TOWARD ETHNOPSYCHOLOGY
OF LANGUAGE*
--Interactional strategies of Japanese and Americans—
Katsutoshi ITO
Introduction
Since the advent of generative-transformational linguistics , atten- tion has been focused mainly on the cognitive aspect of linguistic ability which is rather universal in nature. This tendency has made light of the importance of social aspects of linguistic ability . It was Dell Hymes, a renowned sociolinguist, who tried to rectify the im- balance by broadening the domain of linguistic ability , i.e. by adding socio-cultural component to linguistic competence . Hymes proposed the term `communicative competence,' by which he means `ability to use language in appropriate social situations.' He also initiated the research on 'the ethnography of speaking ,' about which he says that it " ...is concerned with the situations and uses , the patterns and functions of speaking as an activity in its own right ."1' The notion of communicative competence was a natural outgrowth of the ethnography of speaking.
The significant point of communicative competence is to regard language, not simply as psychological phenomena , but as a tool of social interaction in our every day life, incorporating linguistic com- petence which Chomskyans claim to be psychological. It need hardly be said that communicative competence is governed by cultural and
* This is a revised version of my paper read at Psycholinguistic Collo - quium, Boston University on February 20, 1980.
2Katsutoshi Pro
social factors. Communication is governed by the pragmatics unique to a linguistic community and is maintained by members of a society according to their social rules. S. Glugsberg and J. H. Danks, (1975).
proposes the following message-conveying model:
idea
phonology
uiesSilgt'
What I would like to attempt is to put communicative com- petence in a larger framework so as to discover general patterns of social interaction in a given linguistic community. I would like to propose a term `interactional strategies,' by which I mean the strate- gies that members of a social group use to interact with one another linguistically and nonlinguistically to maintain social and cultural life.
One of the best ways to get a clear picture of the interactional strategies of a given social group is to make a comparative study of those of different social groups. Therefore, I am going to com- pare the interactional strategies of Japanese and American (or Western) societies.
Group vs. Individual Orientation
One of the major differences between Japanese and American social structures is that human relationships in Japan are group- oriented, while in America they are individual-oriented.
The Japanese are traditionally a farming people and have lived in small villages. Each village in times past had its own rules, with its social structure being hierarchical or vertical. In addition, the traditional family system was both hierarchical and feudalistic, with father as the head. Members of a family were supposed to obey the father's order and younger siblings had to be obedient to
TOWARD ETHNOPSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE3
older ones. The oldest son was to succeed to his father's occupa- tion. American social structures, on the other hand, are said to be relatively horizontal.21
Address system
The differences in the social structures are reflected most dis- tinctly in the address forms. In America, brothers and sisters call each other by their first names regardless of their age differences, while in Japan children are taught from their early age to call their older siblings (o)niisan (big brother) or (o)neesan (big sister). Unlike English, Japanese language has separate lexical items for older and younger brothers and sisters. Older silbings call their younger ones by their first names.
A similar address system is used in offices and other social organizations. The rule is that in any social groups seniors call their juniors by their family names plus `kun' or `san' and juniors or people in lower ranks call their seniors or those in upper ranks by their titles like shacho (head of a company).3 This address system contributes to the vertical personal relationships in social groups in Japan. Note that first names are exclusively used among family members and close relatives. This may be said to make people family-conscious or family-centered.
In villages, each house has its own name which is usually that of the oldest ancestor. Villagers are very conscious of their house names, and children are taught not to disgrace them. When chil- dren do something wrong or disgraceful, mothers usually discipline them by saying, "you will be laughed at by other people." Children have traditionally been taught to speak and behave in such a way that people outside their family groups would think or speak well of them and their families. In villages the notion Sekentei (what the world or people outside the family group will say) sets the standard by which villagers judge their behavior. Parents would
4Katsutoshi ITo
say, "If you do such a thing, sekentai ga warui (you will get a bad name for it)."
