They said it is because the Democratic Party nominated a person with a four-time criminal record as their candidate*" *17* (*Chosun Ilbo,* March 5, 2022: para. 1), or "*Kim Dong-yeon of New Wave said on the 7th that he met Yoon Seok-yeol, People Power Party's presidential candidate, last month; it seems that he is not thinking deeply about constitutional amendment and political change*" *18* (*Hankyoreh,* March 7, 2022: para.1).

Results showed that the types of frames differ over time. In this campaign context, the official election campaign period began February 15, 2022, and the analysis results were compared between Time 1 (prior to February 15) and Time 2 (February 15 until election day). Prior to the official campaign period, the most frequent election frames were announcement, investigation, and personal stories. During the official campaign period, the most common election frames were strategies, public engagement, issue position, conflict, race, and critique.

The second research question was proposed to examine the negativity covered in the media. *What negativity strategies were presented in the mainstream media coverage during Korea's 2022 presidential election?*

Analysis showed that during the election, negative impoliteness in Korean newspapers was most frequently reported (Culpeper, 1996, 2016). Particularly, newspapers reported a campaign message when it explicitly associated a negative aspect to the opponent. Among the positive impoliteness strategies damaging one's positive countenance desire (to be appreciated), name-calling was commonly reported. Other strategies, such as seeking disagreement, disassociating one from the other, using inappropriate identity, or frightening voters, also manifested in media coverage (Culpeper, 2016, p. 425).

For example, during the 2022 Korean presidential election, some of the campaign keywords used in the communication messages were populism, communism, feminism, and political revenge. Candidates also disregarded their opponents by using the words unfavorable, inexperienced, and unintellectual. Sometimes, one called the other "crazy" or referred to them as a "gangster." When the analysis results were compared between Time 1 (prior to February 15) and Time 2 (February 15 until the election day), negative politeness (explicit negative remarks toward the other candidate, such as populists or feminists) was found more often in Time 2.

13, 14, 15**,** 16**,** 17, 18 Translations are italicized.

Then, the third research question examined the effect of the medium's political ideology orientation. *How do the frames and negativity strategies in the mainstream media coverage regarding the Korean 2022 presidential election differ by the media's political ideology?*

Results show that the frame types are different depending on the media's ideological orientation. The two newspapers selected in this study represented either right-leaning or leftleaning media (Lee et al., 2022). When comparing analysis results between the two newspapers, the most frequent election frames were issue position, announcement, investigation, and critique for 한겨레 *(Hankyoreh,* left-leaning) and strategy, conflict, public engagement, race, and personal story for 조선일보 *(Chosun Ilbo,* right-leaning). The results showed that negative impoliteness was found more in the left-leaning paper, perhaps because the popular news frames of that medium focus more on issue positions, candidates' moral evaluation, or investigations (of scandal or illegal incident) that may harm the others negatively, rather than campaign strategies or simple conflicts between the candidates (i.e., Brown & Levinson, 1987; Rheem & Ahmed, 2022).

Finally, the fourth research question explored how negativity strategies can be connected to the election frame in the media. *How do the negativity strategies connect to the frames presented in the mainstream media coverage during the 2022 Korean presidential election period?*

The results showed that the negativity remarks in the news occurred more when the campaign strategy, issue position, or public engagement frames were used. Political issues successfully drew the media's attention when the issues were presented along with the candidates' communication efforts (e.g., candidates' approaches to the political issues and their solutions). Populism and feminism were popular campaign rhetoric during the election, and with these issues, a candidate also easily associated a negative remark to the other candidate by calling him/her a populist (or anti-populist) or feminist (or anti-feminist).

#### **5 Discussion**

This study examined the mainstream news coverage for the 2022 Korean presidential election to identify the most commonly used frames and negativity remarks during the campaign. From the strategic communication perspective, news media content can be considered an outcome of practitioners' campaign message strategies (i.e., Conway, Kenski, & Wang, 2015; Fountaine, 2017; Nadeau, Pétry, & Bélanger, 2010).

Traditionally, frame is about how one emphasizes a particular aspect of an issue with the hope that it affects the media and public's cognitive understanding of the issue (Entman, 1993; Froehlich & Rüdiger, 2006). Some of the popular news frames used in the previous studies include conflict, horse race, or human interest (i.e., de Vreese, Peter, & Semetko, 2001; Kim & Wanta, 2018). Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) also analyzed Dutch national news media content using the five common news frames: attribution of responsibility, conflict, human interest, economic consequences, and morality (p. 93).

