A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HONORIFICS IN KOREAN AND UZBEK: FOCUSING ON INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Abstract

This study conducts a comprehensive contrastive analysis of the honorific systems in the Korean and Uzbek languages to identify linguistic mechanisms and cultural factors governing politeness in both societies. While the Korean language features a highly complex, grammatically institutionalized honorific system categorized into subject, object, and hearer honorifics, the Uzbek language primarily utilizes pronominal shifts (the second-person plural pronoun Siz) and corresponding verbal inflections (-siz, -lar) to express sociolinguistic distance and respect. This paper investigates how Confucian hierarchical values in Korea and Islamic principles of mutual respect and familial honor in Uzbekistan have shaped these respective linguistic frameworks. Finally, the study outlines pedagogical strategies aimed at improving Korean language curriculum design for Uzbek native speakers, specifically addressing the acquisition of speech levels