「身の上」の成立

『女学雑誌』「いへのとも」からはじまる紙上「身の上相談」

抄録

　Based on discourse analysis of the text, this paper attempts to clarify the origin of the ‘personal advice column’, which has not hitherto been fully examined. The origin of the ‘personal advice column’ is admitted to lie in the column ‘Ienotomo’ of ‘Jogakuzasshi’ published in the middle of the Meiji era. Although the contents were not as diversified as they are today, issues related to personal matters began to be discussed. Through discourse analysis of the text, I have analyzed its development toward construction of the genre.　Firstly, I focused on the development of the subject matter discussed in the text as it shifted from topics related to ‘knowledge’, such as one’s knowledge about historical facts and understanding of vocabulary, to matters related to the contributors’ ‘experience’, such as marriage and giving birth. Secondly, I focused on the relationships among the following three intermingled forms of discourse: ‘informative discourse’, ‘normative discourse’, and ‘narrative discourse’. The first provides a dictionary-like explanation of the issues of people’s interest. The second deals with everyday issues which people face, such as marriage and giving birth. However, those experiences are presented through collective narratives using ‘we’. Finally, the third deals with everyday issues through the first-person narrative using ‘I’, and the individualized issue is organized in chronological order of cause and effect in order to ensure the legitimacy of contributors’ narratives. Likewise, a similar pattern of discourse is observed in the answers by the editors to contributors. It is at this stage that we find the origin of the ‘personal advice column’. Through examination of the creation of the personal advice column, I argue that this approach is also suggestive in exploring thoughts on the construction of the modern subjectivity of ‘I’, as well as its normative implications.