The severest punishment that parents could give to the children would be to expel them from the house. The children are kept outside, until they really repent of what they have done. What is most interesting, in this connection, is that the severest punishment that a villager could get for breaking the rules of the village would be to be kicked out of the village community. These forms of punishment would most clearly show how strongly people are con- scious of inner groups and outer groups.
Speech register for inner and outer groups
The Japanese language is well-known for its elaborate system of honorifics. Polite forms are used to people outside their groups and seniors in their own groups. The distinction in the register for insiders and outsiders is made chiefly by putting different bound- forms to the end of a verb—`da' with or without 'yo' signals in- formality and familiarity, `desu' neutrality, and `de ari masu' `de gozai masu' formality and politeness.
Most of the villagers have lived in the same village generation after generation. As a result, they share so much experience and
information that they can communicate with each other without much verbal expression. Much is taken for granted. Consequently, their utterances are full of deletions and proforms. Excessive ver- balism has traditonally been regarded as something to be despised, especially in the case of men. To be good at reading others' minds
has been looked upon as a virtue. It has also been looked upon as a virtue not to express everything you have in mind but leave room for your conversation partner to read your mind or judge your intention. One of the devices for this rhetoric is to end an utterance with ga which can roughly be translated as 'but', though there is a slight but definite difference in use and implication between the
TOWARD ETHNOPSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE5
two. When an utterance is ended with ga, the listener is expected to fill in. The person who ends an utterance with ga shows his or her humbleness to the listener and is in most cases a junior addres- sing to a senior or a wife to her busband.
In a small closed society like a farm village where few people move in or move out, the preservation of peace and unity will be hard if people are too assertive or argumentative. They are , there- fore, encouraged to suppress their thoughts or emotions and to be patient. This tendency is most clearly reflected in the following sayings: Iwanu ga hana (Silence is better than speech), Wa o motte tootoshi to subeshi. (Harmony is what is to be valued.). It is inter- esting to note that one's hara (stomach), like one's heart in the West, is considered to be the center of one's feelings and emotions . If someone should 'look in the stomach' (hara o saguru .), he is probing your real motives. The idiom haragei exemplifies a peculiar type of Japanese communication. J. A. Corddry, most aptly explains this as follows:
"The most important of these idioms is haragei (lit. "art of the stomach") the process of feeling one another out on an issue. The
Japanese regard haragei as the highest form of interpersonal com-
munication.---. Having a common history , language, and culture,
and a rather homogeneous society , the Japanese have developed into
an art the act of communicating one's most heartfelt desires in the
fewest number of words."4
Use and development of pronouns
In Japanese, unlike English, the pronouns for a speaker (I) and listener (you) are not generally expressed in many cases and many elements of a sentence, except functionally essential elements which carry new information, tend to be deleted . So, the sentence 'Did you go there yesterday?' in the most simplified form goes like, Kinoo itta (Yesterday went?) and the sentence 'I will give it to you tomorrow.' can be expressed in the most reduced form 'Tomorrow
6Katsutoshi ITO
give.'. In ordinary conversation first or second person pronouns are expressed when a speaker intends to be self-assertive or to put emphasis on the first or second person.
Let's look at the possible influence of this infrequent use of pronouns on the development of pronouns in children. According to a survey') made by S. Ide concerning the use of first and second person pronouns by Japanese children, children start to call them- selves by their names plus chan which roughly corresponds to `-y'
or `ie' in Tommy, auntie, Johnny or Johnnie. Parents usually call their children like 'Taro-chan' or `Keiko-chan' when they are little.
Boys begin to use the male I-word `boku' around the age of three.
Girls, on the other hand, begin to use the female I-word `watashi' a little later. This may be attributed to the late development of sex-consciousness on the part of girls.61 An interesting point is that five year old girls who use I word watashi outside their homes still use their names plus chan system at home. This clearly indicates that they are already aware of the distinction between informal or family speech style and formal speech style.
