This study examines the present-day use of the varieties which used to be categorized as “genderlects,” or gendered varieties, in standard Japanese and attempts to reveal that they have lost the function of gender markers... [ view full abstract ]
This study examines the present-day use of the varieties which used to be categorized as “genderlects,” or gendered varieties, in standard Japanese and attempts to reveal that they have lost the function of gender markers and have become part of a repertoire in intraspeaker stylistic variation.
Modern standard Japanese has been supposed to have a distinction between otoko kotoba (lit. men’s language) and onna kotoba (lit. women’s language). Native speakers of the language are well aware of the difference, which lies in prosodic, lexical, and morphological levels, and able to easily infer which gender is indexed when they perceive either one of the varieties. Although it has been reported that the difference of the language use between genders has been disappearing, the features of both genderlects are still observed in daily conversation. What then has been changing and what are the factors which motivate the use of those features?
Focusing on the intraspeaker variation/shifting in conversational discourse, this study attempts a discursive analysis of the speech by “bigenderlectals,” whose language use include various features from both of the two genderlects. The discussion is based on discursive analysis of the data collected from media interactions: mostly from open interactional interviews with live audience, in which the interviewers and auditors are of both genders in order to examine if the shifting is motivated by communication accommodation (Giles 2009) and/or audience design (Bell 1984, 2001). In particular, it analyzes the shifting between the gendered styles in relation to change in local topic and stance (Jaffe 2009).
It is discussed that bidialectal speakers are using the features in “genderlects” not in accordance with the shift in the speaker’s (momentary) gender identities, but as part of their repertoire. Analogous to conversational code-switching by bilinguals, they make shifting between the genderlects within a single interaction where the setting and the interlocutor(s) remain unchanged. The analysis reveals that the “genderlectal” features do not necessarily index the speaker’s gender or gender identity, but can be used as effective interactional devices in conversation.
