Wakimae

Yoko Yonezawa
The University of Sydney
Table of contents

This chapter discusses the notion of wakimae, known in pragmatics by its English translation ‘discernment’, and reconsiders both its relevance and challenges in analysing different aspects of communication.

Full-text access is restricted to subscribers. Log in to obtain additional credentials. For subscription information see Subscription & Price.

References

Agha, Asif
2007 Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anchimbe, Eric A., and Richard W. Janney
2011 “Postcolonial pragmatics: An introduction.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (6): 1451–1459. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Backhouse, Anthony E.
1993 The Japanese Language: An Introduction. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barke, Andrew
2010 “Manipulating honorifics in the construction of social identities in Japanese television drama.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 14 (1): 456–476. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana
1987 “Indirectness and politeness in requests: Same or different?” Journal of Pragmatics 11 (2): 131–146. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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 logo with link to Google Scholar
Cook, Haruko Minegishi.
1996 “The use of addressee honorifics in Japanese elementary school classrooms.” Japanese/Korean Linguistics 5: 67–81.Google Scholar logo with link to 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.
2006 “Japanese politeness as an interactional achievement: Academic consultation sessions in Japanese universities.” Multilingua 25 (3): 269–291. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2011 “Are honorifics polite? Uses of referent honorifics in a Japanese committee meeting.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (15): 3655–3672. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dunn, Cynthia Dickel
2011 “Formal forms or verbal strategies? Politeness theory and Japanese business etiquette training.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (15): 3643–3654. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eelen, Gino
2014 A Critique of Politeness Theory. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2022 Language vs. Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas
2010 Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fêng, Han-yi
1967 The Chinese Kinship System. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foley, William A.
1997 Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to 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 logo with link to Google Scholar
Gu, Yueguo
1990 “Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese.” Journal of Pragmatics 14 (2): 237–257. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hanks, William F., Sachiko Ide and Yasuhiro Katagiri
2009 “Towards an emancipatory pragmatics.” Journal of Pragmatics 41: 1–9. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hasegawa, Yoko
2012 “Against the social constructionist account of Japanese politeness.” Journal of Politeness Research 8 (2): 245–268. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael
2012 “Epilogue: The first-second order distinction in face and politeness research.” Journal of Politeness Research 8 (1): 111–134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013 “Im/politeness, social practice and the participation order.” Journal of Pragmatics 58: 52–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2018 “Linguistic politeness.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, ed. by Yoko Hasegawa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haviland, John B.
1979 “Guugu Yimidhirr brother-in-law language.” Language in Society 8 (3): 365–393. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John
1984 Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar logo with link to 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ide, Sachiko
1982 “Japanese sociolinguistics politeness and women’s language.” Lingua 57: 357–385. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1989 “Formal forms and discernment: Two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness.” Multilingua 8 (2/3): 223–248. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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 logo with link to 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 logo with link to 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2006  Wakimae no Goyooron [Pragmatics of Wakimae]. Tokyo: Sanseido.Google Scholar logo with link to 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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 logo with link to 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 logo with link to 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z., and Sara Mills
2013 “Rethinking discernment.” Journal of Politeness Research 9 (2): 133–158. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kasper, Gabriele
1990 “Linguistic politeness: Current research issues.” Journal of Pragmatics 14 (2): 193–218. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin
1973 “The logic of politeness: Minding your p’s and q’s.” Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS): 292–395.Google Scholar logo with link to 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey
1983 Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C.
2000 Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maynard, Senko K.
2001a “Expressivity in discourse: Vocatives and themes in Japanese.” Language Sciences 23: 679–705. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nwoye, Onuigbo G.
1992 “Linguistic politeness and socio-cultural variations of the notion of face.” Journal of Pragmatics 18 (4): 309–328. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Obana, Yasuko, and Michael Haugh
2021 “(Non-)propositional irony in Japanese: Impoliteness behind honorifics.” Lingua 260: 103–119. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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 logo with link to Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary
1975 Mind, Language, and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Suzuki, Takao
1973 Kotoba to Bunka [Language and Culture]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Terkourafi, Marina
2015 “Conventionalization: A new agenda for im/politeness research.” Journal of Pragmatics 86: 11–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael
2008 Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, and Richard B. Dasher
2002 Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to 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 logo with link to 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna
2003 Cross-cultural Pragmatics: The Semantics of Human Interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google 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. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2021 The Mysterious Address Term Anata ‘you’ in Japanese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar

Dictionary

Super Daijirin Japanese Dictionary
2010 Tokyo: Sanseido.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar

Corpus

Sketch Engine (jaTenTen11)
2011 https://​www​.sketchengine​.eu/
 
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue