Native Speakers’ Judgments of Non-native Speech in Japanese:
Politeness in Sales Talk
1TAKEHARA, Miho
Abstract
Research into native speakers’ judgments of politeness in non-native speech provides useful information for teaching politeness in a foreign/second language and developing teaching materials. However, as Enomoto and Marriott (1994) point out, there are few studies addressing this topic.
In this paper, Japanese native speakers’ judgments of politeness in non-native speech in a speech event of sales are examined. Based on a five-point scale, forty adult Japanese women in Japan subjectively evaluated politeness in the speech performance of two non-native speaker sales clerks. Those two speakers were intermediate-level learners of Japanese-as-a-second-language, but at somewhat different levels of proficiency. It was found that non-verbal or paralinguistic features of speech were significant factors in the judgments. In terms of use of honorifics, the percentage of honorific expressions in the more proficient learner’s total utterances was lower than that in the less proficient one’s.
It was found that native speakers judged the less proficient speaker more polite than the more proficient speaker. The ratio of the number of honorific expressions to the total number of utterances may affect the judgments of politeness. On the other hand, the native speakers judged the more fluent speaker better as a sales clerk. This result suggests that politeness is not a major indicator of a good sales clerk.
Key Words
JSL/JFL, Non-native speech, NS judgments, Politeness, Sales talk
Introduction
The number of learners of Japanese as a second/foreign language (JSL/JFL) has been increasing world-wide. It is reported that more than 356,000 examinees, about 61,500 in Japan and 295,000 abroad, took the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test in 2005. This outnumbered the previous year’s examinees by 54,000 (Japan Educational Exchanges and Services, 2006). Many of those learners hope to study in Japan; in fact, almost 122,000 international students were studying in Japan in 2005 (Japan Student Services Organization, 2005). A lot of those international students work part-time, mainly in the service industry such as restaurants, retail stores, and other establishments. It is necessary for them to know polite Japanese in order to communicate successfully and create good human relationships with Japanese customers. For this reason, it is useful for them to know how native speakers (NSs) of Japanese rate their politeness in Japanese in a work-place setting. That information is also useful for Japanese language teachers in teaching politeness in the language.
Although there are various studies on NS judgments of non-native speakers’
(NNS) speech (Albrechtsen, Henriksen, & Faerch, 1980; Enomoto and Marriott, 1994; Harada, 2004; Koike, 2004; Ludwig, 1982, for information; Matsuoka &
Kawano, 2004; Miyata, Tamaoka, & Ukida, 1999; Tomita, 2004; Watanabe, 2004a, 2004b) and a few sociolinguistic studies on sales talk in Japanese (Kumatoridani, 1982; Sugito & Sawaki, 1979; Tsuda, 1984), no research has ever addressed NS judgments of politeness in NNS sales talk in Japanese.
Politeness in Japanese
Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) explain that all languages have various
means to express politeness such as phonological changes, prosodic features,
modals, indirect speech, ellipses, and honorifics. The Japanese language is rich in
highly elaborated systems of honorifics. Honorifics are often employed to express politeness as well as to indicate deference in modern Japanese.
Japanese honorific systems consist of two major subcategories, addressee honorifics (AH) and referent honorifics (RH) (Comrie, 1976; Shibatani, 1990).
AH usually refers to formality in speech style, which indexes social and/or psychological distance between speaker (S) and hearer (H) (Jorden & Noda, 1987;
Shibatani, 1990) as shown in the following examples:
1a. Mainichi ringo o tabe-masu.
everyday apple OBJ eat-AH (I) eat an apple everyday.
b. Mainichi ringo o tabe-ru.
everyday apple OBJ eat (plain) (I) eat an apple everyday.
(where OBJ stands for an object marker.)
In the above examples, (1a) is a formal sentence which is typically indexed by the AH auxiliary verb masu. On the other hand, (1b) is an informal sentence which is typically indexed by the plain form of the verb and non-use of AH.
