Decentring Linguistics

A Japanese Perspective

Abstract

The epistemological space of the contemporary globalized linguistic academia is, without a doubt, heavily dominated by a Western-centred perspective, which provides the reference frame of categories, concepts, and theories, and which positions itself as the point of origin of comparative and generalizing discourse. Within this context, it is important to reassess the importance of alternative, non-Western linguistic traditions and to allow their methods, concepts, and achievements to contribute more inclusively to the advancement of globalized linguistics in a cumulative fashion. With its rich tradition of philological and linguistic thought, Japan is an ideal pole for such a decentred perspective. As a defence and illustration of the heuristic power of the approach advocated here, this paper presents three issues drawn from the phonological and morphophonological subfields – the mora and syllable, rendaku, and the use of the meta-term akusento (‘accent’) – to show how not only empirical data drawn from the Japanese language but also theories, notions, and perspectives developed within the Japanese approaches to language and linguistics can help achieve the decentring and reflexive enterprise that is arguably required in contemporary academia.