This paper critically reviews politeness studies of the past thirty years emphasizing the distinction between descriptive and theoretical approaches. Descriptive approaches refer to studies pursuing politeness realizations in various languages and cultures, whereas theoretical approaches refer to studies pursuing common principles, which systematically explain, interpret, and predict motivations that induce (im)politeness strategies in human interactions in various cultures. After examining the roles and significance of both approaches, I focus on the theoretical studies of politeness and reexamine Brown and Levinson's politeness theory and other major theoretical politeness studies inspired by their theory. I then summarize some crucial points to be developed and integrated into politeness theory in order to establish a more comprehensive discourse-level theory of politeness. I introduce Discourse Politeness Theory (DPT), which is based on a series of empirical studies of discourse behavior in naturally occurring conversations. This theory broadens politeness research to encompass the concept of relative politeness and permits the explanation of both politeness and impoliteness within the same framework, and allows the pursuit of common principles of discourse politeness in various languages. It can be considered both as a system of the principles of motivations that induce politeness strategies and as a system of the interpretations of both polite and impolite behavior in human interactions. In this paper, I introduce the newly developed parts of the theory, in which I propose that (im)politeness in human interactions should be captured from a more macro-global perspective in addition to a micro-local level. I also discuss the factors that I incorporated into the theory, such as face-balance principle, speaker's desire to save his/her own face, and bystanders presence, when estimating the degree of face threat in a certain act.

View full abstract

There are parallelisms between the three dyads, 'avoidance relationship vs joking relationship', 'honorifics vs non-honorifics' and 'negative politeness vs positive politeness'. The latter two pairs differ from the first anthropological one in that they are pragmatic in nature. This study looks at these two pairs in terms of pragmatic relativity. Firstly, as a means of indicating 'distance' between people, honorifics/non-honorifics delineate a picture of the human relationship on the basis of the empathy of the speaker. This is not a socio-linguistic but a pragmatic phenomenon, in that the picture always differs depending on the speaker's assumption. Secondly, honorifics seem to perform many different discourse functions like showing deference, demeanor, formality, alienation, and affection, and sometimes the use of the one form can even have opposite functions like showing distance and proximity. This paper argues that context in discourse plays key role, and that in order to see how honorifics and non-honorifics work in discourse, it is necessary to devise a scheme which formulates the contextual relations between their semantic and pragmatic functions.

View full abstract

Following a review of the past studies on Japanese honorifics, we claim that a new approach, based on real-time surveys of a speech community, will make a significant contribution to the field. Here we classify current approaches towards honorifics into four facets: (1) grammatical aspect, (2) socio-psychological aspect, (3) sociolinguistic aspect, (4) aspect in the sociology of language. Our literature review revealed that a large amount of attention has been paid to both the synchronic description of the phenomenon, and the analysis of the diachronic development of the honorific system in the history of Japanese language. What is required for the field at this stage, then, is an integration of the finding from both aspects. We show that it is best achieved through real-time surveys of a speech community, couched in the paradigms developed by the past NIJLA surveys and the Variation Theory. Okazaki Honorific Survey III, a research project initiated by NIJLA last year, aims at such an integration of the fields through working on a number of new research questions with newly developed analytical paradigms and techniques.

View full abstract

This paper discusses an attempt at a sociolinguistic analysis of the relationship between honorifics and economy will be discussed in this paper. The economy of language is analyzed from two standpoints; linguistic and extra-linguistic. The scale of High and Low, developed in the field of Diglossia is applied. This scale is effective in many fields of sociolinguistics. Regarding to the economy of language from the linguistic viewpoint, honorifics world-wide are explained on the basis of linguistic typology and economic development of societies. The length of honorific expressions and degrees of honorification were analyzed and correlations were found. The law of diminishing honorification and the theory of politeness are also discussed. The classification of Japanese honorifics into three categories rather than five was seen as economical and recommended on the basis of the facts that honorifics today are changing in a certain direction. Regarding the economy of language from the extra-linguistic viewpoint, analysis of opinion polls was attempted and a correlation between honorifics and occupation was ascertained. Taking this correlation as a means of explanation, the relationship between honorifics and economy was discussed. It was advocated that the scale of High-Low is applicable also for extra-linguistic conditions.

