Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology

Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology PDF Author: Shigeko Okamoto
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195166175
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
This is a collection of previously unpublished articles by established as well as promising young scholars in Japanese language and gender studies.

Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology

Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology PDF Author: Shigeko Okamoto
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195166175
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
This is a collection of previously unpublished articles by established as well as promising young scholars in Japanese language and gender studies.

Gender, Language and Ideology

Gender, Language and Ideology PDF Author: Momoko Nakamura
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027269297
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
The book examines women’s language as an ideological construct historically created by discourse. The aim is to demonstrate, by delineating a genealogy of Japanese women’s language, that, to deconstruct and denaturalize the relationships between gender and any language, and to account for why and how they are related as they are, we must consider history, discourse and ideology. The book analyzes multiple discourse examples spanning the premodern period of the thirteenth century to the immediate post-WWII years, mostly translated into English for the first time, locating them in political, social and academic developments and describing each historical period in a manner easily accessible for those readers not familiar with Japanese history. This is the first book that describes a comprehensive development of Japanese women’s language and will greatly interest students of Japanese language, gender and language studies, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and history, as well as women’s studies and sexuality studies.

The Social Life of the Japanese Language

The Social Life of the Japanese Language PDF Author: Shigeko Okamoto
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316720616
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Why are different varieties of the Japanese language used differently in social interaction, and how are they perceived? How do honorifics operate to express diverse affective stances, such as politeness? Why have issues of gendered speech been so central in public discourse, and how are they reflected and refracted in language use as social practice? This book examines Japanese sociolinguistic phenomena from a fascinating new perspective, focusing on the historical construction of language norms and its relationship to actual language use in contemporary Japan. This socio-historically sensitive account stresses the different choices which have shaped Japanese and Western sociolinguistics and how varieties of Japanese, honorifics and politeness, and gendered language have emerged in response to the socio-political landscape in which a modernizing Japan found itself.

The Ideology of Kokugo

The Ideology of Kokugo PDF Author: Yeounsuk Lee
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824837614
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Available for the first time in English, The Ideology of Kokugo: Nationalizing Language in Modern Japan (1996) is Lee Yeounsuk’s award-winning look at the history and ideology behind the construction of kokugo (national language). Prior to the Meiji Period (1868–1912), the idea of a single, unified Japanese language did not exist. Only as Japan was establishing itself as a modern nation-state and an empire with expanding colonies did there arise the need for a national language to construct and sustain its national identity. Re-examining debates and controversies over genbun itchi (unification of written and spoken languages) and other language reform movements, Lee discusses the contributions of Ueda Kazutoshi (1867–1937) and Hoshina Koichi (1872–1955) in the creation of kokugo and moves us one step closer to understanding how the ideology of kokugo cast a spell over linguistic identity in modern Japan. She examines the notion of the unshakable homogeneity of the Japanese language—a belief born of the political climate of early-twentieth-century Japan and its colonization of other East Asian countries—urging us to pay attention to the linguistic consciousness that underlies "scientific" scholarship and language policies. Her critical discussion of the construction of kokugo uncovers a strain of cultural nationalism that has been long nurtured in Japan’s education system and academic traditions. The ideology of kokugo, argues Lee, must be recognized both as an academic apparatus and a political concept. The Ideology of Kokugo was the first work to explore Japan’s linguistic consciousness at the dawn of its modernization. It will therefore be of interest to not only linguists, but also historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and scholars in the fields of education and cultural studies.

Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology

Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology PDF Author: Shigeko Okamoto
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195347293
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Japanese Language, Gender and Ideology is a collection of previously unpublished articles by established as well as promising young scholars in Japanese language and gender studies. The contributors to this edited volume argue that traditional views of language in Japan are cultural constructs created by policy makers and linguists, and that Japanese society in general, and language use in particular, are much more diverse and heterogeneous than previously understood. This volume brings together studies that substantially advance our understanding of the relationship between Japanese language and gender, with particular focus on examining local linguistic practices in relation to dominant ideologies. Topics studies include gender and politeness, the history of language policy, language and Japanese romance novels and fashion magazines, bar talk, dictionary definitions, and the use of first-person pronouns. The volume will substantially advance the agenda of this field, and will be of interest to sociolinguists, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of Japan and Japanese.

Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan

Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan PDF Author: Roger Goodman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134927126
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The issue of how Japanese society operates, and in particular why it has `succeeded', has generated a wide variety of explanatory models, including the Confucian ethic, classlessness, group consciousness, and `uniqueness' in areas as diverse as body images and language patterns. In Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan the contributors examine these models and the ways in which they have sometimes been used to create a sense of `Japaneseness', that obscures the fact that Japan is actually an extremely complex and heterogenous society. In particular, `practice' at the micro-level of society is explored to illuminate or express a broader ideology. The contributors investigate a wide variety of subjects - from attitudes to death to the role of education, from film making to gender segregation - to see what can be said about the phenomenon in particular, what it tells us about Japan in general, and what conclusions can be drawn for our understanding of society in the broadest sense.