RH consists of two subcategories, subject honorifics or honorific polite expressions (HNR) and object honorifics or humble polite expressions (HMB) (Harada, 1976; Shibatani, 1990). The following sentences include examples of RH:
2 Suzuki-san wa yoku ringo o meshiagari-masu.
Mr. Suzuki TOP often apple OBJ eat (HNR)-AH
As for Mr. Suzuki, he often eats apples.
3 Asa-gohan ni ringo o hitotsu itadaki-mashi-ta .
breakfast for apple OBJ one eat (HMB)-AH-Past (I) ate an apple for breakfast.
(where TOP stands for a topic marker.)
In (2) above, the verb meshiagaru is HNR of taberu (eat) which exalts the referent, Mr. Suzuki in this sentence. In (3), the verb itadaku is HMB of taberu (eat) which is to humble the action of oneself in order to show politeness towards the hearer or reader.
Although there is a minor subcategory of honorifics called beautification honorifics (BH), Inoue (1989) considers them another kind of AH as will this paper.
The following sentence includes examples of BH:
4 O-sake wa o-kome kara tsukuri-masu.
BH-wine TOP BH-rice from make-AH As for wine, they make it from rice.
In (4) above, o in osake and okome is a prefix of BH.
According to Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), honorifics are “products of negative-politeness strategies”. They postulate that politeness is a strategy to save face in the case of H and that politeness strategies with “redressive action” consist of two categories; (a) positive-politeness strategies to satisfy H’s positive-face, which is H’s desire to be appreciated; (b) negative-politeness strategies to satisfy H’s negative-face, which is H’s desire to be free from interference by others.
However, some Japanese linguists (Hill, Ide, Ikuta, Kawasaki, & Ogino, 1986; Ide, 1989) note different perspectives of politeness and posit that the use of honorifics in Japanese is mostly determined by wakimae or discernment, not volitional strategies. They consider the use of appropriate honorifics as socially obligatory.
That is the same perspective from which Matsumoto (1988, 1989) views the use of
honorifics. She claims that honorifics encode acknowledgments of interpersonal relationships among speaker, hearer, and/or referent. Regarding politeness, Ide (1993) defines linguistic politeness as “principles encompassing strategies for language use and choices of linguistic forms associated with smooth communication” (p. 7).
In terms of the use of honorifics, Tsuruta (2002) views it from a different perspective. She considers that a type of use of honorifics is to form the formal register. She studied NS attitudes toward the use of honorifics. She found that use of incorrect honorifics and/or no-use of honorifics did not cause major unpleasantness for NS Japanese, but that a large number of NSs were eager to use honorifics correctly so as to be considered courteous. Then, she compared use of honorifics to the prestigious High register and no-use of honorifics to the Low register in diglossic situations. She suggested that JSL/JFL learners should be provided with much information about the use of honorifics and that choice of use or no-use of honorifics should be open to the learners.
Sociolinguistic studies on sales talk in Japanese
Human beings use language to accomplish something (Austin 1962). Such use of language or illocutionary acts can be classified into several categories according to their functions as Austin, Searle (1976), and others theorized.
Sales talk can be described as a speech event which occurs when selling
something and consists of several speech acts (Tsuda, 1984). Sales talk mainly
consists of selling, which is an ‘illocutionary act that requires [at least] two
participants’ (Hancher, 1979, p.1). Hancher suggests revision of Searle’s (1976)
classification of illocutionary acts and classifies sales under ‘reciprocal cooperative
declarations’ which is a subclass of ‘cooperative declarations’ which is a subclass
of ‘(ordinary) declarations’ itself. By ‘reciprocal cooperative speech acts’,
Hancher means that ‘[speech acts of which] the component acts can be of the same
sort, but they will be intersecting acts, not parallel’; or ‘[speech acts of which] the component acts may be of a different sort’ (1979, p.13). According to Hancher’s analysis, sales can be considered to be complete by the acts of buying and selling.
The act of purchasing reciprocates the act of selling.
