Cover not available
Part of
Handbook of Pragmatics: 26th Annual Installment
Edited by Sigurd D’hondt, Pedro Gras, Mieke Vandenbroucke and Frank Brisard
[Handbook of Pragmatics 26] 2023
► pp. 127–153

Wakimae

| The University of Sydney
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Discernment as the social norm
    • 2.1Conventions and rituals
    • 2.2Honorifics
    • 2.3Person reference
  • 3.Wakimae/Discernment at the macro-level: Common ground
  • 4.Wakimae/Discernment at the micro-level: Dynamics of interaction
  • 5.Wakimae as an emic metalanguage
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 16 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.26.wak1
References (79)
References
Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ameka, Felix K., and Marina Terkourafi. 2019. “What if…? Imagining non-Western perspectives on pragmatic theory and practice.” Journal of Pragmatics 145: 72–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anchimbe, Eric A. 2011. “On not calling people by their names: Pragmatic undertones of sociocultural relationships in a postcolony.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1472–1483. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anchimbe, Eric A., and Richard W. Janney. 2011. “Postcolonial pragmatics: An introduction.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (6): 1451–1459. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Backhouse, Anthony E. 1993. The Japanese Language: An Introduction. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barke, Andrew. 2010. “Manipulating honorifics in the construction of social identities in Japanese television drama.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 14 (1): 456–476. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 1987. “Indirectness and politeness in requests: Same or different?” Journal of Pragmatics 11 (2): 131–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Roger W., and Albert Gilman. 1960. “The pronouns of power and solidarity.” In Style in Language, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 253–276. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cook, Haruko Minegishi. 1996. “The use of addressee honorifics in Japanese elementary school classrooms.” Japanese/Korean Linguistics 5: 67–81.Google Scholar
Cook, Haruko Minegishi. 1998. “Situational meanings of Japanese social deixis: The mixed use of the masu and plain forms.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8 (1): 87–110. DOI logo
. 2006. “Japanese politeness as an interactional achievement: Academic consultation sessions in Japanese universities.” Multilingua 25 (3): 269–291. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. “Style shifts in Japanese academic consultations.” In Style Shifting in Japanese, ed. by Kimberly Jones and Ono Tsuyoshi, 9–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. “Are honorifics polite? Uses of referent honorifics in a Japanese committee meeting.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (15): 3655–3672. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dixon, R. M. W. 2021. “The semantics of the Dyirbal avoidance style.” In The Integration of Language and Society: A Cross-linguistic Typology, ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon and Nerida Jarkey, 144–174. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dunn, Cynthia Dickel. 2011. “Formal forms or verbal strategies? Politeness theory and Japanese business etiquette training.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (15): 3643–3654. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1992. “Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice.” Annual Review of Anthropology 21 (1): 461–488. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eelen, Gino. 2014. A Critique of Politeness Theory. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enfield, N. J. 2004. “Ethnosyntax: Introduction.” In Ethnosyntax: Explorations in Grammar and Culture, ed. by N. J. Enfield, 1–32. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2022. Language vs. Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enfield, N. J., and Bernard Comrie. 2015. “Mainland Southeast Asian languages.” In Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia: The State of the Art, ed. by N. J. Enfield and Bernard Comrie, 1–27. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, Nicholas. 2010. Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas, and Stephen C. Levinson. 2009. “The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science.” Behavioural and Brain Sciences 32: 429–492. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fêng, Han-yi. 1967. The Chinese Kinship System. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foley, William A. 1997. Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Green, Georgia M. 1995. “Ambiguity resolution and discourse interpretation.” In Semantic Ambiguity and Underspecification, ed. by Kees van Deemter and Peters Stanley, 1–26. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Gu, Yueguo. 1990. “Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese.” Journal of Pragmatics 14 (2): 237–257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hanks, William F. 2014. “Introduction to emancipatory pragmatics, Special issue part 3: From practice theory to ba theory.” Journal of Pragmatics 69:1–3. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hanks, William F., Sachiko Ide and Yasuhiro Katagiri. 2009. “Towards an emancipatory pragmatics.” Journal of Pragmatics 41: 1–9. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hasegawa, Yoko. 2012. “Against the social constructionist account of Japanese politeness.” Journal of Politeness Research 8 (2): 245–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugh, Michael. 2012. “Epilogue: The first-second order distinction in face and politeness research.” Journal of Politeness Research 8 (1): 111–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “Im/politeness, social practice and the participation order.” Journal of Pragmatics 58: 52–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018. “Linguistic politeness.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, ed. by Yoko Hasegawa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haviland, John B. 1979. “Guugu Yimidhirr brother-in-law language.” Language in Society 8 (3): 365–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Beverly, Sachiko Ide, Shoko Ikuta, Akiko Kawasaki and Tsunao Ogino. 1986. “Universals of linguistic politeness: Quantitative evidence from Japanese and American English.” Journal of Pragmatics 10 (3): 347–371. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Janet, and Miriam Meyerhoff. 1999. “The community of practice: Theories and methodologies in language and gender research.” Language in Society 28 (2): 173–183. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holtgraves, Thomas, and Yang Joong-Nam. 1990. “Politeness as universal: Cross-cultural perceptions of request strategies and inferences based on their use.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59 (4): 719–729. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ide, Sachiko. 1982. “Japanese sociolinguistics politeness and women’s language.” Lingua 57: 357–385. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1989. “Formal forms and discernment: Two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness.” Multilingua 8 (2/3): 223–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1990. “Person references of Japanese and American children.” In Aspects of Japanese Women’s Language, ed. by Sachiko Ide and Naomi Hanaoka McGloin, 43–61. Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan.Google Scholar