In the current study, "election" news frames were also summarized into nine frame patterns. Still, some of the traditional news frames were prevalent, such as conflict and race (i.e., de Vreese, Peter, & Semetko, 2001; Kim & Wanta, 2018). Theses frames mainly describe the characteristics of the issues important in the election, and campaign strategy is often considered a simple win–lose game. On the other hand, this study's results show that, during the Korean presidential election, a campaign's active role was emphasized in the news coverage. Through

the strategy and issue position frames, candidates' campaign-related activities and their communication strategies (as well as the strategies' effect on the public) have been highlighted in the media. This may show that political public relations information subsidies play a significant role in affecting news agendas during elections.

Not only cognitive attributes but also emotional (affective) attribute issues have been emphasized in the previous agenda-building strategic communication studies (Druckman & McDermott, 2008; Kiousis et al., 2015). Scholars have explained that emotions can play a significant role in affecting an individual's decision-making process (Druckman & McDermott, 2008), and practitioners try to associate their candidates with positive attributes, while associating their opponents with negative attributes to gain public trust (Kiousis et al., 2015). Emotion is important in today's election context due to the development of social media tools and the involvement of younger generations (Fountaine, 2017).

Moreover, in today's political discourse, negative communication is considered an important campaign strategy. For example, scholars used the term "impoliteness" to describe certain types of offensive remarks (Culpeper, 2011, p. 23; Wodak, Culpeper, & Semino, 2021). Even though these negative remarks often go against the social norms, the public sometimes enjoys this intentional and strategic negativity in the campaign messages and perceives the message as authentic (Wodak, 2021; Wodak, Culpeper, & Semino, 2021).

Naturally, negative and aggressive messages have a higher chance of being covered in the media (Schulz, 1976 in Schmidt, 2020), as people are interested psychologically in the negative stories. During the 2022 Korean presidential election, negative remarks were found in the news media coverage; however, the frequency was somewhat moderate. Politicians' official information subsidies may present wide ranges of positive/negative impoliteness, such as insulting language, verbal fighting, exaggeration, or mockery (Sobieraj & Berry, 2011, p. 39– 41). However, only selected appeared in the media coverage.

During the presidential election campaign, ideological negative language, such as populism, communism, feminism, or political revenge, was used often in the Korean news coverage. After experiencing a series of political corruptions and social inequality (e.g., gender or income), people, particularly the younger generation (i.e., those in their 20s), feel deprived and divided. For example, feminism was a hot topic for the country, with an intensified gender war between young men and women (Seo & Hollingsworth, 2022). Considering the country's unique political situation, candidates also had different views on the country's foreign relations with North Korea, China, and the U.S. (Chandran, 2022). With the political uncertainty and risk, communism versus populism became important campaign rhetoric in Korea and a source for negative remarks during the campaign. Negative remarks associated with a populist/anti-populist or feminist/anti-feminist successfully drew media attention in this study.

Moreover, the results show that the frame categorizations differ over time: Time 1 (February 1 to 14) and Time 2 (February 15 to March 9). The most frequent frames were announcement, investigation, and personal stories in Time 1; and the most common frames were strategies, public engagement, issue position, conflict, race, and critique in Time 2. During the official campaign period (Time 2), more diverse and strategic frames were used in the media coverage.

When the analysis results were compared between the two newspapers, the most frequent frames were issue position, announcement, investigation, and critique for a left-leaning newspaper; and strategy, conflict, public engagement, race, and personal story were common for a right-leaning newspaper. Previously, scholars showed that a government's strategic

communication effect might differ by the political orientation of the medium (Myslik et al., 2021). This result also supports the effect of the media organization's ideological profile.

The analysis compared over time and by the political orientation of the media outlet showed that negative politeness occurred more often closer to the election. In addition, this study showed that negative impoliteness occurred more often in the news when framed within certain campaign strategies or an issue position. Practitioners may consider these message factors when developing campaign messages. For example, use of negative remarks can be considered a strategic campaign plan to draw attention from people and the media. When the election is competitive and split, candidates would use more negative emotions on other candidates (i.e., Dijk, 2005), which reflects in media content.

Future research should investigate the role of impoliteness message strategies with multiple media sources for not only mainstream newspapers but also TV news or social media platforms. The media type may affect the use of negative remarks in their news coverage by considering the media's purpose and target audience. Scholars should explore whether Internetbased social media would increase negativity in election campaigns. In addition, future study may expand on campaign messages or news analyses in different election situations. A local or statewide election may differ from a presidential election because of its competitiveness or the amount of public attention. Moreover, a country's culture and social norms may affect the use of negativity strategies, so future study should examine campaign message strategies and their impacts in other countries' election contexts.