With regard to sales, Kumatoridani (1982) studied the language employed in American and Japanese television commercials. One of his findings is that the American commercials are more direct in introducing the central topic than the Japanese commercials. He suggests that a reason for such a difference is that Americans and Japanese are different in their politeness behavior: the American commercials are ‘clarity-relevant discourse’, whereas the Japanese ones are
‘rapport-relevant discourse’. Although it is questionable and controversial to link the difference in directness to the difference in politeness, the above finding may suggest that American sales talk is more direct than that in Japan.
Tsuda (1984) investigated various sales events and sales talk in Japan and the United States. She identified an overall pattern of sales transactions which are comprised of three stages. The initial stage is the opening where greetings between a customer and a salesperson and identification of the salesperson take place. Next comes the middle stage where approach and negotiation of the transaction occur. Tsuda distinguishes two approach types: one is a
‘may-I-serve-you’ approach and the other is a ‘merchandise’ approach. The may-I-serve-you approach is initiated by the salesperson. For instance, the salesperson may initiate service by asking the customer, ‘May I help you?’ The merchandise approach can be initiated by either the salesperson or the customer.
For instance, the salesperson may initiate sales by explaining the item to a customer.
For example, ‘This is the best camera we have here,’ or, the customer may ask the salesperson, ‘Do you carry computer disks?’ The last stage is the closing where pre-closing and leave-taking are observable.
Tsuda (1984) notices that directness is a feature of verbal interactions
between salespersons and customers in American society, whereas, indirectness is a feature of Japanese sales events. That is, most Japanese salespersons employ indirect and polite strategies to convince their customers to buy merchandise in the negotiation phase, and Japanese customers are apt to refuse unwanted merchandise in an indirect manner.
Enomoto and Marriott (1994) state that “A host-client relationship where the host is a service provider requires maximum expression of politeness in Japanese and, accordingly, appropriate honorific styles and honorific forms must be employed” (p. 137). The social relationship between a sales clerk and a customer in Japanese society is such that a customer has a higher status than a sales clerk;
thus, a sales clerk is expected to use polite language in interactions with customers.
As role-play in a speech event of sales is utilized to elicit data in this study, I will adopt Ide’s (1993) definition of linguistic politeness mentioned above. For a sales clerk, use of polite language is a strategy to succeed in sales, to comply with social norms, and to establish and/or maintain smooth communication. General politeness is defined as both verbal and non-verbal behavior to realize strategies to establish and/or maintain smooth communication; verbal or linguistic politeness is defined as verbal behavior to realize strategies for choices of linguistic forms and language use associated with efforts to establish and/or maintain smooth communication; and non-verbal or paralinguistic politeness is defined as non-verbal behavior to realize strategies to establish and/or maintain smooth communication.
In their study on the NS judgments of politeness in NNS speech in actual
tour-guide situations in Japanese in Australia, Enomoto and Marriott (1994) found
the following: (a) NS evaluations were more negative toward the less proficient
NNS in errors not related to honorifics than those related to honorifics; (b) NS
evaluations were more negative toward the more proficient NNS in errors related to
honorifics than those not related to honorifics; (c) Errors not related to honorifics
which NS evaluated negatively were those concerning the content, paralinguistic features, non-verbal features, and the speech acts of apology, compliments, request, and offering help; (d) Some of the errors related to honorifics which NS evaluated negatively were inappropriate use of personal reference forms, addressee honorifics, honorific prefixes, and overuse of casual and informal style; (e) Deviations of politeness features not related to honorifics were evaluated more negatively than those related; (f) NS evaluated the more proficient NNS, who was male, more negatively than the less proficient, who was female.
In Wetzel’s (1994) study on Japanese, her NS participants judged male voices less polite than female voices in the case of mixture of use and non-use of honorifics. She speculates that in H’s mind an expectation of S may be formed right after H listens to S for the first time, and that it may be a cause of the difference in her participants’ judgments of male and female voices. Following her theory, it can be said that H judges S positively when S’s verbal performance satisfies H’s expectation but that H judges S negatively when S’s verbal performance does not satisfy H’s expectation. Wetzel’s idea seems helpful to explain Enomoto and Marriott’s (1994) finding that their NS raters evaluated the speech of the more proficient NNS more negatively than that of the less proficient.
