A Study Of The Japanese Language From Sociolinguistic Perspective

Having been studying Japanese and working in a Japanese company for three years, I am very interested in its language features which are largely associated with its social structure and cultural background. In this thesis, it is explored that the relationship between language and society by investigating some striking characteristics of the Japanese language, and concluded that social structure may either influence or determine linguistic behavior and patterns of use.Chapter One describes the relationship between Japanese language and society, and introduces the concept that language is one of the most powerful symbols of social behavior. This chapter also describes that some remarkable characteristics in Japanese language like honorifics, man and woman talking differently, etc., are related to the social features, such as power and politeness.Chapter Two talks about politeness in the Japanese language. Politeness is an important but general topic in sociolinguistics study, however, the Japanese language is always regarded to have the most complicated expression of showing politeness. By providing a case study, the author gives details about how Japanese varied from man to woman, old to young, express politeness and gratitude in different occasions such as when receiving gift, when recognizing other person's inconvenience, or even just saving people's face, etc. Readers will not only have a picture of how Japanese are being polite, but more importantly, what is its social background underneath.Chapter Three deals with a most interesting topic in the Japanese language, the gender difference. The author first explains that gender difference as a phenomenon exists in every language, and introduces some views and opinions from sociolinguists. Then emphasizes that gender is one of the biggest dividing lines in the Japanese language by giving examples of how different men and women apply wording and grammar structure, such as different expression of "You" and "I", rising intonation exclusively used by Japanese women, and different way of using sentence ending particles, etc.Gender difference is a mirror of Japanese society. For a long period, Japanese has been accustomed to the life style of man working and woman staying at home. Female is regarded as powerless and weak in the society. Different social position brings about the language distinction.Chapter Four summarizes another notable characteristic of Japanese society and how it is manifested in the language. Japanese has frequently been characterized in terms of groupism and contextualism. The former claims that Japan is overwhelmingly group-oriented, and the latter contends that the notion of Japanese self is relative and interpersonal, not a fixed reference point residing within each individual. In this chapter, it is demonstrated that the prevailing group model of Japanese society is inconsistent with the notion of self as encoded in the Japanese language.Chapter Five displays a picture of how Japanese language will evolve with the social development. It is described in this chapter that Japanese society is undergoing significant changes and more open to the outside world. Nowadays, the men has become more effeminate (commercials on television for beauty salons for men, fashion magazines for men, makeup for men) and women stronger and more powerful. The language mirrors this shifting power balance. It is concluded that change is a fact and we will begin to see with the society transmissions, Japanese is evolving into a new amalgamation of many languages or means of expression, while hopefully it can still maintain the good aspects of its own linguistic diversity.