View full abstract

The purpose of the paper is twofold: (1) to propose a model to explain and estimate longitudinal survey data in Okazaki city on honorifics use; and (2) to discuss a theoretical explanation for the mechanism behind the language changes over time. The proposed model is a multiple logistic regression model to describe and predict language changes, with time in various forms, such as participants' ages and the time of data collection, providing some of the major variables. The paper demonstrates the applicability of the model to the longitudinal survey data on honorifics use in Okazaki city collected in 1953 and 1972. The analysis also predicted the upcoming 2006 data, based on the 1953 and 1972 data. The analysis showed efficient applicability of the model to predict language changes based on existing observed data of language changes. We also propose a model of the memory of language related to two variables; memory in the period of mother tongue acquisition for participants' ages and memory of language after the period of mother tongue acquisition for the time of data collection. The theoretical discussion explains the mechanism behind the observed language change phenomena from a psychological perspective, focusing on memory, an intra-personal variable.

View full abstract

This study has two purposes. The first is to investigate how we behave when we meet others and what our behavior represents in terms of honorifics. The second is to exemplify how behavior categorizes people. This study focuses not only on set phrases such as "ohayo" or "konnichiwa", which are already well researched, but on all types of linguistic behavior that take place when meeting others. The author refers to particular types of linguistic behavior as "AISATSU (colloquial greeting) expressions". This study investigates the use of "AISATSU expressions" by conducting a survey using self-recorded logs of the linguistic behavior of different individuals. Through an analysis using Ogino's quantitative theory, the following three facts were observed. First, the various types of "AISATSU expressions" can be arranged according to their level of politeness. Second, it can be clearly observed that "AISATSU expressions" categorize human relationships in the same way that honorific words do. That is to say, in the sense that "AISATSU expressions" indicate social relationships between speaker and listener, they function in the same way that honorific words do. Lastly, not only is the level of deference of the predicate important, but the content of the expression itself is also crucial in demonstrating the relationship between speaker and listener. Through this research, changes seen in "AISATSU expressions" over the past few years, which could not be explained by traditional views of AISATSU research methods, were explained.

View full abstract

When constructing "action-developing expressions," such as "〜ta hoo ga ii (should do 〜)" and "〜te kudasai (Please do 〜)", the speaker takes into consideration the needs of his/her partner and infers these needs from the context of each set of communication. This paper discusses the importance of the "inference of context needs" in the education of Japanese attitudinal expressions, focusing on "action-developing expressions". "Inference of context needs" refers to what the speaker quickly infers as needed in relation to the 'receiver' at the time of speaking. It is assumed that the "inference of context needs" is performed through "context scanning". "Context scanning" is conducted by the speaker, upon encountering the 'receiver', in order to determine how to construct his communication behavior. Furthermore, the "context needs" gained through this scanning process, along with the "reference information" that determines how he will treat the 'receiver', are considered to be very important in the realization of smooth communication. The above hypotheses for "Context Needs and Reference Information" and "Context Scanning" will be described in detail in Chapter 3, and Chapter 4, respectively.

View full abstract

Although Japanese newspapers used special imperial honorifics for the emperor and his family, their use drastically decreased during the post-World War II Allied Occupation. This study examines the major changes in the use of imperial honorifics and paralinguistics (the length of article's text, accompanying pictures, and arts of calligraphy works) in annual articles marking the emperor's birthday in the Asahi newspaper in the twentieth century. The study also examines the use of imperial honorifics in other national daily newspapers from 1945 to 1946 and explores the reasons behind the major changes in the use of imperial honorifics during the early phase of the Occupation. Furthermore, this study examines censor-reviewed (pre-publication) and published articles about the emperor and his family. It also includes interviews with individuals who might have influenced the newspaper use of imperial honorifics. The results imply that the decrease in honorific use was not part of an official censorship policy but rather that the Japanese censors working under the Occupation forces and newspaper editors might have simplified them on their own initiative.