Although Enomoto and Marriott discussed only negative evaluations, I think that it is necessary to consider negative and positive evaluations together in order to examine the NS judgments of politeness in real communication.
Though the situations of a study by Miyata, Tamaoka, and Ukida (1999) on the use of honorifics were not related to sales talk, the study revealed the following:
NS Japanese in Western Japan evaluated mid-level taiguu expressions, that is,
expressions including honorifics for treating others, in NNS speech more
appropriate than high-level ones regardless of the age difference between S and H
and the psychological distance between them. Miyata et al. concluded that it is
necessary to consider taiguu expressions not only from the use of honorifics but
also from the taiguu value or value of treatment of other people, as well as the psychological distance between S and H.
Based on Brown and Levinson’s (1978, 1987) theory of politeness, Ito (2001) conducted an empirical study on NS rating of formality in NS speech in Japanese, considering formality as a kind of politeness. Although her study was not related to sales talk, she observed the followings: (1) Acoustic features of the stimulus speech influenced the NS rating, but speech rate, mora duration, stop in /ka/, F
0, F1, or F2 did not seem to be the most influential factors; (2) The prosodic features of the raters’ dialect seemed to be a major factor in rating formality.
As Blum-Kulka (1990) and Kasper (1990) point out, both quality and quantity of politeness seem to be dependent on the type of discourse. In consideration of all of the above, this study was designed to address the following questions:
A. Does the use of honorifics influence native speakers’ judgments of politeness in NNS sales talk in Japanese?
B. Do non-verbal or paralinguistic features of speech influence native speakers’ judgments of politeness in NNS sales talk in Japanese?
Study
A. Method Participants
NNS, Mary (pseudonym) and John (pseudonym), were American learners of
Japanese as a second language (JSL), who were studying at a college in Tokyo on a
one-year exchange program. They had been in Japan for about two months at the
time of data collection. Mary was a 19-year-old female. She had learned
Japanese for three years in high school and one and a half years in college before
coming to Japan and was placed in a low-intermediate proficiency level class in the
Japanese language program at that Japanese college. John was a 21-year-old male.
He had learned Japanese for four years in high school and two and two-thirds years in college before coming to Japan and was placed in a high-intermediate proficiency level class in the same school.
The NS participants were 40 adult women in Japan, 20 in the Tokyo area and 20 in Kyushu
2. Of the 40 participants, 20 were in their thirties, 19 in their forties, and one was age 51. All of them could be considered middle class and were graduates of either two-year junior colleges or four-year colleges.
Materials and Procedure
This study utilized a role-play in a speech event of sales as a stimulus to elicit data. Data collection had two phases:
Phase I: NNS data
First, two NNSs were interviewed individually, then a role-play was performed between each NNS and the author; NNSs acted as sales clerks and the author as a customer. Each performance was audio-taped and transcribed.
Excerpts from the conversation between each NNS and the author are attached to this paper as an appendix.
Phase II: NS data
Forty NSs were interviewed individually. First, each was asked to listen to
an audio-taped role-play once, paying attention to the sales clerk’s speech. Then,
the NS was asked for her general comments on the NNS verbal performance. Next,
the NS listened to the same role-play again, stopped the tape whenever she felt the
NNS speech strange for Japanese, and reported it. When the NS reported the
above, the author asked the NS for her correction. After the NS finished
commenting, she was asked to evaluate the use of AH, HNR, and HMB, appropriateness of pauses, and the performance as a sales clerk. A five-point rating scale, that is, +2 (very good), +1 (good), 0 (neutral), -1 (bad), and -2 (very bad), was utilized for the evaluation. Next, the NS was asked to evaluate overall general politeness (GP), overall verbal or linguistic specific politeness (VP), and overall non-verbal or paralinguistic politeness (NVP). The term polite was defined as ‘teinei de hito ni fukai na kanji o ataenai’; that is, being polite without causing uncomfortableness. When the NS finished the ratings, it was repeated with a second role-play. The length of the NS evaluation session varied from one hour to one and half hours. The order of the role-plays for the NSs to listen to was varied, that is, Mary-John or John-Mary and 20 participants for each order.
