Subordinates’ use of Japanese plain forms: An examination of superior–subordinate interactions in the workplace

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Early research on Japanese honorific and plain forms (i.e., non-honorific forms) claims that the use of honorific forms is socio-pragmatically governed, so that the speaker of lower status is obligated to employ these forms when interacting with an addressee of higher status. On the other hand, more recent studies on this topic empirically demonstrate that lower-status speakers employ a mixed use of honorific and plain forms even in inter-status interactions. Building on this recent work, this study examines subordinates’ use of plain forms in superior–subordinate interactions in a Japanese workplace, focusing on indexical meanings of these forms. The data in this study demonstrate that subordinates adopt plain forms in diverse situated contexts, such as self-addressing utterances, providing opinions, and clarifying superiors’ directives. Confirming that individuals adopt plain forms in a strategic manner even in a context where a hierarchical differential clearly exists, this study concludes that in superior–subordinate interactions in workplace discourse, subordinates’ use of the plain form indexes (1) the speaker's inward thought, and (2) the speaker's highlighting of information. The findings of this study further support the more recent research on indexical meanings of the plain form in Japanese.