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The main purpose of the thesis is to explore the characteristics of politeness which are conveyed by the use of Japanese honorific forms (i.e honorific politeness). The perspective of the research is as follows: 1) the concept of politeness is regarded as being wider in scope than in major past studies of linguistic politeness in the West (e.g Leech 1983); 2) unlike many past studies of politeness related to Japanese honorific fonns, the research attempts to study the social effect of the use of an honorific form rather than the grammatical or semantic properties of such forms; 3) the analysis of honorific politeness is based on the findings about the mechanism by which honorific politeness mitigates discomfitlrre, and on the metalinguistic evaluations of honorific forms made by native speakers. Results from a questionnaire, which investigated the types of discomfiture which result from various kinds of inappropriate linguistic behaviom, suggested that the lise of an honorific form can mitigate two main types of discomfitme, which differ in degree of seriousness, depending on the social features of the situation in which the use occms. It is pointed out that the mitigation of either type of discomfiture should be regarded as flowing from a common type of linguistic choice, that is, compliance with a social nom1 goveming the appropriate use oflanguage in different kinds of communication situations, i.e. register rules. Furthermore, based on observations of the use of linguistic forms other than honorific ones, it is argued that honorific forms are one of many linguistic devices for realizing register differences, i.e. register markers. Results from the other questionnaire, which probed native speaker's evaluation of different types of language use for the communication of politeness, indicate that native speakers tend to place special aesthetic value on honorific forms and their use, independently of the seriousness of the discomfiture they can mitigate. Based on an analysis of the background to this tendency, it is argued that the value can be appropriately regarded as sharing many properties with the value which language users place on a certain part of register markers in a diglossic conmmunity. It is thus concluded that honorific politeness is a form of diglossia.

The Japanese imperfective aspect marker –teiru is one of the most widely researched tense/aspect markers because of its multiple semantic functions. It has been claimed that the –teiru form can describe two main aspectual meanings, progressive and resultative, depending on the lexical aspect of the attached verb. The present study aims to empirically investigate native speakers’ interpretations of the –teiru meaning with different verb and sentence types through a judgment test. It compares them with the predicted semantic categories from the previous studies, which based their conclusion upon introspective analysis, as well as perceptions of L2 Japanese learners. The results suggest that overall perceptional patterns are consistent with predicted descriptions but also that interpretations of the meaning are flexible to some extent. As for learners’ perceptions, the results indicate that L2 learners develop progressive semantic processing in Japanese faster than resultative semantic processing in Japanese.

Politeness Phenomena and Mild Conflict in Japanese Casual Conversation

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Spoken and written data were analysed to examine the use of first person pronouns (1PP) in Japanese by non-native speakers (NNS), and then compared to 1PP use by native speakers (NS). For English NS who are used to obligatory subjects in their L1, Japanese 1PP poses challenges since Japanese 1PP are used rarely by NS and often brought about by pragmatic motivations. The results indicated that NNS initially overuse 1PP but their frequency of use becomes closer to that of NS over time. When looking at the postpositional particles used, similarities existed between NNS and NS in the written data. However, NNS in the spoken data more closely resembled the written NS data than the spoken data when marking the subject or topic. It was also found that NNS most often used 1PP for emphasis in the written data and for referential reasons in the spoken. / Japanese Language and Linguistics

Politeness Phenomena and Mild Conflict in Japanese Casual Conversation

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 甲第19808号 / 人博第779号 / 新制||人||187(附属図書館) / 27||人博||779(吉田南総合図書館) / 32844 / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科共生人間学専攻 / (主査)教授 東郷 雄二, 教授 藤田 耕司, 教授 田窪 行則 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DFAM

<p>A word or a linguistic construction can mean various things depending on the context. The imperative is a representative example of such a construction and can express a variety of illocutionary forces such as COMMAND, REQUEST, ADVICE, and more (Quirk et al., 1985, Huddleston et al., 2002). </p> <p>However, although there are many studies that comprehensively deal with the imperative or individual illocutionary forces of it (e.g. Lakoff, 1966, Ljung, 1975, Davies, 1986, Wilson & Sperber 1988, Han, 2000, Takahashi, 2012, Jary & Kissine, 2014), there is no such study that shows a possible overall process of how we would interpret an imperative to reach a certain illocutionary force when it is uttered. Without such a shared process, we cannot explain why we can communicate using imperatives without misunderstandings. Thus, this process needs to be investigated. </p> <p>Another problem regarding imperatives is the treatment of non-directive uses of imperatives such as “Have a good day”. The illocutionary force of this imperative would be called GOOD WISH and regarded as a conventional use of imperatives (Davies, 1986). However, it has not been clearly explained why we would choose the imperative construction to express wishes. If this kind of wishes expressed in the form of the imperative are actually a use of imperative, then there should be some reason and motivation for it. </p> <p>The main purposes of this study are to provide (1) a schema of how one would typically reach the interpretation of WISH when hearing an imperative and (2) an account of such use of imperatives as WISH. In this study, examples of imperatives in two non-cognate languages are used for the analysis in the hope to substantiate the credibility of the schema and the account: Japanese and English. Based on the analyses on the imperative and individual illocutionary forces that have been presented in the literature combined with my own analysis, a schema is proposed that illustrates how one would typically reach PRIVATE WISH, the state of affairs of which is deemed to be desirable mainly for the speaker, and GOOD WISH, the state of affairs of which is deemed to be desirable mainly for the addressee. Then, an account for the use of PRIVATE WISH and GOOD WISH is provided. Specifically, the use of imperatives as WISH is an analogous use of prototypical imperatives; people would use the imperative construction to express their strong desirability, and to build and maintain a good relationship with others.</p>

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