The Mysterious Address Term anata 'you' in Japanese

Yoko Yonezawa

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027210500 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027258922 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

The use of the second person singular pronoun anata ‘you’ in modern Japanese has long been regarded as mysterious and problematic, generating contradictory nuances such as polite, impolite, intimate, and distancing. Treated as a troublesome pronoun, scholars have searched for a semantically loaded meaning in anata, under the assumption that all Japanese personal reference terms involve social indexicality. This book takes a new approach, revealing that anata is in fact semantically simple and its powerful expressivity is explained only in pragmatic terms. In doing so, the study brings to bear a thorough understanding of key issues in pragmatics, such as common ground, sociocultural norms, and shared understandings, in order to fully grasp the meaning and usage of this single linguistic item. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in a range of linguistic fields, such as semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, anthropological linguistics, linguistic typology, cultural linguistics, as well as applied linguistics.

[Topics in Address Research, 4] 2021. xv, 208 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/tar.4

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements | pp. xi–xii

Abbreviations | pp. xiii–xiv

List of figures | pp. xv–xvi

List of tables | pp. xvii–xviii

Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–36

Chapter 2. The history of anata, person reference terms in Japanese, and social norms in Japanese communication | pp. 37–66

Chapter 3. The perceptions of native speakers | pp. 67–90

Chapter 4. Absolute specification in a socially undefinable relationship | pp. 91–116

Chapter 5. Absolute specification in a socially definable relationship | pp. 117–144

Chapter 6. Ideology, identity, reflexive processes, and the use of anata | pp. 145–170

Chapter 7. Conclusion | pp. 171–174

References

Resources | pp. 191–192

Data Sources | pp. 193–194

Appendix

Name index | pp. 201–204

Subject index | pp. 205–208

“I highly recommend this book to Japanese language students, professors, and scholars interested in pragmatics, sociolinguistics, media language, and language ideology.”

Rika Ito, St. Olaf College, in Journal of Pragmatics 198 (2022)

“[T]his study makes an immense contribution to Japanese linguistics. This book offers a systematic solution to this problematic address term by revealing how the meaning of anata dynamically changes by the interlocutors’ intent to accept or reject social norms and relationships.”

Yuki Matsuda, University of Memphis, Journal of Japanese Linguistics 38(2): 295–297

“One might be skeptical as to whether a single pronoun deserves an entire book, but ‘anata’ is by no means merely the equivalent of English ‘you’. Its controversial characteristics indeed merit thorough investigation from a variety of angles, which the author launches into engagingly. As with a good mystery novel, readers at the end will say to themselves, “So that’s what was going on. Now I see.” [...] Yonezawa’s analysis is compelling. She solves the “mystery of anata” by showing how historical developments and political motivations contributed to its complexification, and by doing so she sheds light on the ever-evolving Japanese person-referencing system and on Japanese speakers’ underlying sensitivity to sociolinguistic norms.”

Emi Morita, National University of Singapore, in Language in Japan, 1 (2024).

Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Djenar, Dwi Noverini

2024. Levelling, differentiation and structure of feeling: Address and interlocutor reference in Indonesian political interviews. Discourse & Society 35:4 ► pp. 434 ff.

Yonezawa, Yoko

2023. Wakimae. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 127 ff.

Yonezawa, Yoko

2024. Generic and vague uses of a second-person singular pronoun in an open-class person-reference system and speaker creativity in reported speech: the case of anata in Japanese. Linguistics

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