[ Panels by World Area Main Menu ]
[ View the Timetable of Panels ]
Emerging Perspectives in Analyzing 'Shift' in Language Use: Cognitive, Linguistic and Cultural
Organizer: Fumiko Nazikian, Columbia University
Chair: Kimberly A. Jones, University of Arizona
Discussant: Kimberly A. Jones, University of Arizona
Language use is situated in various contexts such as setting/scenes, participants, goals, etc. (e.g., Hymes 1974). When we look at language use, it is becoming increasingly clear that style shifting plays an important role in achieving various communicative strategies. This panel aims to contribute towards the understanding of how linguistic shifting is based on cognitive, affective and cultural factors. The first paper in this panel unites cultural geography and linguistics, and considers three major elements of the language use in Japanese public signs, speech acts, targeted behavior, and linguistic form. In the second paper, we address shifting between formal, informal and impersonal speech styles and show how style-shifting is used to adopt other viewpoints. The third paper of the panel examines cognitive conditions under which the shifting from a bare-noun to a tachi-suffixed noun occurs; the paper demonstrates how the speaker's spatio-cognitive notions of uchi 'in-group' and soto 'out-group' plays a key role in shifting in the use of tachi suffix.
"[We] Humbly Request that [You] Refrain From Smoking Here": Japan's Linguistic Landscape
Patricia J. Wetzel, Portland State
The "linguistic landscape" refers to the setting for language use. Not only do we associate certain kinds of language with particular settings, language is oftentimes contingent upon location for its meaning. Public signs in Japan address everything from smoking to parking to litter to cell phones, and they vary considerably in their use of language. I propose three elements that converge to distinguish genres in the world of Japanese signs: speech act, targeted behavior, and linguistic form. Focusing on the language in these signs, I propose to unite two threads of contemporary scholarship-cultural geography and linguistics-to outline the parameters of language that combine with setting to create a world that is Japanese and not some other.
"Shifting styles and shifting viewpoints"
Fumiko Nazikian, Columbia University
Speech style mixing commonly occurs in discourse and is considered one of the major difficulties for the Japanese learner. Its mechanism is not fully understood. Previous studies predominantly focus on the informal speech style (IF) of da verb ending forms. However, Cook (2002) indicates that da verb ending forms also index 'impersonal' speech style (IP). Cook's distinction of impersonal and informal speech style is insightful, however there remains a fundamental mystery of what motivates the speaker to shift to the impersonal speech style. A particularly interesting example of shifting to impersonal speech style can be found in institutional speech such as TV interviews and in some written texts such as newspaper articles. Analysis of conversations taken from a TV interview program and of newspaper articles reveal that switching to the impersonal speech style occurs when the interviewer or the writer voices other people's perspective. Comparing the roles of the host of the TV interview programs and the reporter of the newspaper article to that of the katarite 'narrator' of stories, this study shows that style-shifting in institutional talks and written texts is motivated by the host's/writer's effort to situate herself as a 'stagehand' to facilitate a better understanding of the content of information between the guest and the mass audience. We discuss these two functions of the impersonal speech style based on the notion of 'conversational dominance' by Itakura (2001) and on the notion of shiten 'viewpoint' by Miyazaki & Ueno (1985).
"Shift in Number Assignment in Japanese Discourse"
Seiichi Makino, Princeton University
Unlike Indo-Eureopean languages, any Japanese noun is unmarked with regard to number; in other words, it is a "bare" noun just like an English collective noun. My research on -tachi led me to two important findings: one is, -tachi is attachable to practically any noun, including both animate and inanimate objects, and, secondly, a bare noun in the beginning of discourse shifts to a tachi-suffixed noun in discourse under certain cognitive conditions. The first finding reveals Japanese categorization of objects in the Japanese environment from the category of humans through all sorts of living creatures to abstract concepts with a complicated hierarchical order. This finding has to do with historio-cultural results, whereas the second finding is a synchronic process that is being generated by human cognition of spatio-cognitive notions of uchi and soto. When one category, let us say, an insect ('fire-fly', for example) becomes almost permanently categorized as psychologically uchi-insect, then the suffix -tachi is easier to be attached, and the synchronic attachment of the suffix is result of Japanese psychological closeness to the insect. Exactly the same process of the suffix-attachment occurs temporally in a given discourse if the speaker/writer believes he/she can cognitively categorize an object as belonging to uchi space. My paper intends to show how lack of number as obligatory grammatical agreement reveals intricacies of diachronic and synchronic Japanese cognitive processes through a tiny window of the plural marker -tachi.