B. Data
In this report, only quantitative data will be analyzed. First, the percentage of the NNS use of honorific expressions was calculated by dividing the total number of utterances
3with tokens by the total number of overall utterances as presented in Table 1. The results indicate that Mary used both AH and RH relatively more frequently than John. However, Mary did not use any HMB, whereas John used one HMB, kashikomarimashita “Humbly all right”. They both used only one BH, o-saifu “a purse”. Thus, most of RH they used were HNR.
Table 1
Frequency of the NNS Use of Honorifics
Type of honorifics Mary John
Addressee honorifics 49.0% 36.6%
Referent honorifics 7.1% 2.8%
Note. The total number of Mary’s utterances was 98 and John’s 148.
The data obtained in Phase II will be presented in the following section.
For the sake of calculation, the rating scale was changed to range from “+1 (very bad)” to “+5 (very good)”. Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics of the NSs’
judgments of the NNS speech in terms of seven variables, GP, VP, NVP, use of AH, HNR, and HMB, appropriateness of pauses, and performance as a sales clerk.
Use of RH was calculated by dividing the sum of scores in the use of HNR and HMB by two.
Table 2
NS Judgments of NNS Speech
Variables NNS n M sd Min Max
General politeness Mary 40 3.325 1.047 1 5
John 40 3.200 0.939 1 5
Verbal politeness Mary 40 3.125 1.090 2 5
John 40 2.875 1.017 1 5
Non-verbal politeness Mary 40 3.500 1.132 1 5
John 40 3.325 1.269 1 5
Addressee honorifics Mary 40 2.900 1.355 1 5
John 40 2.775 1.165 1 5
Referent honorifics Mary 40 2.588 0.973 1 5
John 40 2.413 0.831 1 4
Honorific polite Mary 40 2.800 1.224 1 5
John 40 2.700 1.043 1 4
Humble polite Mary 40 2.375 0.925 1 5
John 40 2.125 0.853 1 4
Pauses Mary 40 2.425 1.357 1 5
John 40 3.075 0.944 1 5
Sales clerk Mary 40 2.700 1.305 1 5
John 40 2.925 1.269 1 5
The results indicate that Mary was judged somewhat more positively than
John on five out of seven variables; however, John was judged more positively in
the appropriateness of pauses and performance as a sales clerk. The difference
between Mary and John in the VP value was larger than those in the values of GP
and NVP. Concerning the NSs’ evaluative behavior, their ages may be a variable
as well.
The following Table 3 presents the results of the judgments when the NS participants are grouped according to their age: Group I, a group of NS younger than 40, and Group II, a group 40 or older. Although the differences in the above judgments between Group I and II seem to be small, the results suggest that there is a tendency for Mary to be judged more positively by Group I and John by Group II.
Table 3
Judgments of NNS Speech by Two Age Groups
Group I (n=20) Group II (n=20)
Variables NNS M sd M sd
General politeness Mary 3.45 1.099 3.20 1.005 John 2.85 0.988 3.55 0.759 Verbal politeness Mary 3.15 1.182 3.10 1.021 John 2.85 1.089 2.90 0.968 Non-verbal politeness Mary 3.65 1.137 3.35 1.137 John 3.05 1.191 3.60 1.314 Addressee honorifics Mary 3.25 1.517 2.55 1.099 John 2.95 1.191 2.60 1.142
Referent honorifics
Honorific polite Mary 2.90 1.373 2.70 1.081 John 2.40 0.995 3.00 1.026 Humble polite Mary 2.40 1.046 2.35 0.813
John 1.95 0.945 2.30 0.733
Pauses Mary 2.65 1.663 2.20 0.951
John 2.90 0.968 3.25 0.910 Sales clerk Mary 3.15 1.309 2.25 1.164 John 2.50 1.395 3.35 0.988 Note. Average age of Group I was 35.8 years old and Group II 44.0.
