Gender features in modern Korean short stories

The Korean language contains an integral hierarchical system, expressed through levels of speech. These levels, expressed in a sentential structure, display solidarity or hierarchy between speaker and hearer. The 'high level' of speech style is used when a speaker wishes to give him/herself a lower status than the hearer. The 'low level' of speech style is used by people who consider themselves to have the same or lower status than the hearer. This characteristic of the Korean language enables people to detect social hierarchy between speaker and hearer by simply analysing their speech style. Socially acceptable indicators of higher status are age, rank and certain occupations. Writers use this linguistic feature to depict the social status of their characters without an explicit statement. There are cases whereby a made-up hierarchical relationship is imposed upon characters in foreign-language works through translation into Korean. Translators have no choice but to arbitrarily assign and depict the social rank of characters. Certain speech styles are selected by a translator through contextual inferences of a speaker's attitude towards a hearer. Notably, there is a gender-dependent division of speech styles between characters. Female characters described in fiction written in or translated into Korean tend to use more honorifics than males. Female characters do not normally use 'low level' speech style to males even to those of lower social rank. The presentation will show the analysis of the speech styles of characters from prominent modern short stories. The second aim is to provide an explanation to why writers and translators make female characters use honorifics more than males.