Japanese

I have analyzed natural conversations in Japanese. I used the data compiled in one of the corpora of the Kyushu University Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies (Matsumura & Li 2011).

Firstly, several examples of in-quotation users of gender markers corresponding to the speaker’s own sex have been found. In the following example, a female speaker is bringing up a funny anecdote about a colleague from work:

Excerpt 14

F1 私の知り合いのおばさんはさ、御昼過ぎでラーメンを作っててさ、前の会社の時。

食べて、で、その入れようとして、具にしようとして、ゆで卵を家から持って来て、上に卵

183 浮かして、

頂きます、と食べた瞬間に、卵を食べようとしたとき、カッツンって。｛笑｝

D1 ｛大笑い｝。

F2 あ、見てなかった。

F1 あら、殻ごとだったわ｛笑いながら｝。（D1：｛笑｝）

何ぼけているんだ、自分で、じーぶんで卵を持って来てさ｛笑いながら｝。

ゆで卵剥くのを忘れてたわ、（D1：｛笑｝）殻は白いから剥いてあると思っていた、とかと言 ったの。

（FIRST NAME2）さん、シール、シール貼ってありますよ｛笑いながら｝。（D1：｛笑｝）

あーら、気が付かなかった。

（省略）

あら、殻は白いやつだったもん、気が付かなかったわ～↑とか言ってて。｛笑｝

シール、シール。²⁸

F1 Watashi no shiriai no obasan ha sa, ohirusugi de raamen wo tsukuttete sa, mae no kaisha no toki. Tabete, de sono ireyō to shite, gu ni shiyō to shite, yudetamago wo ie kara motte kite, ue ni tamago ukashite, “Itadakimasu,” to tabeta shunkani ni, tamago wo tabeyō to shita toki, gattsuntte. (laughter) D1 (hearty laughter)

F2 A, mitenakatta.

F1 “Ara, karagoto datta wa” (laughing).(D1:laughter)

Nani boketeirunda, jibun de, jiibunde tamago wo mottekite sa. (laughing)

“Yude tamago muku no wo wasureteta wa.”(D1:laughter) „Kara ha shiroi kara muite aru to omotteita.” toka to itta no.

“[FIRST NAME2], shīru, shīru hatte arimasu yo.” (laughing) (D1:laughter) Aara, ki ga tsukanakatta.

(abrreviated)

“Ara, kara ha shiroi yatsu da mon, ki ga tsukanakatta wa!” toka itte te (laughter) “Shīru, shīru.”

28 The text written in Japanese characters is the original transcript.

Romanization is added by me, including quotation marks added wherever they were absent in the source text.

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F1 One lady from the company I used to work in made herself some ramen noodles. She wanted to put it in, make it a topping, a hard-boiled egg she brought from home, so she puts it on top and goes “Itadakimasu²⁹,” and when she takes the bite, when she tries to eat that egg it goes CRACK! (laughter) D1 (hearty laughter)

F2 Oh, she didn’t look.

F1 “Oh my, the shell was still on.” (laughing).(D1: laughter)

How could she be so absent-minded, she brought it, she brought it from home herself! (laughing)

“Oh dear, I forgot to peel the shell from the egg.” (D1:laughter) She said like:

“The shell is white so I thought I already peeled it.”

“[FIRST NAME2], there, there’s still a sticker on it.” (laughing) (D1:laughter)

“Oh dear, I didn’t notice.”

(abbreviated)

She said “Oh my, but the shell was white, so I didn’t notice.”

“The sticker, sticker.”

This is a good example of using gender markers to create a vivid character and enliven the story. The quotes paint a picture of a likeable if absent-minded middle-aged woman. Because the particle wa is associated more with fictional characters than real people, it could be even said that the story takes on the character of a caricature. The persons involved in the conversation are laughing throughout the anecdote, as evidenced by the transcript. Together with the gendered exclamation ara, the particle aids in giving the quote what Kamata (2000) calls hatsuwarashisa, that is the quality of resembling an independent utterance. Ara is typically found at the beginning of an utterance, while the sentence-final particle wa closes it, as the very name suggests. A quote which has its beginning and end marked this way stands out from the rest of the dialogue and makes the already vivid direct speech stand in even greater contrast to the rest of the text. In this case, it could be said that ara and wa perform a secondary function similar to quotation marks in writing,

29 A customary expression uttered before meals, among other situations.

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because they help to distinguish between what the speaker means as her own words on one hand, and what she delivers as a quote from a third party on the other.

Another example of female speakers using female markers in quotation comes from a conversation about the anxiety related to public speaking.

Excerpt 15

B：カッキーとかね、全然緊張せんって言いよったと。最初から。

A：かわいい、すごい。

B：わたし～緊張とか～しないんですよ～。って。

A：えははははあ。

B: Kakkī toka ne, zenzen kinchō sen tte iiyotta to. Saisho kara.

A: Kawaii, sugoi.

B: “Watashi～kinchō toka～ shinaindesuyo.” tte.

A: Ehahahahaa.

B: For example, Kakkii said she’s never nervous at all. She was like that from the start.

A: That’s cute, great.

B: “I don’t get nervous or anything” she said.

A: Hahaha.

While the first-person pronoun watashi is used by both sexes, in informal contexts it is used predominantly by women. The omission of a particle such as ha directly after watashi and the use of toka instead of a more formal form (such as nado) suggests precisely that this context is not highly formal. Note that here too the conversation partner responds with laughter to the acting out of Kakkii’s part. It’s clear that direct quotations enhanced with some mannerisms of the original speaker (whether real or imagined) make for a more engrossing dialogue.

I found that while female speakers did use male markers on several

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occasions in quoting, male speakers did not use female markers even once.

While the small sample size would make it difficult to decisively draw conclusions based on this study alone, the results are in agreement with the general trend visible in other research: that is, what used to be considered specifically male forms are now commonly used by women (if to a lesser extent than by men), while words belonging to the traditional category of “women’s language” are either used by women or no one at all. This is the claim made by Inoue (2003): that Japanese women’s language is “speech without a speaking body,” existing only in fiction as the language of a stereotypical urban middle-class woman, but rarely used by real women, even those who belong to that group. Okamoto (1995) notes that forms traditionally believed to be masculine (at least moderately so) were not perceived as gendered by one female speaker who used them. She said that they are instead a part of the language of the youth wakamonokotoba.