#### **References**

D'Angelo, P., Calderone, M., & Territola, A. (2005). Strategy and issue framing: An exploratory analysis of topics and frames in campaign 2004 print news. *Atlantic Journal of Communication, 13*(4), 199-219. https://doiorg.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/10.1207/s15456889ajc1304\_1

media relations and agenda building during the Smolensk airplane crash. *International Communication Gazette, 83*(2), 169-192. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048519853766

https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.1994.9963030

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Facework in Patient Requests for Treatment Recommendations in Korean Medical Interactions: The Use of Main Clause Omission**

#### **Yujong Park1**

**Abstract** This study examined the involvement of facework in main clause omissions employed by patients when performing requests. The data were drawn from a corpus of videotaped primary care visits collected from Korean medical practitioners. Drawing on previous work on facework in politeness research, requests in conversation analytic research, and main clause ellipsis in Korean, the study found that main clause omissions provided a mechanism for patients to minimize any threats to the participants' face when requesting a prescription for a treatment plan. By employing this practice, patients were able to prove the relevance for a proposed treatment without directly requesting it. By only providing the relevance for a specific type of treatment by omitting the main clause, the patient allowed the doctor to indirectly reject or grant the request. The analysis allowed the notion of facework to be respecified as one emerging from both participants' joint construction of the sequential unfolding of the interaction. This study supports the view that face is a discursive, interactional, and social accomplishment by examining a linguistic practice employed primarily by patients in Korean medical interactions. The role of epistemic imbalance and asymmetry in this setting is also discussed.

**Keywords** Facework Requests Main clause omission Treatment plans Medical interaction

1 Y. Park ()

English Literature and Language Department, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### **1 Introduction**

In medical interactions, patients rarely propose for a specific treatment plan (Kravitz et al., 2003; Stivers, 2002) as it is considered a highly face-threatening act (FTA) because it imposes on the doctor's authority (Robins & Wolf, 1988). Because doctor-patient interaction is characterized by a knowledge-based asymmetry or epistemic imbalance (Pilnick & Dingwall, 2011; Drew, 2018), the performance of politeness in doctor-patient interactions had been studied in relation to how this imbalance is managed through a variety of linguistic or interactional practices (Cordella, 2007; Granger et al, 2005; Robins & Wolf, 1988). For example, doctors may threaten the patients' negative face by using warnings to make patients understand the consequences of noncompliance with treatment recommendations (Cordella, 2007). Although there are a number of studies which investigated how doctors can threaten a patient's face when prescribing treatment or conveying bad news (Grainger et al, 2005; Robins & Wolf, 1988; Silverman et al., 2005), fewer studies have examined the patient's performance of face-threatening actions in medical encounters, even though patients also have many opportunities to threaten the doctors' face, such as rejecting a treatment plan, advocating for medication (i.e., Stivers, 2002) or requesting more information. Filling this gap, this study investigates how patients' perform FTAs in an interactional, sequential accomplishment of requesting for treatment. We focus on how patients work to provide the relevance for treatment without having for themselves to request it, primarily using main clause omission as a face saving practice in the Korean primary care settings.

Past research has shown that when engaging in FTAs, Koreans tend to employ a greater number of hedges and accounts in longer turns (Sohn, 1986) and frequently omit the main clauses (Byon, 2006; Rhee, 2008; Sohn, 2003). In Example 1 below, the son omits a main clause that questions his mother's request to run an errand (i.e., Are you asking me to run an errand?) and only states the reason for his inability to fulfill this request (line 2, *konpwuhalamyense,* "you told me to study"). The interrogative main clause is omitted (put in parenthesis) leaving only a subordinate clause that ends with the Korean clausal connective -*lamyense.*

Example 1. Rhee (2014, modified, invented p. 604)

01 Mom: 심부름 좀 해. simpwulum com hay. errand-DM-do **"Run an errand for me."** 02 Son: 공부하라면서 (심부름가래?) kongpwuha-lamyense (simpwulum-ka-lay?) study-CONN errand-go-QP **"(Are you asking me to run an errand) while telling me to study?"**

Since main clauses in Korean usually carry the speaker's assertion, main clause omissions can be used to protect the face of the hearer by withholding the assertion that puts an imposition on the hearer (e.g., Are *you asking me* to run an errand). However, despite the frequency of this construction in Korean request exchanges, in particular, there has been little research into main clause omissions and their relationship to facework.

