Interpersonal Functions of the Polite Forms Desu/Masu in Japanese Conversations

要旨

Studies in inter-language pragmatics have shown that second language speakers transfer pragmatic strategies of their native language in intercultural conversations and are misunderstood by speakers of other languages (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993; Kasper & Rose, 2001). This study is a part of group research projects which compare conversational styles of native speakers of Japanese (NSJ) and English (NSE) and examine causes of such misunderstandings by analyzing conversational data. We assume that there are cultural or social norms that a speaker of each language follows and transfers the norms when speaking with culturally and socially different speakers. The present study focuses on first encounter conversations to see how NSJ balance deference and closeness by investigating the uses of polite and non-polite forms. Japanese language has a long history of elaborate honorific systems, but studies of honorifics in a Western linguistic framework started in the middle of the Meiji Era towards the end of the nineteenth century, apart from the seminal works by Portuguese and British scholars which were written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Since the late twentieth century, it has become customary to divide Japanese honorifics into three categories: sonkeigo (respect language), kenjogo (humble language), and teineigo (polite language). Sonkeigo is employed as a means of raising addressee status and kenjogo as a means of lowering it. Teineigo is used in formal occasions or among speakers who are not very close to each other (Hayashi & Minami, 1974; Kikuchi, 1994; Nakayama, 2003; Takiura, 2005). The present study focuses on the use of polite forms desu/masu and non-polite forms which belong to the Teineigo category. In Japanese, there are two kinds of sentence final markers, the polite form desu/masu and the non-polite forms as illustrated in 1a and 1b.

主題