In order to explore whether the judgments of VP and NVP can predict those
of GP, cluster analyses (CLA) and multiple regression analyses (MRA) were
performed. According to the results from CLA of data on Mary’s performance,
three variables, VP, NVP, and the appropriateness of pauses were chosen to be
further analyzed through MRA. The Backward-step MRA was employed
throughout this paper in order to see which variables were less predictable for
variance in GP. The following Table 4 presents the results of the analysis of the data on Mary’s performance:
Table 4
NS Judgments of Mary’s Overall General Politeness
Variables R
2Significance level (p= )
Age 0.0058 0.9991
Age + Paralinguistic 0.6576 0.00000001 Age + Paralinguistic + Linguistic 0.7462 0.00000000008 Note. ‘Age’ stands for the ages of the NSs.
As shown in the above table, the NS age is analyzed as the first variable in order to exclude the variance by any non-NNS-related factors; the result is that it accounted for almost zero variance. The variable NVP alone accounts for about 65 percent of the variance in GP, which is statistically significant ( p< .001). When another variable VP is added to it, those two together account for about 74 percent of the variance (p< .001). Therefore, it can be said that NVP and VP are probably significant factors. To check the assumptions of MRA, correlation analysis was performed, and it was found that there is neither multicollinearity nor suppressor variables.
The above three variables were adopted to analyze the NS judgments of John’s GP. Table 5 reports the results of the Backward-step MRA.
Table 5
NS Judgments of John’s Overall General Politeness
Variables R
2Significance level (p= )
Age 0.1863 0.0300
Age + Paralinguistic 0.4136 0.0054
Age + Paralinguistic + Linguistic 0.4980 0.00001
Note. ‘Age’ stands for the age of the NSs.
As reported in the above table, the variable Age accounts for 18.63 percent of the variance in the NS judgments, which is statistically significant (p<0.05). The variable NVP accounts for 22.73 percent of the variance (p<0.01). By adding another variable VP, 49.80 percent of the variance is accounted for (p<0.001). To check the assumptions of MRA, correlation analysis was performed, and it was found that there is no multicollinearity or suppressor variables. Therefore, it can be said that the above three variables are probably significant in the prediction of the NS judgments of John’s GP.
In order to see whether the use of RH can be considered as a contributor to the judgments of VP, a Backward-step MRA was performed with three independent variables, use of RH and AH, and appropriateness of pauses. Table 6 presents the results of the analysis.
Table 6
NS Judgments of Mary’s Overall Verbal Politeness
Variables R
2Significance level (p= )
Referent H 0.4597 0.000002
Referent H+ Addressee H 0.4836 0.000005
Referent H+ Addressee H+ Pauses 0.4928 0.00002 Note. H stands for honorifics.
As shown in the above table, use of RH accounts for 45.97 percent of the variance
in VP (p<0.001), and use of RH and AH 48.36 percent (p<0.001), which are both
statistically significant. Though addition of the variable Pauses increases R
2by
only 0.0092 percent (p< .001), it is still statistically significant. To check the
assumptions of MRA, correlation analysis was performed, and it was found that
there were neither muliticollinearity nor suppressor variables. Therefore, it can be
said that the above two variables, use of RH and AH, are major factors in the NS
judgments of Mary’s VP.
Next, the variables, use of RH and AH, and appropriateness of pauses were taken into consideration to find if they would be useful in predicting the NS judgments of John’s VP. It was found that the sum of all the three variables accounts for only 14.33 percent (p=0.1302) of the variance, of which AH alone accounts for 9.00 percent (p<0.06) and RH only 1.21 percent, which are not significant at all.
