Pragmatics of Japanese
Pragmatics of Japanese

Author: Mutsuko Endo Hudson

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2018-04-15

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 9027264406

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Bringing together the latest studies on Japanese pragmatics, this edited volume showcases the breadth of research conducted in this ever-expanding, interdisciplinary field, with the introductory chapter providing a useful summary of developments in the field in the past decades. The twelve chapters address a variety of traditional and emerging topics by adopting diverse theoretical and methodological frameworks and presenting a range of perspectives on grammar, interaction and culture. They demonstrate a wide scope of pragmatics research informed by, as well as informing, usage-based grammar, cognitive linguistics, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and literary and cultural studies. Chapters also consider future directions as to how the study of Japanese language in use will continue to offer critical data and analyses to the field dominated by the study of English and other European languages. This volume is certain to be of interest to students and scholars engaged in pragmatics in general and the Japanese language in particular.

Handbook of Japanese Semantics and Pragmatics
Handbook of Japanese Semantics and Pragmatics

Author: Wesley M. Jacobsen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-10-12

Total Pages: 1183

ISBN-13: 1501501054

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The volume on Semantics and Pragmatics presents a collection of studies on linguistic meaning in Japanese, either as conventionally encoded in linguistic form (the field of semantics) or as generated by the interaction of form with context (the field of pragmatics), representing a range of ideas and approaches that are currently most influentialin these fields. The studies are organized around a model that has long currency in traditional Japanese grammar, whereby the linguistic clause consists of a multiply nested structure centered in a propositional core of objective meaning around which forms are deployed that express progressively more subjective meaning as one moves away from the core toward the periphery of the clause. The volume seeks to achieve a balance in highlighting both insights that semantic and pragmatic theory has to offer to the study of Japanese as a particular language and, conversely, contributions that Japanese has to make to semantic and pragmatic theory in areas of meaning that are either uniquely encoded, or encoded to a higher degree of specificity, in Japanese by comparison to other languages, such as conditional forms, forms expressing varying types of speaker modality, and social deixis.

Japanese Discourse Markers
Japanese Discourse Markers

Author: Noriko Onodera

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2004-01-01

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9789027253750

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This book is one of the pioneering historical pragmatic studies of Japanese. It closely illustrates the usage and contributions of some Japanese discourse markers, and reveals their developmental history. The section on Synchronic Analysis explores the previously uninvestigated functions of some discourse markers used in Present Day Japanese. Moment by moment in on-going conversations, where culturally rigidly-defined interactional norms are highly valued, a specific marker is chosen and used by the speakers as their strategy, based on their quite subjective judgment. The section on Diachronic Analysis then demonstrates chronologically how the meanings and forms of the same markers have come into being. Results include some noticeable changes related to the strengthened intersubjectivity. This multi-dimensional study also discusses the relevance of findings to typological characteristics and productivity. Consideration is further given to why certain expressions (rather than others) become discourse markers and independent forms in Japanese.

Diachrony of Personal Pronouns in Japanese
Diachrony of Personal Pronouns in Japanese

Author: Osamu Ishiyama

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 9027262810

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Personal pronouns in Japanese form a heterogeneous category. This book investigates their historical development from a functional perspective. It shows that while nouns give rise to personal pronouns through semanticization of pragmatic inferences, the use of non-nominal forms such as demonstratives and reflexives for person referents can be resolved within their original functions, offering little reason to treat them as personal pronouns. The cross-linguistic investigation into the common sources of personal pronouns reveals that the development of personal pronouns from nouns is largely consistent with grammaticalization, but that of forms of non-nominal origins requires separate mechanisms such as spatial/empathetic perspectives and displacement of semantic features for politeness, showing that a one-size-fits-all approach to diachrony of personal pronouns is not sufficient. This book will be of special interest to researchers and students in historical linguistics, pragmatics, and Japanese linguistics, who take a functional view of language.

Bonding through Context
Bonding through Context

Author: Risako Ide

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 902726063X

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This book examines the linguistic and interactional mechanisms through which people bond or feel bonded with one another by analyzing situated discourse in Japanese contexts. The term “bonding” points to the sense of co-presence, belonging, and alignment with others as well as with the space of interaction. We analyze bonding as established, not only through the usage of language as a foregrounded code, but also through multi-layered contexts shared on the interactional, corporeal, and socio-cultural levels. The volume comprises twelve chapters examining the processes of bonding (and un-bonding) using situated discourse taken from rich ethnographic data including police suspect interrogations, Skype-mediated family conversations, theatrical rehearsals, storytelling, business email correspondence and advertisements. While the book focuses on processes of bonding in Japanese discourse, the concept of bonding can be applied universally in analyzing the co-creation of semiotic, pragmatic, and communal space in situated discourse.

