| The use of deferential(敬重的)language is symbolic of
the Confucian ideal of the woman, which dominates conservative gender norms in
Japan. This ideal presents a woman who withdraws quietly to the background,
subordinating her life and needs to those of her family and its male head. She
ii a dutiful daughter, wife, and mother, master of the domestic arts. The
typical refined Japanese woman excels in modesty and delicacy; she "treads
softly (谨言慎行)in the world", elevating feminine beauty and grace to an art
form. Nowadays, it is commonly observed that young women are not conforming to the feminine linguistic(语言的) ideal. They are using fewer of the very deferential "women's" forms, and even using the few strong forms that are known as "men's". This, of course, attracts considerable attention and has Led to an outcry in the Japanese media against the defeminization of women's language. Indeed, we didn't hear about "men's language" until people began to respond to girls' appropriation of forms normally reserved for boys and men. There is considerable sentiment about the "corruption" of women's language-which of course is viewed as part of the loss of feminine ideals and morality--and this sentiment is crystallized by nationwide opinion polls that are regularly carried out by the media. Yoshiko Matsumoto has argued that young women probably never used as many of the highly deferential forms as older women. This highly polite style is no doubt something that young women have been expected to "grow into"--after all, it is a sign simply of femininity, but of maturity and refit, and its use could be taken to indicate a change in the nature of one's social relations as well. one might well imagine little girls using exceedingly polite forms when playing house or imitating older women--in a fashion analogous to little girls' use of a high-pitched voice to do "teacher talk" or "mother talk" in rote play. The fact that young Japanese women are using less deferential language is a sure sign of change--of social change and of linguistic change. But it is most certainly not a sign of the "masculinization" of girls. In some instances, it may be a sign that girls are making the same claim to authority as boys and men, but that is very different from saying that they are trying to be "masculine". Katsue Reynolds has argued that girls nowadays are using mole assertive language strategies in order to be able to compete with boys in schools and out. Social change also brings not simply different positions for women and girls, but different relations to life stages, and adolescent girls file participating in new subcultural forms. Thus what may, to an older speaker, seem like "masculine" speech may seem to an adolescent like "liberated" or "hip" speech. |