Situational Meanings of Japanese Social Deixis: The Mixed Use of the Masu and Plain Forms

Abstract

This article explores indexical relations between honorific forms and their situational meanings by examining the Japanese addressee honorific masu form and its nonhonorific counterpart, the plain form. Arguing against a simple view of these forms as speech‐level markers, the article proposes that both addressee‐deference and speaker‐focused self‐presentation are indexical values of the masu form; the plain form is associated with an absence of these values. By examining two contrastive social situations, the article investigates ways in which co‐occurring contextual features foreground one value over the other.

On historical Chinese apology and its strategic application

“…Furthermore, it was also demonstrated that honorifics/RF are not always used to show politeness and have other discourse functions, cf. Cook (1998;. Section three tries to corroborate these critiques, from the perspective of historical Chinese politeness.…”

1. Introducing the ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ of (im)politeness

“…Users' variable evaluations of these categories, the negotiation of identities, positions and stances enacted in situated contexts were put under the spotlight. Politeness theory of this kind (Watts 1989(Watts , 1992Watts et al 1992;Eelen 2001), opened up new avenues of investigation such as the discursive nature of politeness (Watts above and 2003;Locher 2004Locher , 2006Locher , 2008Watts 2005, 2008;Mills 2011) and the strategic nature of honorific usage (Pizziconi 2003;Cook 1998Cook , 2013, the pro-social character of polite behaviour (Sifianou 1992) as well as deliberately confrontational impolite behaviour (Culpeper 1996(Culpeper , 2011Culpeper, Bousfield and Wichmann 2003;Locher and Bousfield 2008;Bousfield , 2010. These trends also showed many synergies and the contributions of different disciplinary traditions, from theories of identity to social cognition, conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, and others (see Locher 2012 for a review).…”

Politeness in a Japanese intra-organisational meeting

“…Traditionally it was claimed that the application, unequal use and omission of honorific patterns indicates status differences in Japanese society (Kabaya, 2007). However, discursive studies of speech-level shifts in various contexts, including broadcast interviews, student discussions, and classroom interactions, demonstrated the weakness of this conventional belief (e.g., Cook, 1999;Ikuta, 1983;Usami, 2002). These linguistic studies show that the mixing of honorific and non-honorific language does not directly reflect contextual factors, such as hierarchical difference or level of intimacy, between the interactants.…”

“…they may omit honorifics in order to create a casual atmosphere (Okamoto, 1999). Thus, speech-level shifts can be observed when speakers change their footing, or adjust psychological distance (Hidaka and Ito, 2007;Cook, 1999;Reisei, 2006: 96-106).…”