Explorations in Japanese Sociolinguistics
Explorations in Japanese Sociolinguistics

Author: Leo Loveday

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1986-01-01

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 9027225516

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Explorations in Japanese Sociolinguistics provides a treasure of information on the Japanese language and the social and cultural system it has developed and is embedded in. To the non-specialist, it opens an unknown world. To the specialist it offers theoretical and methodological perspectives aimed at avoiding the interference of myth and musing with accurate characterizations. A general introduction on Japanese sociolinguistics is followed by two case studies, one on the ethnography of ritual and address at a Japanese wedding reception, and one on the pragmatics of Japanese donatory verbs. The final chapter discusses cross-cultural contrasts and the danger of semiotic schism in Japanese-Western interaction.

Style Shifting in Japanese
Style Shifting in Japanese

Author: Kimberly Jones

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9027254257

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This innovative and interdisciplinary book on style shifting in Japanese brings together a wide range of perspectives and methodologies—including discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and functional linguistics—to look at a variety of types of style shifting in both spoken and written Japanese discourse. Though diverse in approach, the contributions all reflect the belief that language use is inextricably linked to both context and language structure in mutually constitutive relationships. Topics covered include shifting between "polite" and "plain" styles, the emergence of a "semi-polite" style, speakers' strategic use of gendered styles or regional dialects, shifting between different deictic expressions, and prosodic shifting. This careful and detailed examination advances our understanding of the complex phenomenon of style shifting not only in Japanese, but also more generally, and will be of interest to researchers and students in fields such as linguistics, linguistic anthropology, communication studies, and second language acquisition and teaching.

Pragmatics in Language Teaching
Pragmatics in Language Teaching

Author: Kenneth R. Rose

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-10-15

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9780521008587

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Pragmatics in Language Teaching examines the acquisition of language use in social contexts in second and foreign language classrooms. Included are 2 state-of-the-art survey chapters, and 11 chapters reporting the results of empirical research. The empirical studies cover three areas: incidental acquisition of pragmatics in instructed contexts, the effects of instruction in pragmatics, and the assessment of pragmatics ability. The studies address a number of areas in pragmatics, from speech acts and discourse markers to conversational routines and address terms, and represent a range of target languages and contexts in the United States, Asia, and Europe.

Linguistic Creativity in Japanese Discourse
Linguistic Creativity in Japanese Discourse

Author: Senko K. Maynard

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 9789027254023

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Using theoretical concepts of self, perspective, and voice as an interpretive guide, and based on the Place of Negotiation theory, this volume explores the phenomenon of linguistic creativity in Japanese discourse, i.e., the use of language in specific ways for foregrounding personalized expressive meanings. Personalized expressive meanings include psychological, emotive, interpersonal, and rhetorical aspects of communication, encompassing broad meanings such as feelings of intimacy or distance, emotion, empathy, humor, playfulness, persona, sense of self, identity, rhetorical effects, and so on. Nine analysis chapters explore the meanings, functions, and effects observable in the indices of linguistic creativity, focusing on discourse creativity (style mixture, borrowing others' styles, genre mixture), rhetorical creativity (puns, metaphors, metaphors in multimodal discourse), and grammatical creativity (negatives, demonstratives, first-person references). Based on the analysis of verbal and visual data drawn from multiple genres of contemporary cultural discourse, this work reveals that by creatively expressing in language we share our worlds from multiple perspectives, we speak in self's and others' many voices, and we endlessly create personalized expressive meanings as testimony to our own sense of being.

Soliloquy in Japanese and English
Soliloquy in Japanese and English

Author: Yoko Hasegawa

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 9027256063

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Language is recognized as an instrument of communication and thought. Under the shadow of prevailing investigation of language as a communicative means, its function as a tool for thinking has long been neglected in empirical research, vis-a-vis philosophical discussions. Language manifests itself differently when there is no interlocutor to communicate and interact. How is it similar and how does it differ in these two situations communication and thought? "Soliloquy in Japanese and English" analyzes experimentally-obtained soliloquy data in Japanese and in English and explores the potential utility of such data for delving into this uncharted territory. It deals with five topics in which elimination from discourse of an addressee is particularly relevant and significant. Four are derived from Japanese: the sentence-final particles "ne" and "yo," deixis and anaphora, gendered speech, linguistic politeness; the fifth topic is the use of the second person pronoun "you" in soliloquy in English."