A Contrastive Analysis of Discourse Structures in Korean and English

This paper presents a crude contrastive analysis of the structures of casual conversation and expository writing in Korean and English. The analysis focuses on the overall organizational patterns of the two types of discourse. Few major differences are found between the overall structures of casual conversation in the two languages. However, in the realization of certain structural elements, such as Greeting and Leave-taking, the two languages show some notable differences which reflect the social relationship' of the participants. As for the expository writings, it is shown that English writings are characterized by deductive and linear development in which the general topic of the writing is established early and the ensuing paragraphs are defined through a uniform orientation, each having its own topic sentence presented early in the paragraph. Korean writings, on the other hand, are shown to be characterized by non-deductive patterns in which the statement of the theme or topic is preceded by rather lengthy episodes or quotations from famous sayings or writings. Though the claim that most Korean writings are non-linear is rejected, it is admitted that the linearity in Korean writings is not as strong as that in English. It is also shown that the concept of paragraph is far less strong in Korean than in English.이 硏究는 1986年度 文敎部學術硏究組成費에 의해 이루어 진 것이다