The myth of a homogenous grammar of Japanese women's language :

The speech of women in non-traditional gender roles

Shoji Takano

Sat. 11:00-12:40 C

Social constructions of gender in Japanese society today are undergoing rapid transformation. While the ideal of traditional gender roles (i.e. men's public roles and women's domestic roles) survives as an ideology, this ideology coexists with the reality of increasing numbers of women engaged in labor and even leadership roles outside the home. Mainstream research on gender differentiation in Japanese rests upon a simplistic view of the traditional complementary relationship: men work, and women stay at home with full responsibility for domestic matters. This common view has consistently led researchers to base descriptions of Japanese women's language exclusively on the speech of homemakers, especially those from middle-class salaried households in urban settings. While 'feminine' characteristics based on data from that restricted sector are purported to represent the speech of Japanese women as a whole, they do not necessarily conform to the speech of the the majority of Japanese women, many of whom lead different types of social lives (Endoo et al., 1989).

This paper challenges the 'prescriptive' homogeneous definition of Japanese women's language by shedding light on the speech of women who play 'innovative' gender roles-- professional women in leadership positions. Their variable grammar will be investigated and compared with the grammar described by previous studies of Japanese women's language (e.g. Shibamato, 1985). The results will show that the common assumption of 'women' (or 'men') as a linguistically 'homogenous group' is simply a myth (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992). Gender differentiation in language should be accounted for on the basis of the speaker's social practices in a particular local community.

Data come from sociolinguistic interview with 6 professional Japanese women in executives positions and 6 full-time homemakers and also vary in education, marital status, and social network patterns. Their speech, which includes narratives style, casual conversations with me, and responses to my information questions, will be analyzed in terms of the ellipses of the Japanese topic maker -wa, epistemic modality, and the use of sentence final particles, all of which have been suggested as markers for 'feminine' speech (Shibamoto, 1985, Smith, 1990). A variable rule analysis will demonstrate that the speech of women in executive positions involves a different grammar from that of homemakers . The Varbrul 4 program will be particularly used to cluster the speakers into appropriate sociolinguistic groups (Rousseau & Sankoff, 1978).

References

Eckert, P. and S. McConnell-Ginet. (1992). Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Reviews of Anthropology 21:461-490.

Endoo et al. (1989). Zyosei no hanashi kotoba: Terebi no intabyuu bangumi kara (Women's speech: Data from interview programs on TV). Kotoba 10: 1-84.

Rousseau, P. & Sankoff, D. (1978). A solution to the problem of grouping speakers. In D. Sankoff (ed.), Linguistic Variation: Models and Methods. New York: Academic Press.

Shibamoto, J. S. (1985). Japanese Women's Language. New York: Academic Press.

------. (1990). Sex-related variation in the ellipsis of wa and ga. In S. Ide & N.H. McGloin (eds.), Aspects of Japanese Women's Language. Tokyo: Kurosio. 81-104.

Smith, J.S. (1990). Linguistic privilege: "Just stating the facts" in Japanese. In K. Hall et al.(eds.), Locating Power, Volume II. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group. 540-548.