I had an opportunity to observe a playgroup and its activities in Boston for six months from September 1979 to February 1980.
It consisted of four children ranging in age from two to three. The play leader was a lady in her twenties. I have transcribed their speech from cassette tapes. As far as my data go, none of them used their names to refer to themselves as Japanese children of their age do.
Play leader: Who would like to pour their juice?
C (Child)1: Me, me • • •
C2: Me, me • . •
C3: I'll go first.
C4: I
C1: I want it.
TOWARD ETHNOPSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
C2: I want that.
C1: I want it.
C2: I want it.
C1: I want it.
C2: I I
I observed a nineteen month old girl's speech and found that she could use 'I' and 'you'. She used `I' in place of `mine' in the following dialogue:
The girl's older brother aged 9: That's mine.
19 month old girl: No, I.
Many Japanese children use at least until 3 years of age, their given names+chan plus 'no' to indicate their possession ('No' is the genetive particle.). Two or three year old American children, how- ever, use `mine' or `yours' without any difficulty.
Child,: That's my apple juice.
AlI other children: Mine.
My apple juice.
Mine.
C1: Mine. It's mine, not yours.
Carie (2 years old): This is mine.
That's yours.
Another point of interest about Ide's survey is that the deve- Iopment of kimi and anata71 is as late as 4 or 5 years of age. I have found in my data the following utterances by two and three year old girls:
Carie (2 yrs): You will do it, too.
Author: Is that for me?
Karry (3 yrs): No, for me. That is not for you, for me.
Ide goes on to say that three year old children said only 'Yes' or simply handed their dishes silently when they were offered another
8 katsutosh i ITo
serving. As is obvious from the preceding dialogues by the play group children, they are extremely self-assertive. The early develop- ment of first and second person pronouns in American children could be attributed to the early development of self-assertiveness which is a characteristic of the West. The late development of I-word and you-word in Japanese children would seem to result from the in- frequent use of pronouns by Japanese adults.
Direct vs. Indirect personal contact
Self-assertiveness which is a characteristic of American or western dialogue seems to be acquired at an early age. Generally speaking, Japanese children are rather shy and do not express their feelings or desires explicitly. American children are educated at home to express themselves explicitly. On many occasions, I have witnessed American mothers telling their children to answer 'yes' or 'no' immediately. In our neighborhood in Brookline, Massachusetts a three year old girl whom I had met for the first time came up to me and said, "Hi, what's your name?" Japanese children will rarely start conversation with a new neighbor that way. Our neighbors were very friendly from the beginning and said, "Just knock on the door anytime." or "Come over for coffee." The little girl simply modelled after her parents and her friendly neighbors. The 'what's your name?' business initiates personal contact in America and people shift to first name basis rather quickly. The frequent use of first names in the course of conversation seems to promote the directness of personal contact.
In Japan, however, first names are rarely used outside the family and even the last names are not mentioned in conversation so fre- quently. This seems to contribute to the indirectness of personal contact, especially at the early stage of acquaintance . It takes time, therefore, to shift to an informal personal relationship.
Japanese people more often than not exchange name cards at
TOWARD ETHNOPSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE9
the first meeting. This card exchanging business gives information as to their social status. This information is necessary for the con-
versants to choose appropriate register and address forms. They carefully sound out their relative status, according to which they regulate their speech. Their speech tends to be formal and carefully controlled. They also try not to be too assertive and try to keep psychological distance from each other, at least until they have sounded out their respective status. The elaborate use of polite forms help maintain distance between persons belonging to different social groups and age brackets.
Linguistic devices of English and Japanese
How are the above mentioned differences of interactional strate- gies are manifested in the linguistic devices of both languages?
On a phonological level, two prominent differences come to my mind. One is that the English language is a stress type language, while, Japanese a pitch type language. It would seem that a stress type language is fit to assert one's will or ideas and that pitch is controlled by emotion or feelings. Another difference is that English intial stops are aspirated, while in Japanese they are not and that the English language has sonorous sounds, like [t f ] and [dz] which are lacking in the Japanese sound system. These phonetic qualities make English sound more forceful and penetrating than Japanese.
