Japanese honorifics (JH) are challenging for learners of Japanese language to acquire
due to their complex grammatical formulas. Textbooks tend to assume that the explanation
of grammatical rules and drill exercises focusing on the rules are sufficient for learners to be
competent in JH. However, functional issues related to honorifics such as how to use
honorifics in socioculturally appropriate ways or how to deal with non-linguistic aspects of
honorifics are likely to be ignored.
The present study questioned the assumptions entailed in the traditional formoriented
approach to teaching language, and examined an oral interview activity carried out
by 24 students in a Japanese language course at a Canadian university. In this activity, the
students interviewed Japanese professors using JH, and several types of data (i.e., the
researcher observations and interviews with the participants and student written reflections
on the interviews) were analyzed in order to find out students' practice (i.e., what students
did) of and theory (i.e., how students perceived) about JH and oral interviews.
The findings of the study present a very complex picture of students' practice and
theory; they were engaged not only in the formation of the rules of JH but also in the
functional areas such as non-verbal behaviour and conversation management. The data also
revealed that students were very much concerned with functional areas during the
interviews. From these findings, the study emphasizes the importance offunctions embedded
in JH, and suggests that the Japanese teacher help learners acquire the functional competence
dealing with JH as well as the linguistic competence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11818 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Ode, Maki |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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