The use of requests in this study is a broad one, akin to Searle's (1969) "directive" speech act category, which forms threats to the other's positive or negative face (Goffman, 1967). A variety of forms may be used to perform requests (Austin, 1962, Searle, 1969). Studies in line with Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory have argued that in general, indirect linguistic speech act forms are less face threatening and polite as they increase the degree of optionality and decrease the force of the illocutions in speech acts. The graded notion of indirectness assumed in previous studies has taken "direct" and "indirect" to refer to the extremes of an (in)directness scale, with imperatives being the most "direct" request forms, and hints being the most "indirect" (Blum-Kulka 1987; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984; Brown & Levinson 1987; Leech 1983). The use of main clause omissions could be categorized as an indirect linguistic form similar to hints described in the literature. In conversation analysis (CA), the notion of preference is frequently employed to explain how requests are performed (Atkinson & Drew, 1979; Pomerantz, 1984). The basic claim is that dispreferred actions such as requests or invitations are accompanied by marked features such as delays, accounts, prefaces or mitigations. Preference choices are in many cases motivated and determined by face considerations (Brown & Levinson, 1989) although the face concept is not frequently employed in CA research to explain preference organizations. Requests from patients constitute dispreferred actions in doctor-patient interaction where preservation of face may be an important consideration in managing the epistemic imbalance between participants.

This paper proposes that main clause omissions may be employed as a locally and sequentially managed resource to accomplish facework when patients deliver FTAs during Korean medical encounters. The face concept was developed by Goffman (1967) as a derivation from Durkheim (1915) and refers to the "positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact" (p. 5). Facework is a set of coordinated practices that communicators use language to build, enhance, maintain and challenge interpersonal communication relationships (Domenici & Littlejohn, 2006; Locher, 2004, 2013). Facework can be achieved through the various devices users employ that allow them to negotiate their social identities and maintain their sense of dignity and place in a given social space during the emergent discourse (Locher, 2011).

Conversation analysis (CA) studies that have criticized Goffman's face notion as being too general and as presuming the existence of an already constituted, recognizable action (Schegloff, 1988) have used the notion of (dis)affiliation (Heritage & Raymond, 2005; Stivers, 2008), with affiliation in this context being defined as "the affective level of cooperation." According to Stiver et al. (2011, p. 21), affiliative responses are "maximally pro-social when they match the prior speaker's evaluative stance, display empathy and/or cooperate with the preference of the prior action." Therefore, the (dis)affiliation notion subsumes issues related to both facework and politeness in this line of work.  Generic features, such as turn taking, sequencing, and repair, are involved in the turnby-turn joint construction and negotiation of possible face-threatening actions in an interactional moment. In this way, the organization of talk such as preference organization provides opportunities to avoid face threats. While acknowledging the effectiveness of the "(dis)affiliation" notion in explaining politeness phenomenon, this study primarily discusses facework in relation to the generic features of the organization of talk.

While it is possible to employ a face perspective to understand CA notions such as repair and preference organization, the focus of CA work has been to emphasize the sequential and collaborative nature of talk; however, recent work has begun to explore the relationships between concepts developed in CA and (im)politeness research (Chevalier, 2009; Karafoti, 2021). For example, Lerner (1996) discusses the ways in which the anticipatory completion of a turn could

transform a structurally dispreferred action such as a disagreement into its preferred alternative (i.e., agreement) and recognized this kind of completion as a potential locus for the study of face work in interaction. Hutchby (2008) outlined the contributions that CA may make to politeness research, as well as its natural limitations. The discursive turn in politeness research have also begun to recognize politeness as a social order that penetrates the here-and-now of conversation (Kàdàr & Haugh, 2013). Here, (im)politeness, face-saving, face-threats or face aggravation is situationally, institutionally, or contextually bound and revealed in the discourse (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005). This chapter contributes to this line of research by engaging in a sequential analysis of a specific linguistic practice (i.e., requests performed through main clause omission) to examine how face work may be displayed and co-constructed in and through interaction in the Korean medical context.