Discussion
In terms of the research question (A), the data above indicates that the use of honorifics can be said to be a good predictor of variance in the VP judged by NSs in Mary’s speech; in other words, it can be a factor of the VP judged in Mary’s speech. However, the use of honorifics does not seem to be a good predictor for John’s speech. Mary was a female with a lower proficiency level in the target language, and John was a male with a higher proficiency level, therefore, the features of Mary’s and John’s speech patterns were different. For example, Table 1 demonstrates that the ratio of the frequency of the use of honorifics to total utterances in Mary’s speech was higher than that in John’s. Thus, it is difficult to clarify the reasons for the differences between the NS judgments of Mary’s speech and those of John’s in terms of the predictability of the use of honorifics.
Moreover, the use of socially inappropriate expressions such as casual and informal phrases/sentences, final particle sa, the informal word chotto (a bit), and the frequency of inappropriate laughter were more common in John’s speech than Mary’s.
According to Wetzel’s (1994) study, NS Japanese participants judged the
male voice less polite than the female voice as concerns the insufficient use of
honorifics. Her contention that H judges S positively when S’s verbal
performance satisfies H’s expectation but that H judges S negatively when the
performance does not satisfy H’s expectation could be helpful to explain the results in this study.
Considering all of the above, the author theorizes as followings: When the participants listened to John’s speech, they probably felt that he was rather fluent in Japanese and, likewise, expected to hear socially appropriate expressions at the same level. However, contrary to their expectations, the more he spoke, the more he used inappropriate and less polite expressions. This may have resulted in their judging him poorly.
In terms of the judgments of the appropriateness of pauses and the performance as a sales clerk, John was rated somewhat better than Mary by the two groups. The data show that John spoke far more than Mary did and that much more pauses were found in Mary’s speech than in John’s. Some NS participants commented that they felt John was making more effort to sell merchandise than Mary. That eagerness perceived in John’s performance may have influenced the NSs positively and they rated him better than Mary as a sales clerk. On the other hand, a large number of pauses in Mary’s speech may have influenced the NS judgments on Mary’s speech negatively as to the appropriateness of pauses and the performance as a sales clerk.
As for the research question (B), predictability of the judgments of NVP for GP, it is safe to say that NVP clearly accounts for the variance in GP (Mary:
65.18 percent; John: 22.73 percent). As a matter of fact, the predictability of NVP for GP is much higher than that of VP. Therefore, it can be said that non-verbal features are significant factors in judgments of politeness in NNS sales talk.
Conclusion
As reported here, the answer to research question (B) “Do non-verbal or
paralinguistic features of speech influence NS judgments of politeness in NNS
sales talk in Japanese?” can be said to be in the affirmative. This suggests that
attention should be paid to those features in investigations on politeness in sales talk. In this study those features are treated as a whole. Further investigation is necessary to identify which features (e.g., tone, pitch, sentence intonation, intensity, and speech rate) play important roles, and which most influences politeness in discourse. On the other hand, the results obtained for question (A) “Does the use of honorifics influence NS judgments of politeness in NNS sales talk in Japanese?”
are inconclusive. It seems necessary in these kinds of studies to consider other variables such as NNS gender, proficiency levels, and the use of impolite expressions.
This study is exploratory in nature, so further investigation is necessary to confirm the importance of the use of honorifics as a strategy for NNSs in expressing politeness in sales talk and other types of speech events in Japanese. It is also necessary to further examine the roles of non-verbal or paralinguistic features in judgments of politeness in various types of speech events. If it is confirmed that those features play important roles in judgments of politeness, then as educators in L2 we should consider teaching appropriate non-verbal or paralinguistic features together with verbal or linguistic features.
Endnotes
1
This paper is a revised version of the paper published in the Research Bulletin of the International Student Center, Oita University, Vol. 3, 2006. The old version was a rewrite of my paper presented at the First College-Wide Conference for Graduate Students in the College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, 1997. I would like to thank the referees for this repository of theses and all the other people who gave me helpful comments and advice. Especially my thanks go to Gabriele Kasper and Haruko M. Cook, whose extensive knowledge of the field sparked my interest in studying pragmatics and sociolinguistics. I also would like to extend my thanks to all the participants in my study.
2
Those 20 participants were either native or long-term residents in the mid-eastern
part of Oita Prefecture.
3