The English language is characterized as an outdoor language and Japanese as an indoor language.
John Condon,'" a specialist on intercultural communication, said that American people like to disagree even when they do not really disagree. He went so far as to say that Americans disagree just for the sake of argument and actually take great delight in argueing with each other. This, he said, is a form of American rhetoric. As to Japanese rhetoric, Condon said that Japanese conversations are full
of yes's and direct confrontation and argument tend to be avoided.
10Katsutoshi Pro
Both English and Japanese languages are structured in such a way as to serve most effectively the rhetorics of both languages.
In English informationally the most important elements like nega- tives and verbs are placed at the front of sentences. This may be said to serve to express the speaker's intentions quickly and expli- citly. In Japanese, on the other hand, those elements come toward the end of the sentence, which contributes to expressing the speaker's intentions at the last stage of sentence formation.
E: Sub ject-Modal-Negative-Verb-Object----.
J: Subject-Object-Verb-Negative-Modal-(Sentence particles)
Sentence elements are linearly ordered. Much has yet to be unravelled about sentence production processes, but the recent studies of speech error analysis conducted by M. Garrett and his associates at M.T.T. are making substantial contributions to research on sen- tence processing strategies. One of their findings is that most word- exchange errors are within phrasal boundaries. This seems to sug- gest that sentence planning is carried out in terms of phrasal units.
This hypothesis is consonant with the result of studies done by M.
Ford at M.I.T. who said that sentence planning units are basic clauses (`deep sentoid' in Bever, et al.'s terminology (1974)) which correspond to phrases on the surface structure in many cases. Ford states at the end of her conclusion as follows:
"It is apparent , though, that the basic clause is an important unit in production, with sentence production proceeding by the successive
planning of basic clauses in the order in which they are spoken."9
If this hypothesis of sentence production processes is plausible, the core of a speaker's intentions or mood is expressed at an early stage of sentence production, while in Japanese it is expressed rather late in sentence production processes. It may be said that these sentence production schemes of both languages are in accord with the respective interactional strategies of the two peoples.
One of the syntactic features which characterize Japanese con-
TOWARD ETHNOPSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE11
versational strategies is a set of sentence-final particles like ne, yo, and sa. I will not elaborate on the nature of these sentence parti- cles here. Let me point out, however, that they are emotive and modal in nature and are used to regulate the psychological dis- tance between conversants and to express the speaker's mood or feelings and attitude toward the hearer. I would call these particles
"Interpersonal Relation Regulators ."
S. Iakino (1978) discusses the correlations between the house layouts in Japan and America and the linguistic structures of Japa- nese and English. When you enter most of American houses, you are right in the living room which is supposed to be the heart of the house. When I visited my American friend's home for the first time, I was often taken around for the so-called `house tour' to see every nook and corner of the house. A Japanese will rarely do the same to his American friend.
Japanese houses are surrounded by fences or trees and bushes.
When you enter a Japanese house, you will find a guest room near the front door, which most of the guests are ushered in. Some of the important guests are taken into the zashiki which is a special guest room. Only very intimate guests who are usually relatives or close friends are invited into the living room which is regarded as a family room and is open only to ingroup people.
Makino claims that sentence constructing processes and house layouts have much in common in that in the case of American sen- tence structuring and the house layouts, what Makino calls 'sanctuary' are positioned in the front or at the outset, while in Japanese sen- tence structuring and house layouts they are to be found in the
innermost part.
Conclusion
I have been trying to argue that the principles of ethnopsychology
12Katsutoshi ITo
of language are not limited to ethnographic patterns of speaking but they also pervade all types of interactional strategies, both linguistic and nonlinguistic.