The current study argues that main clause omissions in Korean are a patient's resource oriented toward the face-threatening nature of requests and employed in a collaborative, sequential accomplishment of facework. Because treatment decisions are in the realm of the doctors' power, patients' request for a preferred treatment plan must be carefully constructed in line with how the doctor responds. In the following section, the key aspects of main clause omissions in Korean are based on previous research, after which instances are taken from the data set and the possible connections between the sequential deployment of main clause omissions and facework in the Korean language are discussed. The study was driven by the following question:

How is facework collaboratively performed through the use of main clause omissions in patients' request for treatment plans during Korean medical encounters?

#### **2 Main Clause Omissions in Korean Talk-in-Interaction**

Main clause omissions during interactions have been frequently observed in Korean. In a typical main clause ellipsis (Rhee, 2020; Sohn, 2003), which is this study's main focus, the main clause in the latter part of the sentence is withheld, leaving the subordinate clause ending with sentence final particles or different connectives (e.g., -*ntey, -se, -nikka*). Because ellipsis is a term that is used to refer to a wide range of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic structures (Stainton, 2006), the term "omission" is used in this study to focus attention on the deliberate interactional withholding of turns completed by the current speaker.

 When the main clause is missing, the hearer must reconstruct the missing information from the omitted main clause (Heine et al., 1991). These deliberately invited inferences or reinterpretations are often employed in delicate or problematic interactions, as shown in example 1 above (i.e., challenges to requests). This study complements previous research on Korean main clause ellipsis by sequentially analyzing these turns to reveal whether the recipients understood the speaker's actions and were sensitive to the trouble in the talk.

Rhee (2008) claimed that interactional ellipsis has resulted in the grammaticalization of Korean complementizers (e.g., -*lako, -tako*), which have gradually evolved into sentential endings. Ending forms such as "*lako"* have developed from elliptical structures involving complementizers that emphasize a statement, a question, or a command that was presented before the current turn. For example, in *ppalli o-lako*, "Come quickly-*lako*," instead of completing the sentence by stating the main clause as in *ppalli o-lako mal-hay-ss-e*, "I have already said this, come quickly," the speaker simply stops the sentence midway after the complementizer "-*lako*" to indicate the unstated information which is "I have already said this before" (Rhee, 2008, p. 14). Similar

instances have been examined in other languages and have been given various labels, such as "suspended clauses" (Ohori, 1995), "inconsequential clauses" (Haiman, 1988), and "insubordination" (Evans, 2007, 2009, Evans & Watanabe, 2016). Insubordination refers to a type of local ellipsis in which a structural change from [S[Sub.Clause-CONN Main.Clause]] to [S[Clause-CONN]] and further to [S[Clause-SFP] occurs. The process involves the connective (CONN) being reinterpreted as a sentence final particle (SFP) in the final stages (Rhee, 2020). Because it is unclear whether the connective function of connectives has survived or not, the structure may be ambiguous because of the opposing functions of connective clauses and ending sentences. For the parties in interaction, however, there does not seem to be an ambiguity because to project what the turn seeks to accomplish, the main clause omissions in Korean are accompanied by interactional resources, such as sequential positions, connectives/sentence final suffixes, sound stretches, and non-verbal actions (e.g., laughter, gaze).

The following example (Example 2) shows how a patient employs main clause omission as a challenge to the doctor's diagnosis, which is accompanied by laugh particles. Here, the patient is questioning the doctor's proposal that this (Tuberculous lymphadeniti) is not a rare disease (lines 1-3) by employing the target practice (line 6, *cey cwuwi-ey amwuto epse-kaciko*, "nobody around me has it so hhhe hhh").

#### Example 2. SS\_01\_TL (56-67)

When the doctor delivers the diagnosis along with an explanation that tuberculous lymphadentitis commonly occurs when one's lymph node grows in size (line 03), the patient challenges the doctor's use of the term "commonly occurs" by repeating the doctor's words using questioning intonation (line 4, *cal sayngki-nun kemnikka*, "(It) commonly occurs?"). After the doctor responds to this challenge with a reassurance, the patient acknowledges the doctor's response with a change of state token *ah* "oh" (Heritage, 1984) and provides an account for having questioned him earlier (line 6, *cey cwuwi-ey amwuto epse-kaciko hhhe hhh*, "nobody around me has it so hhhe hhh"). In place of the main clause which may have conveyed the actual opposition in the lines of "Nobody around me has it (so I didn't believe you)" and an indirect challenge, the patient inserts laugh particles (hhhe hhh). The injection of laugh particles into talk is often associated with the reporting of misdeeds of some kind (Jefferson et al., 1987), especially in medical consultations (Haakana, 2001; Heritage & Robinson, 2006). In the next turns, the doctor grunts (line 8, "hm"), and then provides additional evidence for the claim that this is not an uncommon disease by providing a contrast with tuberculosis occurring in other areas of the body. Therefore, the withholding of the main clauses does not create ambiguity here; rather, it has an important interactional purpose related to facework in which the patient minimizes possible threats to the doctor's face by not fully articulating his doubts. It is worth noting that facework is also performed via nonverbal resources such as laughter along with the employment of main clause ellipsis.

