Reference Terms Used among Members of a Family : The Speaker's Viewpoint of the Referent and the Linguistic Form of the Referent

Abstract

Previous studies on person deixis have tended to deal with the expression of the speaker or the hearer, rather than the linguistic form referring to the third person. This may be due to the fact that analysis of reference terms seeks to explore the complicated human relationships between the speaker, the hearer, and the referent. This paper analyzes reference terms used among members of a family, which is one of the three major contexts in the study of the person deixis in Japanese, as Koizumi (1990) points out. The data analyzed in this study was obtained by means of participant observation. The detailed examination of the recorded data led to the following four findings: (1) The speaker adopts three kinds of viewpoints of the referent: the speaker's viewpoint, the hearer's viewpoint, and a third person viewpoint. (2) The third person is referred to by kinship terms, first name, and surname. (3) Generational differences and blood relationships between the speaker, the hearer, and the referent are two crucial factors which affect the speaker's choice of linguistic forms. (4) The hearer's age has an influence on deciding the speaker's viewpoint of the referent.