Article published In:
PragmaticsVol. 13:3 (2003) ► pp.423–450
Reanalysis of contrastive -wa in Japanese
Perspectives from newspaper articles
This paper examines the behavior of contrastive –wa in Japanese written discourse. While supporting its local nature (Clancy and Downing 1987), the paper argues, based on a survey of newspapers, that localness alone is not sufficient to understand the nature of contrast. It proposes that the use of contrastive –wa is motivated by how the writer perceives the world, or what Chafe (1994) calls ‘conscious experience’. We propose literal opposition, evaluation, association, and conflict as its main components. In the final part, the paper relates the results to the recent study on Contrastive Topic (Lee 1999, 2000, 2003), stating that the CT-approach is still unable to account for the entire range of phenomena discovered. The paper suggests that the discrepancies arise because of the fact that natural data integrates the writer’s context-specific intentions, to which priority is not given in formalistic approaches.
Keywords: Written discourse, Conscious experience, Contrastive –wa, Speaker/writer, Contrastive Topic
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
References
Caenepeel, Mimo
Caffi, Claudia
(1994) Metapragmatics. In R.E. Asher (ed.), The Enchyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 41.Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 2461-2466.
Chafe, Wallace
(1976) Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In C.N. Li (ed.), Subject and topic. New York: Academic Press, pp. 25-55.
(1994) Discourse, consciousness, and time. The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. BoP
Clancy, Patricia M., and Pamela Downing
(1987) The use of wa as a cohesion marker in Japanese oral narratives. In J. Hinds, et al.. (eds.), Perspectives on topicalization. The case of Japanese ‘wa’. Amsterdam/New York: John Benjamins, pp. 3-56. 
Cotter, Collen
(2001) Discourse and media. In D. Schiffirn, et al.. (eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 416-36.
van Dijk, Teun A
(1985) Structures of news in the press. In T.A. van Dijk (ed.), Discourse and communication. New approaches to the analyses of mass media discourse and communication. Berlin/New York: W. de Gruyter, pp. 69-93.
Dooley, Robert, and Stephen H. Levinsohn
(2001) Analyzing Discourse. A Manual of Basic Concepts. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics International.
Francis, Gill
(1989) Thematic selection and distribution in written discourse. Word 40.1-2: 201-21.
Givón, Talmy
(1983) Topic Continuity in Discourse: An Introduction. In T. Givón (ed.), Topic Continuity in Discourse. A Quantitative Cross-language study. John Benjamins. Amsterdam/New York, pp. 3-41.
(1984) Syntax: A functional typological introduction, vol 11. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Gundel, K. Jeanette
(1985) ‘Shared knowledge’ and topicality. Journal of Pragmatics 91: 83-107.
Hinds, John
(1987) Thematization, assumed familiarity, staging, and syntactic binding in Japanese. In Hinds et al. 1987, pp. 83-106.
Hinds, John, Senko K. Maynard, Shoichi Iwasaki
(eds.) (1987) Perspectives on Topicalization. The Case of Japanese ‘wa’. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. BoP
BoPHobbs, Jerry R
(1990) Topic Drift. Conversational Organization and its Development. In B. Doral (ed.), Conversational Organization and its Development. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, pp. 3-22.
Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress
Inoue, Kazuko
(1979) Furui jouhou atarasii jouhou [Old information and new information]. Gengo 8.10: 22-34.
(1982) An interface of syntax, semantics, and discourse structures. Lingua 571: 259-300.
Iwasaki, Shoichi
Kress, Gunther
(1983) Linguistic processes and the mediation of ‘reality’: The politics of newspaper language. International Journal of Sociology of Language 401: 43-57.
Kuno, Susumu
(1973) The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Kuroda, Shigeyuki
(1972-73) The categorical and the thetic judgment. Foundations of Language 91: 153-85.
(1987) A study of the so-called topic wa in passages from Tolstoi, Lawrence, and Faulkner. In Hinds, et al.. (eds.), Perspectives on Topicalization. The Case of Japanese ‘wa’.Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 143-61.
(1990) The categorical and the thetic judgment reconsidered. In Mulligan, Kevin (ed.), Mind, Meaning and Metaphysics. The Philosophy and Theory of Language of Anton Marty. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 77-88.
Lang, Ewald
(2000) Adversative connectors on distinct levels of discourse: A re-examination of Eve Sweetser’s three-level approach. In Couper-Kuhlen, E. and B. Kortmann (eds.), Cause Condition Concession Contrast. Cognitive and discourse perspective.Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 235-256.
Lee, Chungmin
(1999) Contrastive Topic: A locus of the interface. Evidence from Korean and English. In K. Turner (ed.), The Semantics/Pragmatics interface from different points of view, Elsevier, pp. 317-342.
(2000a) Contrastive predicates and conventional scales. In A. Okrent & J. Boyle (eds.), Chicago Linguistic Society 361: 243-257.
(2000b) Topic, Contrastive Topic and Focus: What’s on our minds. Journal of Cognitive Science 11: 21-38.
(2003) Contrastive Topic and proposition structure. In A.M. Di Schiullo (ed.), Asymmetry in Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 45-371.
Linell, Per, and Natascha Korolija
(1997) Coherence in Multi-Party Conversation. Episodes and Contexts in Interaction. T. Givón (ed.), Conversation. cognitive, communicative and social perspectives.Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 167-205.
Longacre, Robert E
Lyons, Christopher
Maynard, Senko
(1987) Thematization as a staging device in the Japanese narrative. In Hinds, et al. (1987), pp. 57-82.
(2002) In the name of a vessel: Emotive perspectives in the reporting of the Ehime Maru-Greeneville collision in a Japanese newspaper. Linguistics 40.5: 1047-1086. BoP
BoPMey, Jacob
(2001) Pragmatics. An introduction. [second Edition]. Oxford: Blackwell.
Miyagawa, Shigeru
Nagano, Masaru
(1972) Bunshouron sousetsu [Introduction to the sentence structure]. Tokyo: Asakura Shoten.
Nariyama, Shigeko
(2002) The WA/GA distinction and switch-reference for ellipted subject identification in Japanese complex sentences. Studies in Language 26.2: 369-431.
Noda, Naofumi
(1996) Wa to ga [Wa and ga]. Tokyo: Kuroshio Publishers.
Nuyts, Jan
(1992) Aspects of a cognitive-pragmatic theory of language. On cognition, functionalism, and grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. BoP
Schwenter, Scott. A
(2000) Viewpoints and polysemy: linking adversative and causal meanings of discourse markers. In E. Couper-Kuhlen & B. Kortmann (eds.), Cause Condition Concession Contrast. Cognitive and discourse perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 257-281.
Sweetser, Eve E
(1990) From etymology to pragmatics. Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BoP
BoPTannen, Deborah
(1985) Relative focus on involvement in oral and written discourse. In D.R. Olson, N. Torrance, A. Hildyard (eds.), Literacy, language, and learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Ungerer, Friedrich
(1997) Emotions and emotional language in English and German news stories. In S. Niemeier & R. Dirven (eds.), The Language of emotions, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 307-328.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Fukuda, Chie
2022. Resistance against being formulated as cultural other. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 429 ff. 
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.