Ellipsis theories differ widely on the degree to which the ellipsis material is recovered. For example, Quirk et al. (1972, p.536) restricted the use of the term "ellipsis" to describe words that were uniquely recoverable, that is, when there is no doubt about the missing words. Evans (2006) defined ellipsis as involving "some recoverable elements that are grammatically acceptable," and then defined a range of situations from "uniquely recoverable to non-uniquely recoverable" (p.370). Following Evan's definition, when main clause ellipses occurred in the data set, it was assumed that a grammatically compatible main clause would be reconstructed by the hearer. Evans (2006) stated that when determining if the regular ellipsis is the best analysis for a given language, it is necessary to conduct sensitive language-specific tests. For example, there may be syntactic evidence for the underlying presence of the main clause, such as the presence of negative polarity items like "ever" or "any" in an English clause as in "Like I'll ever give you any money?" the

presence of which can only be accounted for by an ellipsed negative matrix clause like "You don't believe." In Korean, the syntactic evidence for an underlying main clause is most effectively displayed using connectives at the end of the subordinate clause (subordinating conjunction), such as *"-lako,*" *"-nuntey,*" and *"-se.*" Due to the scope of this paper, the conventionalized usage of insubordinate clauses or grammatical forms that emerge through ellipsis are not considered; however, the importance of this line of research (Evans & Watanabe, 2016; Rhee, 2020) in understanding the target phenomenon is acknowledged. By examining patient requests without a main clause using CA and assessing the relationship with facework, this study sought to fill a gap in previous research.

#### **3 Method**

The present study adopts a conversation analytic approach as applied to institutional interactions, (Heritage & Maynard, 2006; Pilnick et al., 2009) to examine politeness as a social practice in the collected interactions (Kàdàr & Haugh, 2013). Discursive theories of politeness have considered it important to make native speaker assessments of politeness "the basis of a discursive, datadriven, bottom-up approach to politeness" (Locher & Watts, 2005, p. 6) by building theories of politeness that rely on the participants' perspectives. Eelen (2001) argued for the importance of using naturally occurring data in politeness research by stating that "due to the situational embeddedness of politeness, they would have to derive from natural settings and occur spontaneously, as elicited evaluations and/or an experimental setting introduce particular social aspects and motivations that warrant their classification as separate social practices" (p. 255).

The current data were drawn from a corpus of sixty videotaped primary care visits that had been collected from Korean medical practitioners. Two community-based practices and two university-based practices located in two Korean cities (Seoul and Chonan) allowed the researcher to collect videotapes of the doctor-patient interactions that had occurred in the family medical departments and internal clinics. All data collection was approved by the university human-subject protection committee, and the participants provided informed consent to being recorded before the study, were aware of being recorded, and permitted the recordings to be published. Of the 60 cases, five encounters in which a patient requested a specific treatment plan were selected for analysis. In the following extracts, three instances are given that involved visits to the family medical department in two separate hospital settings. All data were transcribed by the author and all names were changed to maintain confidentiality. The Korean was romanized using the Yale system, which represents the actual sounds rather than the standard Korean orthography. The three lines used in the transcripts respectively represent the sound, the morpheme-by-morpheme gloss, and the English translation.

Rather than restricting analysis to isolated sentences or phrases, CA examines the social actions that people seek to accomplish through their interactions. CA was used to search for interactional patterns in the interaction that gave some evidence of systematic usage to accomplish a particular social action (Heritage, 1984; Schegloff, 1968). For example, previous CA research on medical encounters has identified various practices used for opening and closing an encounter (Robinson, 1998; Park, 2017) and for delivering diagnoses and treatment (Peräkylä, 1998; Stivers, 2002). This paper assessed the main clause omission practice used by the patients to request the desired treatment plan. The analysis proceeds by addressing 2) how patient requests' (performed through main clause omissions) can be either successful or unsuccessful by investigating its sequential development and 2) how the focal practice illustrates the co-constructive nature of politeness and facework in this setting.

