Pragmatics and Noonchi

In college, I took a few linguistics classes, one of which involved pragmatics. What is pragmatics, you ask. Good question. In linguistics, you have syntax, which deals with the structure of language. Then you have semantics, which deals with the meaning of language. Pragmatics involves context, stuff that’s communicated beyond the meaning of the words. An example: say there’s an exchange where someone is describing a single girl to a single guy, and the guy asks if she’s attractive. Other person pauses, then responds, “She has a great personality.” There’s a clear message there, but it’s not captured by the meaning of the response itself. It’s contextual. That’s pragmatics.

Anyway, for my final paper I did an examination of Korean, with a lot of help from Jieun, since my Korean is worse than Shaq’s free throw form. Here’s the weird thing about Korean – at least conversationally, a ton of it is ambiguous and contextual. For example, “I gave it to him”, “They gave it to you”, “Did she give them to us?” could all be expressed in Korean the exact same way – the subject, direct and indirect object are all optional, and frequently left out. It’s all defined by context.

There’s a raging debate about whether thinking affects language or vice versa, but I do think that the features of a language say something about the cultures that use it. With Korean, the fact that so much of the language depends on context for meaning reflects the culture, where so much is unsaid and beneath the surface, where there’s a concept of noonchi – intuitive thinking – that understands beyond what’s actually said or done. I think it’s reflected in the language itself.

And personally, that’s the part of both the language and culture that I least get. The unclarity and imprecision of it all, where what you mean doesn’t match what you say. That’s also the part of me that frustrates Jieun the most, my lack of contextual understanding, but for the life of me, I don’t know how to get over that. I’m not Korean, I’m American, and I just can’t grasp how one could say something and mean something completely different.

So I’m starting to think maybe the secret is knowing Korean better, since it’s built in to the language. As I recall, Dave got way more obsessed about social situations and contexts after his Korean skills improved. Perhaps that’s the key. Too bad I’m too lazy to do it.

On a related note, Jieun said to me the other day, “Abby needs to know three languages by the time she’s two.” Yikes. No pressure or anything.