Organizer: Miyako Inoue, Washington University, St. Louis
Chair: Patricia J. Wetzel, Portland State University
Discussant: Charles J. Quinn, Jr., Ohio State University
The actual behavior of socially-situated actors diverges, often in systematic ways, from the predictions of the prevailing models of sociolinguistics. Japanese cases in point, examined in this panel, include studies of women who do not speak "women's language," of social subordinates who do not use the "obligatory" honorifics toward social superiors, of vernacular descriptions of linguistic convention that do not jibe with received theory, of actors "inappropriately" using linguistic convention to create or project the very reality such convention is said to encode. These studies are not windows on sociolinguistic "deviance" or "marginality," but rather indications of the remarkable complexity of real speech on the part of real actors in a very concrete and material social world.
What reframing of sociolinguistic theory would allow us to account for and make sense of these unpredicted "voices" without consigning them the category of statistical outlier? Is there a theoretical perspective that would reflect another kind of systematicity in these divergent voices? From a different perspective, how do these studies force us to reconsider the central tenets sociolinguistics? Does the increasing awareness of heterogeneity in our empirical studies suggest that our central paradigms are insufficient and in need of reconceptualization? This panel will attempt to draw together some rather disparate phenomena and suggest solutions to common issues.
Indexicality and Japanese Addressee Honorifics
Haruko Minegishi Cook, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
The relationship between linguistic forms and social meanings is complex, and in most cases social identities are not directly indexed by a linguistic form (e.g. Brown and Levinson 1979; Ochs 1988, 1990). Ochs (1990, in press) has recently proposed that a linguistic form directly indexes a particular social category and that it can further index various others through the direct index. She suggests that, crosslinguistically, linguistic forms directly index affective and epistemic stances, which are building blocks of social identities and other social categories. This view challenges the major assumption often held in the study of honorifics: that honorifics are grammatical encodings of social statuses and situations.
This paper studies the Japanese addressee honorific form (the -masu form) and its non-honorific counterpart (the so-called plain form), which are typically analyzed in terms of formality/politeness and informality/casualness respectively. The goals of the present study are to reanalyze these forms from the indexical perspective and to identify their direct indexical meanings as well as to demonstrate how the direct indexical meanings help constitute other social meanings. The data used in this study are naturally occurring conversations from various social situations.
The paper proposes that the -masu and plain forms directly index culturally significant affective stances, namely the two basic modes of self in Japanese society, "disciplined" and "spontaneous," respectively (Rosenberger 1989). It also shows how these meanings indirectly index other social information including politeness. This analysis can account for many uses of these two forms which were previously not explained.
Subversive Subordinates or Situated Language Use? A Look at Keigo Ideology and
Sociolinguistic Description
Laura Miller, Loyola University of Chicago
One cherished conviction commonly found in Japanese sociolinguistic research is that conversation between individuals in hierarchical relationships is requisitely marked with linguistic features of the keigo (honorific/polite speech) system. It has also been noted that keigo may index relations of intimacy or social distance described as an in-group or out-group orientation reflected in the metaphors of uchi and soto. Yet even in an in-group setting such as the workplace, many scholars insist that hierarchy is strictly observed, and that use of keigo is therefore obligatory.
This paper proposes an alternative to traditional approaches which routinely confound linguistic ideology about keigo with sociolinguistic description of situated language use. Videotaped and audiotaped instances of naturally-occurring workplace interaction will be used to support two unorthodox ideas:
(l) Hierarchical roles are not necessarily exhibited through the use of expected or exemplary linguistic forms. Instead, there is considerable register-mixing, and deference and dominance may be displayed through other aspects of the discourse or communicative situation.
(2) Situated language use is not iconic with social hierarchy, and coworkers do not continuously, or exclusively, orient to each other as representatives of pre-assigned social categories.
The findings suggest that, rather than starting with a folk model of what constitutes "proper" or "appropriate" speech, the locus of our sociolinguistic investigations should be natural conversations, in which participants are seen to draw from a repertoire of linguistic forms to index a variety of social personas, scripts, and meanings.
Japanese Women's Speech: Beyond Indexing Gender
Shigeko Okamoto, California State University, Fresno and University of California,
Santa Cruz
Previous studies of Japanese language and gender have focused mainly on the differences between male and female speech patterns or "languages" and paid little attention to category-internal variability. (e.g. Ide 1979, 1990; Reynolds 1985; Shibamoto 1985; Smith 1992). This study examines actual speech of Tokyo women-10 middle-aged women and 10 college students-and shows that their speech exhibits wide variation, often failing to conform to "Japanese women's language." Analysis of the data indicates that the category commonly delineated as "Japanese women's language" represents a class-based cultural norm and does not accurately capture actual speech practices. Variability in Japanese female speech is common and its careful examination suggests that linguistic expressions do not directly relate to, or index, gender as a unified category: ways of being men and women are diverse, as are their ways of talking. Thus Japanese women's choice among speech styles is a complex process involving a context-specific consideration of multiple social attributes associated with identity and relationship (e.g. gender, age, social class, intimacy) as well as an evaluation of relevant linguistic norms. Women, then, may or may not choose to use "women's language," or a particular speech style, to index-indirectly through the pragmatic force (e.g. strong or mild assertion) of linguistic expressions-various social meanings such as identity (e.g. what kind of woman), solidarity, power, and gender ideology.
Just Folks: Native Speaker Theories of Honorifics
Miyako Inoue, Washington University, St. Louis
Patricia J. Wetzel, Portland State University
Research on Japanese keigo represents a broad spectrum of theoretical perspectives. Among Western-trained linguists, this includes structural delimitation of keigo categories (Martin 1964, 1975, Miller 1967, 1971), the syntax of honorifics (Harada 1976), and pragmatic and sociolinguistic research (Hendry 1990, Ide 1986, Wetzel 1994a, 1994b). Among native Japanese linguists, there is an attempt to tie keigo in to a larger system-so-called taiguuhyoogen-of linguistically-mediated social relationships that includes not only politeness behavior, but also, at the opposite pole, the acts of cursing and insulting (Minami 1987, Oishi 1977, Tsujimura 1992).
We add to these a third classification: "vernacular" analysis of keigo-that is, what native speakers take to include and define this category. Native or folk accounts are a new source of concern for sociolinguists such as Cameron, et. al. (1992) for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the question of whether speakers of a language can comply with conventions (especially as defined by an outsider) that do not "make sense" within their frame of reference. As non-western cultures increasingly demand autonomy in their own self study, the analysis of keigo is muddied by conflicts between Western and Japanese cultural assumptions that underlie theory.
This first pass at characterizing the vernacular understanding of keigo will enable us to give a fuller account of these linguistic forms than has been previously available. In the broader perspective it will tie the study of keigo to the sociopolitical issues being raised within contemporary sociolinguistics