Grammatik und Höflichkeit im Sprachvergleich: Direktive Handlungsspiele des Bittens, Aufforderns und Anweisens im Deutschen und Koreanischen

The study describes and compares politeness in 'directive' language games in German and Korean. On the basis of a speech-act theory of dialogue, utterance variants with different politeness functions are identified and related to respective cultural particularities. The results indicate both differences and commonalities in the orientation to principles of politeness, thus not only extending the insights of systematic linguistic analysis but also pinpointing politeness as an integral component of communicative grammar.