Moves and Strategies Used in Complaint Emails Used by Korean speakers of English

This study examines the moves and strategies employed by Korean speakers of English. Complaining involves reacting with discontent to the act performed by the complainee. Thus, complaining constitutes a face-threatening act for both native and non-native speakers of a language. To avoid putting the communication process at risk, both socio-pragmatic appropriacy and language adequacy are vital. Thus, the speaker is required to have socio-cultural competence as well as linguistic competence to perform the speech act appropriately. Written complaints by non-native speakers of English have drawn scholarly attention in various contexts. Written complaint by Korean speakers of English, however, have been mostly neglected. To fill the gap, therefore, this study analyzed emails of complaint of 40 Korean speakers of English with above upper intermediate English proficiency. Data analysis show that Korean speakers of English often transfer substrategies from their LI and tend to delay the statement of predicament in favor of lengthy openers, which contrasts native English speakers. (Kongju National University · Hannam University)