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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1123

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Analyzing the Panel Samples in the Okazaki Survey on Honorifics

Authors: Matsuda, Kenjiro
Submitted by: Matsuda, Kenjiro (Kobe Shoin Women's University, Japan)

This paper is intended to be a near-final report on the analysis of panel samples of the Okazaki Survey on Honorifics (OSH), a questionnaire-based longitudinal survey on honorific use and its consciousness in Okazaki City, Japan.  The survey has been conducted by National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics since 1953 (OSH I), and following OSH II in 1972, OSH III was completed in 2008.

Aside from the trend samples, where the respondents are randomly sampled from residents of Okazaki, OSH also traced panel samples, i.e., people surveyed in the previous surveys. The first panel sample traced 185 people from the OSH I trend sample with a 19-year interval, the second panel 62 from the OSH II trend with a 36-year interval, and the third panel sample followed 20 people from the second panel sample, resulting in a 55-year interval.

Matsuda (2009) reported, based on the 55-year-interval panel sample, that the respondents displayed remarkable stability on their responses, showing significant  changes in only few questions. The result suggests that in most cases, people do not change their honorifics after their formation in early 20s.  The extremely small size of the sample (N=20), however, did not allow him to make definite statements about the panel sample in general.

The current analysis, which includes all three panel samples, mostly confirms Matsuda’s analysis; the Okazakians responded to most of the questions in a similar way to what they did in the previous survey(s). Furthermore, the panel samples are also found to take the democratization path as the trend samples do (Inoue 1999, Matsuda 2009, 2011), a tendency where people use the honorifics according to the psychological distance between the interlocutors, leaving the power-based usage behind.

References:

Inoue, Fumio. 1999. Keigo-wa Kowaku-nai (Don’t be scared off by honorifics). Tokyo: Kodansha.
NIJLL. 1957. Keigo-to Keigo Ishiki (Honorifics and their consciousness). Tokyo: Shûei Shuppan.
---. 1983. Keigo-to Keigo Ishiki: Okazaki-ni okeru 20-nen mae-to-no Hikaku (Honorifics and their consciousness: Comparison with the 1957 report). Tokyo: Shûei Shuppan.
Matsuda, Kenjiro. 2009. “Lifespan change in OSH. ” A paper read at the Workshop “OSH III: An interim report” The 19th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference , Univ. of Hawai’i, Manoa, November 15, 2009.
---. 2011. “How Japanese change their honorifics use during their lifetime: Evidence from the Okazaki Survey on Honorifics I-III.” A paper read at ICHL 20, Osaka, July 27, 2011.