E. Ishida,4} a well-known Japanese anthropologist, hypothesized that the core character of a race is formed at the initial stage of its history, just as a core personality of a person is formed at his early age. The mental attitude or outlook thus formed will underlie the basic principles of human interactional strategies, expressive patterns, value systems and modes of life itself.
From this, it may be quite obvious that the ethnographic des- cription should not be limited to the synchronic aspects of ethno- graphic phenomena but the diachronic or evolutionary perspective is also of vital importance to obtain a total picture of the ethnopsy- chological principles of a society which govern the interactional strategies including verbal and nonverbal communication, as well as artistic, religious and other socio-cultural phenomena.
I am not prepared at this stage to deal with detailed descriptions of ethnopsychological principles of American and Japanese societies.
I have presented just a sketch of those principles in terms of inte- ractional strategies. Elaboration of those principles and the historical development of those principles must await further speculation and research. Let me conclude by quoting a passage from C. 4. Frake
(1968):
"The principles by which people in a culture construe their world reveal how they segregate the pertinent from the insignificant, how
they code and retrieve information, how they anticipate events, how
they define alternative courses of action and make decisions among
them. Consequently a strategy of ethnographic description that gives
a central place to the cognitive processes of the actors involved will
contribute reliable cultural data to problems of the relations between.
language, cognition, and behavior; it will point up critical dimensions
for meaningful cross-cultural comparison; and finally, it will give us productive descriptions of cultural behavior, descriptions which, like
the linguists' grammar, succinctly state what one must know in order
TOWARD ETHNOPSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE13
to generate culturally acceptable acts and utterances appropriate to a given socio-ecological context." °
1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10)
Notes
Hymes, D. H. "The ethnography of speaking" in Fishman, J. A. Ed.
(1968), pp. 99438.
Nakane, C. Human Relations in Vertical Societies (Japanese). Kodan- sha, Tokyo. 1967.
Suzuki, T. Language and Culture (Japanese). Iwanami, Tokyo. 1973.
Corddry, J. A. "Hara" Seidensticker, W. G. et al., Eds. Japanese Culture from Foreign Eyes. Kinseido, 1979, pp. 25-27.
Ide, S. (1978) in Peng, F. Ed. (1978), pp. 41-68.
Kobashigawa, S. "Recent studies in the sexual roles and behavior of children" (Japanese), Kyoikushinrigaku Kenkyu, Vol. 14, No. 4. 1966.
Condon, J. (1972), p. 52.
Ford, M. (1980), p. 33.
Ishida, E. (1969), p. 15.
Frake, C. O. (1968) in Fishman, J. A. Ed. (1968), pp. 434-446.
References
Bever, T. Fodor, J. and Garrett, M. The Psychology of Language. McGraw-
Hill, 1974.
Condon, J. "Language in reasoning and rhetoric: A Cross-cultural perspec-
tive" in Studies in Descriptive and Applied Linguistics. Vol. V, 1972.
Fishman, J. A. Ed. Readings in the Sociology of Language. Mouton, 1968.
Ford, M. "Sentence planning units: Implications for the speaker's repre- sentation of meaningful relation underlying sentences" Unpublished
paper, 1980.
Frake, C. O. "The ethnographic study of cognitive systems" in Fishman, J. A. Ed. (1968), pp. 434-446.
Glugsberg, S. and Danks, J. A. Experimental Psycholinguistics. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1975.
Hymes, D. Foundations in Sociolinguistics. University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1974.
Ide, S. "Development of personal pronouns in Japanese children" (Japanese)
in Peng, F. Ed. (1978), pp. 41-68.
Inoue, D. The Structure of Sekentei (Japanese). Nippon Hoso Kyokai, Tokyo. 1977.
14 Katsutoshi Pro
Ishida, E. Japanese Culture (Japanese). Chikuma Shobo, Tokyo. 1969 . Makino, S. Language and Space (Japanese) . Tokai Daigaku Shuppan,
Tokyo. 1978.
Peng. F. Ed. Development in Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior . Bunka Hyoron, Hiroshima, Japan, 1978.
