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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 950

Part of Session 114: Linguistic Identity Constructions in the Japanese Workplace (Other abstracts in this session)

Variation within the workplace: Japanese reference and address forms in the construction of identity

Authors: Barke, Andrew John
Submitted by: Barke, Andrew John (Kansai University, Japan)

A wide variety of linguistic resources are available for use in Japanese to refer to oneself and others. Commonly reported forms include personal pronouns (e.g. 1^st person – watashi/atashi/boku/ore; 2^nd person – anata/anta/kimi/omae; 3^rd person – kare/kanojo), titles (e.g. shachō ‘company manager’; sensei – ‘professor/teacher’ etc.), kin terms (e.g. otōsan ‘father’; obasan ‘aunty’) as well as various combinations of names and title suffixes (e.g. [family name]+suffix-san; [given name]+suffix-chan). Use of such forms in reference and address has traditionally been described as determined by contextual variables such as the age, social status and gender of interactants, and the formality of the context (e.g. Ide 1989, Shibatani 1990, Suzuki 1999).

The results of the present study, however, support the view held by social constructionists that social contexts are constructed in social interaction (Ochs 1993; Bucholtz 1999; Cook 2008) and that speakers strategically employ linguistic resources in order to achieve specific interactional goals. This paper examines the interactional behavioral patterns of members of a Japanese workplace community of practice. In particular, focus is placed on non-prototypical patterns of usage of reference and address forms.

Two types of data were analyzed in the study: a) the recordings and transcriptions of 10 hours of naturally occurring verbal interactions between employees at a small manufacturing company located in the downtown area of Tokyo; and b) interactional and contextual information elicited from participants by means of follow-up interviews. The latter were designed to draw out participant perceptions of their own linguistic behavior and the behavior of others, as well as information on possible motivations behind the selection of particular forms over others.   

Initial analysis of the data revealed that, while prototypical patterns of reference and address form use were generally adhered to by most members of the workplace community, some members displayed a tendency to employ non-prototypical forms or to make use of a wider variety of forms than others. This raises the question, what motivates members of a community of practice to deviate from unmarked patterns of use and to adopt marked patterns of use? In an attempt to answer this in relation to the community being observed, the utterances of several individual speakers were examined in detail. It was found that identity construction of both the speaker and referents, is a key factor in understanding the selection process of forms not only in cases of prototypical usage, but also non-prototypical usage. Speakers who used a wider variety of forms or less common forms appeared to be motivated by a variety of concerns including the desire to construct unique, non-conformist identities and/or multiple identities for a single referent. The results of this study offer further evidence that verbal interaction is a dynamic process in which participants create and negotiate, moment by moment, social contexts through the strategic linguistic choices they make in discourse.