Japanese Native Speakers’ Derogatory Language Use Against Men and Women By Oliver Braun Bachelor Thesis Lund University Japanese Centre for Languages and Literature, Japanese Studies Spring Term 2021 Supervisor: Mechtild Tronnier, Rika Hayashi Abstract This thesis explores the differences between how Japanese native speakers use insults and derogatory language toward men and women. Initially, impoliteness is described as an area of sociolinguistics that explores face-threatening acts, the offensiveness of which is modified by various factors, such as the interlocutors’ relationship and gender. Then, gendered language is described as a subset of role language. Next, female speech is described and discussed as a spontaneously occurring aspect of the Japanese language, and as a manufactured ideal for how women should speak created after the Meiji restoration. This linguistic ideal of a woman should use polite and elegant language — an idea that lingers on to this day. From this theoretical background emerges the research question: “Is there a difference in how speakers of Japanese use derogatory and insulting language against men and women?” To investigate this, a survey was distributed to and answered by 12 participants. The survey consisted of two parts. In the first part, the participants were asked to judge the offensiveness of sentences, each containing one of the selected 10 Japanese derogatory words. The sentences were contextualized using the information about the interlocutors’ relationship, as well as their gender — shown through the use of male and female names. After that, the participants were given a list of 30 terms and asked what gender they associated with the words and how likely they were to use them in a friendly context. The results showed a pattern of the women’s use of insults being perceived as more offensive compared to men’s use of those same words. Thus, this thesis suggests that the use of derogatory language by women is seen as more offensive compared to its use by men. Keywords: impoliteness, gender, insults, derogatory language 2 Conventions In this thesis, the modified Hepburn system is used for transcription. Japanese words are shown in italics. English translation is provided within brackets. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors for being patient with me and giving very helpful feedback on my thesis and construction of my survey, as well as Hayashi-sensei for helping me with translating my survey into Japanese. I would also like to thank my linguistics teacher Ishihara- sensei for giving me extra assistance with my thesis, as well as my friend for helping me brainstorm and proofreading it for me. 4 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 7 2. Background ......................................................................................................................... 9 2.1. Impoliteness ................................................................................................................ 9 2.2. Gendered speech ....................................................................................................... 11 2.3. Research question ...................................................................................................... 14 3. Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 15 3.1. Part one of the survey ................................................................................................ 17 3.2. Part two of the survey................................................................................................ 18 3.3. Participants and sampling.......................................................................................... 19 4. Results .............................................................................................................................. 20 4.1. Insults and gender...................................................................................................... 20 4.2. Relationship between interlocutors ........................................................................... 22 4.3. Gender of the speaker and addressee ........................................................................ 25 4.4. Gender association and friendliness .......................................................................... 28 4.5. Dialect and age .......................................................................................................... 29 5. Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 31 5.1. Gender of the speaker and the addressee .................................................................. 31 5.2. Association of insults with gender ............................................................................ 33 5.3. Relationships and insults ........................................................................................... 34 5.4. Age and dialect .......................................................................................................... 37 6. Conclusions ...................................................................................................................... 38 References ................................................................................................................................ 40 Appendix .................................................................................................................................. 42 List of Tables Table 1 Category membership by word ................................................................................... 17 Table 2 Average Impoliteness Value regardless of condition ................................................. 20 Table 3 Average Impoliteness Value by gender condition ...................................................... 21 Table 4 Average Impoliteness Value by relationship, regardless of gender............................ 22 Table 5 Average Impoliteness Value by relationship and gender ........................................... 23 Table 6 Average Impoliteness Value by word and relationship .............................................. 24 5 Table 7 Average Impoliteness Value by gender and role, all conditions ................................ 25 Table 8 Average Impoliteness Value for male and female addressees and speakers by word 25 Table 9 Average Impoliteness Value by gender and relationship ........................................... 27 Table 10 Gender association by word ...................................................................................... 28 Table 11 Likelihood of friendly use by word .......................................................................... 29 Table 12 Average Impoliteness Value for dialects, any condition. ......................................... 29 Table 13 Average Impoliteness Value by age, any condition ................................................. 29 6 1. Introduction Nishimura (2019) states that in the field of Japanese sociolinguistics, politeness has received much more attention from researchers than impoliteness. She traces back the first proper research on impoliteness to the work of the psychologist Hoshino in the 1970s. Hoshino blamed the unwillingness to describe Japanese impoliteness among linguists on their additional role as language teachers, who had the underlying assumption that you should not teach bad Japanese but rather good Japanese. Thus, impoliteness was not an attractive research topic among scholars (Nishimura, 2019, pp. 264-265). This had carried into the modern day, as pointed out by Calvetti (2020) when looking at an up-to-date list of papers on Japanese impoliteness made by Nishimura. The list shows that publications on the topic are few and far between (Calvetti, 2020, p. 101). Impoliteness is thus a field with a relative lack of research, which is why it is important to contribute additional data by investigating it further. Impoliteness is also often tied to a balance (or imbalance) of power between interlocutors, which in some cases may relate to their gender. Therefore, it is possible that the gender of the speaker and the addressee may affect the perceived impoliteness of an utterance. This makes it interesting to investigate whether native speakers differ in their use of insults and derogatory language depending on their own gender, as well as that of the addressee. Perceived impoliteness is also affected by the context, such as the relationship between interlocutors, with the closer relationships allowing for joking or ironic use of seemingly offensive language. For example, it is more acceptable to use teasing insults with friends than with superiors at work — it might be acceptable to jokingly call one’s friend an idiot, while saying the same thing to one’s boss, teacher, or parents would certainly be seen as less acceptable. If the factors such as gender and the relationship between the speaker and the addressee affect the interpretation of impolite utterances such as ‘idiot’, it is natural to assume that they might interact and create complex patterns of perceived impoliteness. This thesis will explore whether there is a difference between how native Japanese speakers use insults and derogatory language towards men and women. First, in the background chapter, the notion of impoliteness as well as gendered