#### **4 Analysis: Facework and Main Clause Omissions in Patient Requests**

This section argues that patients frequently employ main clause omissions when they seek to advocate for a specific treatment plan or when delivering requests for a prescription that is delicate or problematic. The analysis centers around the question of how patients' requests (in the form of main clause omission) become (un)successful and how the employment of this practice is related to politeness and facework. Examples 3 and 4 show cases in which patients' requests are unsuccessful (doctors reject the need for the treatment being requested) whereas examples 5 and 6 display cases in which patients' request for treatment are granted. All target turns (arrowed lines) that lead up to the request do not contain a main clause and instead end with a connective that allows the speaker to avoid stating the actual request. In this way, the main clause omissions are used to hint at trouble in the talk (during the FTA) and leave it to the recipient to figure out the main import of the action. Doctors' responses to the patients' main clause omission based requests as well as the participants' use of non-vocal resources are also examined.

In Example 3 below the patient reported that she had been bitten by her dog several days ago (lines 01-03). When the doctor asked for the relevance of this report (line 06, *yey kuntey?* "Yes, so?"), the patient inquired about the need for a shot by repeating that she had been bitten by her dog (line 07) followed by an indirect request (line 09, *cwusalul macaya tweyna,* "get a shot or (not)"). This request is incomplete as the patient ends the turn with a questioning final suffix -*na*  INTERR without articulating the main clause (i.e., *kekcengtweyseyo, "(I) was worried"*). When the doctor appears reluctant to grant the request for a shot (lines 23, *Ani mwe i-cwu-na twey-ssney:,* "No, it's been two weeks already"), the patient builds a turn without a main clause to appeal her case once again (line 27, *kangaci paley ancase* "(I) sat on the puppy's foot so::"). This extract displays the extensive amount of work that both parties put into both performing a request and rejecting the request in a less face threatening manner by not being direct.

Example 3. KU#3\_42

**By a puppy**? 05 PAT: 예. yey. yes:POL **Yes.** 06 DOC: 예 근데? yey kuntey? Yes so **Yes so?** 07 PAT: 강아지한테 며칠 전에 물렸는데요? kanagaci-hantey myech-il ceney mwullye-ss-nuntey-yo? puppy-from several-day before bit-PST-but-POL **(I) got bit by a puppy a few days ago?** 08 DOC: 음[:.] **mm[:.]**  09 PAT: -> [그:] 그 주사를 맞아야 되나.= [ku:] ku cwusa-lul mac-aya toy-na.= DM DM shot-ACC get-should IMP-INTERR  **-> [the:] (should I) get a shot or not.=** 10 DOC: =헤파티누스? **=Hepatinus?** 11 **(0.5) (22 lines of history taking omitted regarding the name of the shot)** 23 DOC: 아니 뭐 이주나 됐네:. 이주 전에 그랬고, Ani mwe i-cwu-na twey-ss-ney:. i-cwu-cen-ey kelay-ss-ko, no what two-week-even been-PST-ASSIL two-week-ago so-PST-CONN **No what (it's) been two weeks:. That happened two weeks ago and,** 24 PAT: 또 어제요. tto ecey-yo. Another yesterday-POL **The other (case) was yesterday.** 25 DOC: 어제? 어디. ecey? eti. yesterday where **Yesterday? Where.** 26 PAT: .hhh @아하@ .**hhh @aha@ ((stands up and sits down again))** 27 -> 침대가 있는데 강아지 발에 앉아서::, chimtay-ka iss-nuntey kangaci pal-ey anca-se::, Bed-TOP be-but puppy food-at sit.down-so **There's a bed and (I) sat on the puppy's food so::,**