. 1992. “On the notion of wakimae: Toward an integrated framework of linguistic politeness.” Mosaic of Language: Essays in Honour of Professor Natsuko Okuda, Mejiro Linguistic Society: 298–305.Google Scholar
. 2005. “How and why honorifics can signify dignity and elegance: The indexicality and reflexivity of linguistic rituals.” In Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness, ed. by Robin T. Lakoff and Sachiko Ide, 45–64. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Wakimae no Goyooron [Pragmatics of Wakimae]. Tokyo: Sanseido.Google Scholar
. 2012. “Roots of the wakimae aspect of linguistic politeness: Modal expressions and Japanese sense of self.” In Pragmaticizing Understanding: Studies for Jef Verschueren, ed. by Michel Meeuwis and Jan-Ola Östman, 121–138. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ide, Sachiko, and Kishiko Ueno. 2011. “Honorifics and address terms.” In Pragmatics of Society, ed. by Gisle Andersen and Karin Aijmer, 439–470. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1971 [1957]. “Shifters, verbal categories and the Russian verb.” In Selected Writings, ed. by Roman Jakobson, 130–147. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
. 1992 [1959]. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida, ed. by Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet, 144–51. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Originally in On Translation, ed. by Reuben A. Brower, 232–239. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Janney, Richard W., and Horst Arndt. 1993. “Universality and relativity in cross-cultural politeness research: A historical perspective.” Multilingua 12 (1): 13–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jarkey, Nerida. 2021. “The grammatical expression of social relations in Japanese.” In The Integration of Language and Society: A Cross-linguistic Typology, ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon and Nerida Jarkey, 58–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z., and Sara Mills. 2013. “Rethinking discernment.” Journal of Politeness Research 9 (2): 133–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kasper, Gabriele. 1990. “Linguistic politeness: Current research issues.” Journal of Pragmatics 14 (2): 193–218. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, Robin. 1973. “The logic of politeness: Minding your p’s and q’s.” Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS): 292–395.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin T., and Sachiko Ide. 2005. “Introduction: Broadening the horizon of linguistic politeness.” In Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness, ed. by Robin T. Lakoff and Sachiko Ide, 1–20. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2000. Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liu, Xiangdong. 2021. “‘I’ll never call them by their names, because it’s rude.’: Kinship terms used by Chinese native speakers in daily interactions.” Paper presented at the 17th International Pragmatics Conference, Winterthur, 27 June – 2 July 2021.
Matsumoto, Yoshiko. 1988. “Reexamination of the universality of face: Politeness phenomena in Japanese.” Journal of Pragmatics 12 (4): 403–426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maynard, Senko K. 2001a. “Expressivity in discourse: Vocatives and themes in Japanese.” Language Sciences 23: 679–705. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001b. “Falling in love with style: Expressive functions of stylistic shifts in a Japanese television drama series.” Functions of Language 8 (1): 1–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mertz, Elizabeth, and Jonathan Yovel. 2009. “Metalinguistic awareness.” In Cognition and Pragmatics, ed. by Dominiek Sandra, Jan-Ola Östman and Jef Verschueren, 250–271. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nwoye, Onuigbo G. 1992. “Linguistic politeness and socio-cultural variations of the notion of face.” Journal of Pragmatics 18 (4): 309–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Obana, Yasuko, and Michael Haugh. 2021. “(Non-)propositional irony in Japanese: Impoliteness behind honorifics.” Lingua 260: 103–119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Okamoto, Shigeko. 2011. “The use and interpretation of addressee honorifics and plain forms in Japanese: Diversity, multiplicity, and ambiguity.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (15): 3673–3688. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Okamoto, Shigeko, and Janet S. Shibamoto Smith. 2004. Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary. 1975. Mind, Language, and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1985. “Language and the culture of gender: At the intersection of structure, usage, and ideology.” In Semiotic Mediation: Sociocultural and Psychological Perspectives, ed. by Elizabeth Mertz and Richard J. Parmentier, 219–259. Orlando: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Suzuki, Takao. 1973. Kotoba to Bunka [Language and Culture]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.Google Scholar
Terkourafi, Marina. 2015. “Conventionalization: A new agenda for im/politeness research.” Journal of Pragmatics 86: 11–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Terkourafi, Marina, and Dániel Z. Kádár. 2017. “Convention and ritual (im)politeness.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, 171–195. London: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, Michael. 2008. Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, and Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Usmanova, Shoira Rustamovna, and Nargiza Rasuljanovna Ismatullayeva. 2020. “Expression of lacunas in comparative study of kinship terms in Chinese and Uzbek languages.” Solid State Technology 63 (6): 4974–4985.Google Scholar
Watts, Richard J., Sachiko Ide, and Konrad Ehlich. 1992. Politeness in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 2003. Cross-cultural Pragmatics: The Semantics of Human Interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yonezawa, Yoko. 2019. “Constructing fluid relationships through language: A study of address terms in a Japanese drama and its pedagogical implications.” Journal of Japanese Linguistics 35 (2): 189–211. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. The Mysterious Address Term Anata ‘you’ in Japanese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dictionary
Super Daijirin Japanese Dictionary. 2010. Tokyo: Sanseido.Google Scholar
Corpus
Sketch Engine (jaTenTen11). 2011. [URL]