Japanese sociolinguistics politeness and women's language

Abstract

The most interesting but recalcitrant issue in Japanese sociolinguistics is perhaps honorifics. In Japanese, honorifics are a morphologically welldefined system which is used to express politeness. There are various devices to express politeness in language, but honorifics are the core of Japanese polite expressions. In this paper I will first present a description of the grammar of honorifics. Honorifics are used when social factors call for polite speech patterns; that is, when we refer to or address a respectable person or when formality is involved. I will then describe who a respectable person is and what formality is in Japanese society ~ the description here is given in the form of social rules for politeness. It is assumed that our polite behavior is controlled by such social rules. It is in terms of both the grammatical rules and the social rules of politeness that the communicative competence of honorifics is to be described. In a discussion of polite language, women’s language cannot be ignored, for one of the fairly wide-spread features of women’s language is its politeness. Japanese women’s speech, which has features distinct from men’s speech, is no exception. For this reason, Japanese women’s speech is briefly discussed to see what features contribute to make women’s speech polite in Japanese. Following this discussion, universal features of polite speech are sought.