Through repetition and main clause omission the patient indirectly insists that she wants to get a shot which constitutes a FTA. The doctor on the other hand indirectly rejects the need for a shot by asking for clarification and emphasizing the lapse of time since the incident. Although the patient reiterates that she was bit by a puppy twice in lines 01-03 and line 07, the doctor does not immediately register this as a legitimate problem. The doctor performs facework by declining to acknowledge the doctorability of the presented problem (Robinson & Heritage, 2002) by 1) employing a repair initiation (line 04, *kangacihantey?,* "By a puppy?') and 2) requesting for clarification (line 06, *yey kuntey* "Yes so?"). When her description of the problem fails to receive the desired outcome, the patient first builds her request for a (rabies) vaccine shot in line 09 using a subordinate clause ending with the connective -*toyna* IMP-INTERR*.* The doctor reassures the patient that if no symptoms had presented in the two weeks since the bite, the patient probably did not have to worry, that is, the doctor indicates that the proposed shot is unnecessary without directly rejecting the proposal. She employs the sentence-initial particle *ani* "no" and emphasizes the amount of time passed (line 23, "No what (it's) been two weeks:") which resists the term of the prior request (Kim, 2015). In the light of rejection, the patient provides another case, saying that she was bitten by the dog the previous day as well. When building this turn, the patient does not mention the consequences of this action, which is hinted at by the omitted main clause. The use of the connective *-se::,* "so:::" at the end of this turn (line 27) and the sound stretch hints at the unarticulated consequence of being bitten by her dog. What is omitted may be twofold: "the puppy bit me" and "I want a shot." This layered intended message makes her main clause omission more complicated. This complexity is constructed because her request was already repeated and rejected earlier but she still wants a shot and at the same time has to appear polite. The doctor also works hard to make her rejection less face threatening by employing a variety of interactional practices. Disagreeing actions such as rejections are dispreferred as it can threaten the hearer's face (Karafoti, 2021). It appears that the doctor in this example employs clarification practices which asks for the the agent of the episode (line 04, *kangacihantey? "*by a puppy?" and line 28, *cakiney kangaci?*  "your puppy?"), instead of directly acknowledging the patient's concern. This enables the doctor to perform the FTA without employing a dispreferred action (i.e., rejecting a request). In this context, the request for clarification functions as a pre-sequence leading to the actual rejection of the patient's request (Schegloff, 2007) by creating an opportunity for the patient to retract or mitigate her request before it can be openly rejected.

The amount of work the patient and doctor puts into making and rejecting a request less face-threatening is noteworthy in this example. It shows how facework and preference organization are intertwined actions with both parties orienting to requests and rejections of requests, which are both dispreferred actions, as requiring extensive interactional work. While the patient wishes for the doctor to accept her unfinished statements (via main clause omissions) to be accepted as a request, the doctor avoids rejecting the request by asking for clarification so that the actual request may be delivered in attenuated form. Main clause omission is used as a repair action (line 27), while also saving face, after the patient's unsuccessful first attempt at receiving the desired treatment plan. Both requests are unsuccessful, however, and the patient ultimately fails to receive the desired shot.

The following example also displays an unsuccessful request from the patient delivered via main clause omission. Similar to the prior example, rather than directly rejecting the request, the doctor performs face saving work by using non-verbal cues, accounts and hesitation markers that show the dispreferred nature of his own actions. The patient was visiting a family medical department at a university hospital to complain of a skin rash that had (re)appeared on his hand. The following example was taken from the history taking phase of the medical encounter in which the doctor asks questions related to the symptoms/problems that the patient have earlier presented. The patient was indirectly advocating for an antibiotic shot by first appealing to a non-medical contingency – he had a (knee) surgery scheduled on the same day so it was convenient for him to make the quick visit to the family medical department for a shot before the problem worsened (lines 66–67). In the following, the lines containing the patient's main clause omission based requests are marked with arrows (lines 66–67).

Example 4. CU\_#5\_63

```
68 지금. 주사 한대 맞을까 하고(hhhh).
          cikum. cwusa han-tay mac-ul-kka ha-ko(hhhh).
          now shot one-shot get-ACC-INTERR do-CONN
          now. (I thought I might as well) get one shot and (hhh).
69 DOC: mm.
70 (0.2)
71 DOC: .hhh 이- 이런 경우: 이런 식으로 도진 거는::,
          .hhh i- ile-n kyengwu: ile-n sik-ulo toci-n-ke-nu::n,
           this- this-ATTR case this-ATTR type-INS reappear-ATTR-thing-TOP
72 .hhh 원인을 찾기는 쫌 어려워요. 실제로는.=
          .hhh wenin-ul chatki-nun ccom elyewe-yo. Silceylo-nun.=
           reason-ACC find-TOP a.bit difficult-POL reality-TOP
          .hhh This- cases like this: when (rashes) reappear like this::
          .hhh (It's) a bit difficult to find the reason. In reality.=
73 PAT: =이: 좀 더 전에는 쫌 많이 났을 때는
          =i: com te ceney-nun ccom manhi na-ss-ul ttay-nun
          This a.bit DC before-TOP a.bit many appear-PST-ACC-when-TOP
74 이게 가려워가지고? [이게=
          i-key kalyewo-kaciko? [i-key=
          This-thing itchy-so this.thing
          =this- um a while back when (this) was much bigger this
          was itchy so? [this=
75 DOC: [mm.
```