Vicarious Language

Vicarious Language PDF Author: Miyako Inoue
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520245857
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
"Inoue has accomplished an extraordinary task, which is without precedent in the East Asian Fields. To my knowledge, no author has ever demonstrated as persuasively as she does that the issues concerning women's Japanese can be explored in such an innovative, engaging way. Vicarious Language brilliantly displays how effectively Foucauldian archaeology can be introduced to the study of gender and language, and undermines any of the previous studies in English of what is erroneously referred to as the unique feature of the Japanese language. This is a superb model of engaged scholarship."—Naoki Sakai, author of Voices of the Past: The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse "Miyako Inoue's Vicarious Language is a work of scholarly distinction and cultural insight. She explores the texture of Japanese modernity, its national rituals and social practices, by way of a sustained, semiotic analysis of womens' language—the language of self-expression that women use in intimate and institutional contexts, and the language used to define the gendered roles assigned to women within the powers of patriarchy. Her sources range widely from scholarly studies to the 'popular opinion' fostered by newspapers and advertisements; her excellent ethnography investigates the strategies of institutions and organisations, while inquiring into the politics and poetics of everyday life; her analytic method is, at once, conceptually sophisticated and textually intensive. This is a work that allows you to participate in the lifeworld of the Japanese language, at the illuminating moment when gender relations are writ large in the social syntax of national life. This is a book that will make a lasting impression on a range of disciplines."—Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F.Rothenberg Professor, Harvard University

The Language of Feminine Beauty in Russian and Japanese Societies

The Language of Feminine Beauty in Russian and Japanese Societies PDF Author: Natalia Konstantinovskaia
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783030414351
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
This book conducts a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural study of 'women’s language' as it pertains to feminine beauty. It examines the ideological constructs of beauty and femininity in the cultures of Japan and Russia, as embodied through televised beauty ads, and relates them to the real-world language practices of Japanese and Russian women. The author traces the reciprocal connection between women’s real and imagined language in the construction of ideals of beauty and femininity, revealing the complex ways women respond to ideological expectations regarding language use: assimilating, transforming, and subverting ideologized language and the assumptions implicit in it. She also demonstrates ways in which women alter the texture of language by appropriating 'masculine' language for their own purposes, shifting the meaning and correlates of linguistic items and structures. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociolinguistics, language and gender, cultural and media studies, and Russian and Japanese culture.

Japan's Far More Female Future

Japan's Far More Female Future PDF Author: Bill Emmott
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192634984
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The Japan on show in the 2019 Rugby World Cup was an admirably safe, stable, resilient, and efficient society. However, that appearance disguises crucial vulnerabilities and social ailments, including an ageing and shrinking population, slow productivity growth, a new low-wage, insecure workforce, declining marriage and fertility rates, and an extreme level of gender inequality. Within this gender gap lies the key both to the ailments and the cure. A deterioration in the use of human capital and a decline in family formation have become entrenched thanks to discrimination against the female half of the population. Yet gradual change is occurring, thanks not only to demographic necessity but also to a significant rise in female access to university education since the 1990s and the emergence of a wide range of role models to inspire and empower the next generation. Analysis of trends and policy options, combined with interviews with 21 role models spanning fields from business to the arts, diplomacy to politics, music to e-commerce, provides ample grounds for optimism. Japan is becoming a nation with an increasing number of potential female leaders. If this rise can be accelerated by both public policy and private action, Japan could achieve much greater social justice and sustainable prosperity in the decades to come.

Vicarious Language

Vicarious Language PDF Author: Miyako Inoue
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520939069
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This highly original study provides an entirely new critical perspective on the central importance of ideas about language in the reproduction of gender, class, and race divisions in modern Japan. Focusing on a phenomenon commonly called "women's language," in modern Japanese society, Miyako Inoue considers the history and social effects of this language form. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a contemporary Tokyo corporation to study the everyday linguistic experience of white-collar females office workers and on historical research from the late nineteenth century to 1930, she calls into question the claim that "women's language" is a Japanese cultural tradition of ancient origin and offers a critical geneaology showing the extent to which this language form is, in fact, a cultural construct linked with Japan's national and capitalist modernity. Her theoretically sophisticated, empirically grounded, interdisciplinary work brilliantly illuminates the relationship between culture and language, the nature of power and subject formation in modernity, and how the complex nexus of gender, language, and political economy are experienced in everyday life.