Differences in the Way of Perceiving and Describing Events between English and Japanese Native Speakers

Abstract

When describing an event with an agent and a patient, English native speakers show a stronger tendency to put an agent into the subject position than Japanese natives. This seems to show that English natives perceive events with a stronger focus on the agent than Japanese natives. This paper examines whether this linguistic-level tendency (and its difference between English and Japanese natives) stems from the difference on a cognitive level through an experiment in which subjects are presented with a set of events with an agent and a patient and instructed to imagine and describe what happens next. If English natives tend to put their focus more onto an agent than onto a patient, then they will imagine and describe what happens next to the agent often by placing the agent as the subject. The results of the experiment support this hypothesis; English natives describe the next scene by putting the agent into the subject position more often than Japanese natives. This suggests that English natives tend to focus more on an agent than Japanese natives both on a cognitive and linguistic level.