| The dissertation presents a sociohistoric study within the framework of critical pragmatics, which tries to analyze and articulate the interrelationships among dialects, sociolects, linguistic structures, linguistic theories, graphological systems, and their sociohistoric contexts. As an empirically-based case study, the dissertation deals with linguistic, metalinguistic, and other sociohistoric phenomena in Japan, covering historic developments, as well as important ruptures, from antiquity to the present, focusing on the modern period and, inter alia, the genealogy and social significances of modern linguistic standardization and dialectology.; More specifically, the dissertation analyzes and explores the following issues: (1) the history of Japanese graphological systems and native linguistic theories in relation to their social contexts; (2) the formal-structural, pragmatic, and social characteristics of dialects and sociolects in Old, Middle, early Modern, and Modern Japanese from the perspective of sociohistoric pragmatics; (3) the general features of linguistic, epistemic, literary, sociological, legal, and geopolitical transformations in the modern ages; (4) the vernacularization (genbun-itchi) movement in literature and official linguistics in the modern period; (5) the changing modern Japanese perceptions of China, Confucianism, and Sino-lexigraphs (Chinese characters) in the Meiji period (1868--1912); and (6) the activities of modern Japanese linguists and other intellectuals in the social matrix of national standardization, language education, and the mass media, such as woodblock prints, books, newspapers, journals, radio and television programs.; In so doing, the dissertation tries to demonstrate the power of critical sociohistoric pragmatics of provide theoretically grounded explications and empirically rich descriptions of linguistic and other sociohistoric phenomena as a complex yet integrated whole. |
