Organizer and Chair: Patricia J. Wetzel, Portland State University
Discussant: Eleanor H. Jorden, Cornell University
A key feature of linguistic science has been, since the founding of structuralism, the distinction between description and prescription, the linguist’s task being to describe what is and not prescribe what ought to be. Yet linguists’ distancing themselves from prescriptive issues has not caused a diminishing of debate or disagreement about what is "right," "correct," or "standard." There is increasing interest within "descriptive" linguistics in popular "prescriptive" attitudes about and portrayals of language. The population at large has a vested interest in linguistic convention; people can and do actively interpret as well as interfere in linguistic convention. And when this happens it behooves linguistic science to take notice; the scientific study of language is incomplete without an understanding of the power of beliefs and attitudes about language. This panel examines four of the interfaces between language and its users: strategic manipulation of regional and standard language, the interpretation of classical language forms in contemporary Japan, the ideology of language advice literature, and the modernization of honorific language or keigo. What we discover is that vernacular analysis and beliefs are of real value in explaining how language works, how and why it changes, and why the linguist’s aversion to prescription merits reconsideration.
Learning Tradition: How-to Books on Spoken Japanese for Native Speakers
Akiko Kawasaki, Tsukuba University
Consciousness of and insecurity concerning language is very strong in Japan, especially among young people. When they enter junior high school, students try hard not to make mistakes in addressing senior students. When they undergo job interviews at the third or fourth year of college, students again become very conscious of language issues. When they start working, new recruits report on the difficulty of using language that will promote good relationships between them and their colleagues, boss, customers, etc. One reads about young mothers who are concerned about speaking and interacting in the PTA and other public forums. A genre of advice literature known here as "how-to" targets all of these concerns. This paper addresses the following points: what is the nature of the perceived need for how-to in Japanese society? And just what is taught in how-to books?
In contrast with American advice literature where readers are instructed in the principles or reasoned approach to appropriate behavior, in Japanese how-to form is of the essence. Japanese how-to books list useful expressions and associate them with situations, the implication being that if one can use these expressions properly and effectively, one will be considered a mature member of society. In this paper, Japanese expressions are analyzed and clustered into several types that reflect those virtues which are considered indispensable in Japanese society.
Strategic Manipulation of Regional and Standard Varieties of Japanese
Shigeko Okamoto, California State University, Fresno
It is often claimed that Japan has achieved extensive language standardization (see Inoue 1997 for a discussion). Yet in the process of standardization, new varieties, referred to as neo-dialects (Sanada 1992) and quasi-standards (Long 1996), are said to have emerged. Furthermore, regional varieties of Japanese have not lost their vitality and many speakers are bi- or multi-dialectal (e.g. Long 1996; Miyake 1998). However, few studies have examined Japanese speakers’ "code-switching" behavior as it pertains to non-standard varieties. This study analyzes audio-taped conversations of "bi-/multi-dialectal" speakers engaged in a variety of social interactions. The analysis shows that speakers do not simply code-switch between two distinct varieties but rather mix features of the two, creating intermediate varieties, or alternating forms of a neo-dialect. Depending on the context (e.g. peer vs. hierarchical relationship, public vs. private discourse), speakers strategically employ more or fewer standard (or regional) features, and this in turn contributes to the perception of more or less formal speech style. The resultant speech style not only indexes but at the same time projects social aspects of the communicative context (genre, degree of solidarity, nature of the setting, etc.). Japanese code-switching/style-shifting practice suggests that while the hegemony of standard Japanese is implicitly recognized by virtually all speakers, the social significance of regional varieties of Japanese persists as a force competing with the "dominant" Japanese language.
Interpreting Interpretive Tradition: Japanese Referential Predicates Then and Now
Charles J. Quinn, Jr., Ohio State University
In translating classical Japanese sentences that end in the rentai ‘adnominal’ inflection, there is a tradition of using the noun koto ‘matter, business, fact’ to indicate the earlier inflection’s nominalizing role. Oono Susumu, for example, regularly employs koto as a present-day equivalent for the rentai-inflected predicates of kakari-musubi sentences, and suggests that when it ends a sentence, rentai inflection actually means ‘. . . koto’ (1993: 203):
. . . kokoda kanasi ki (Manyooshuu 2299)
‘konna ni kanasii koto.’ (Oono 1993: 56).
The practice is observed in grammar handbooks and annotated editions of the classics, e.g.,
. . . akade mo hito ni wakarenuru ka na (Kokinshuu 404)
‘. . . akazu site anata ni owakare to iu koto ni narimasita.’ (Ozawa, ed. 1971: 889).
For most such predicates, however, the same editor prefers no to koto. The variation, if puzzling, seems fairly common.
Today’s no and koto are structurally similar; each nominalizes the clause it is head of. But they differ in the kind of reference they thereby create. If koto is basically generic, a maker of nonce common nouns, no refers to facts known within a particular universe of discourse, as a kind of nonce pronoun. Why, then, the received practice of understanding earlier rentai inflection sometimes as koto, and sometimes as no? This paper claims that present-day no is the better functional match for all cases of nominalizing rentaikei, but it also examines several reasons why a koto interpretation should insinuate itself, at least when the rentai-inflected predicate is that of the main clause.
The Modernization of Keigo
Patricia J. Wetzel, Portland State University
Modern discourse practices surrounding keigo ‘honorifics’ have grown more and more familiar in contemporary Japan via the policing of language and social convention by language professionals in what is called here the "how-to" industry. The how-to industry includes books and other print media along with educational enterprises both public and private whose purpose is to train Japanese in the finer points of speaking their own language. The appropriation of keigo by the how-to industry and its subsequent manipulation and portrayal in Japan is consistent with other features of linguistic modernization that Fairclough 1995 treats as "the technologization of discourse" (102) and that Giddens 1991 includes under "expert systems" (22). This discussion draws on Fairclough’s 1995 notion of "ideological discursive formations" (IDFs). An IDF may be thought of as a kind of speech community with its own discourse and ideological norms, the idea being that people construct themselves in accordance with those norms even though they may be unaware of their ideological underpinnings. One characteristic of the IDF is the capacity to "naturalize" ideologies, that is, to gain acceptance for them not as ideological but as "common sense." This paper analyzes the re-appropriation of keigo for modern Japan, and compares it to similar phenomena in other languages/cultures.