View full abstract

This paper surveys usages of and changes in the first personal pronouns yo and wagahai used in the Meiji and the Taisho eras. Data for this paper is collected from the Taiyo Corpus based on the journal Taiyo published from 1895 to 1928. This research has revealed the following tendencies. Yo tended to be often used in descriptive text but was not used in dialogue, on the other hand wagahai tended to be used in not only descriptive text but also in dialogue. Yo expressed formality while wagahai expressed informality. Regarding changes, yo started to decline around the late Meiji era and the early Taisho era, and was hardly used in the late Taisho era. Similary, wagahai declined in the late Taisho era.

View full abstract

Most of the previous works on politeness, including Brown & Levinson (1987), have discussed within a limited scope in regards to the conduct of face threatening acts (FTA). In this paper, data collected from three different conversations where FTAs were strongly expressed were analyzed in order to see how the FTAs were exchanged between the participants as the discourse developed. The analysis revealed a new type of strategy which seeks to balance both the quantity and quality of FTAs conducted by the participants throughout the discourse; the participant who has produced relatively more FTAs may induce FTAs within the other participant against him/herself, and the receiver of the FTAs may conduct new FTAs either by induction or voluntarily. Another type of balance seeking behavior is to conduct new FTAs directed at him/herself after conducting excessive FTAs to the other participant. In conclusion, this balance seeking behavior tends to add FTAs, while the traditional politeness strategies tend to reduce FTAs.

View full abstract

This paper shows how the organization of instruction including its design and sequential trajectories in a university laboratory and a boxing gym, is affected by the organization of participants' visual attention at that moment. Based on C. Goodwin (2003, 2006, 2007), we show that taking body position where participants can see each other or look at the same object, enables them to use multimodal resources such as gestures, in order to show and understand their own actions. We also demonstrate that what kind of sequential trajectory appears depends on whether participants can establish such joint attention.

View full abstract

This paper discusses differences between affective expressions in English and Japanese novels focusing on narrative voices, and suggests that these differences are most likely attributable to linguistic features of English and Japanese. In English third-person novels, indirect discourse (ID) is the unmarked option for reporting the characters' thoughts, while free indirect discourse (FID) is frequently employed when the two voices of the character and narrator intermingle in one sentence. However, in Japanese versions of the same text, direct discourse (DD) is more frequently used to report the characters' thoughts and speech acts. In other words, readers hear the "direct voices" of characters. This distinction derives from how interpersonal expressions are used in each linguistic system. In English, auxiliary and modal verbs play an important role in interpersonal functions. When they appear, auxiliary and modal verbs do not enforce on readers a DD interpretation. Instead the sentence is likely to be treated as an FID rendition. In Japanese, on the other hand, sentence-final particles and auxiliary verbs like desu and masu are easily incorporated into sentence endings, manifesting interpersonal functions, through which readers hear characters' voices in the form of DD.

View full abstract

The Kinki dialect is different from the dialect of the Tokyo metropolitan area in that accent is placed at dependent moras, like /H/, /Q/, /N/, in some words. So, it is possible that speakers from these two areas differ in their perception of the duration of the moraic nasal, /N/. In this study, a recording of a native speaker of Japanese uttering the test words containing the moraic nasal /N/ was prepared, and the durations of the moraic nasal /N/ were changed. Ten females from the Tokyo metropolitan area and ten females from the Kinki area listened to these recordings and judged whether they thought the speaker was 'careless' towards the listener. When the moraic nasal /N/ was shortened, both groups tended to judge the speaker as 'careless' towards the listener. On the other hand, when the moraic nasal /N/ was lengthened, more Tokyo metropolitan speakers judged this as 'carelessness' towards the listener, while fewer Kinki speakers judged this as 'careless.' This indicates that linguistic environment influences perception.

View full abstract