Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vfjqv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T07:54:44.631Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A quantitative study of gender differences in the ellipsis of the Japanese postpositional particles -wa and -ga: Gender composition as a constraint on variability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Shoji Takano
Shoji Takano
Affiliation:
Hokusei Gakuen University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It has been claimed that the ellipsis of postpositional particles is one of the properties of Japanese women's language. The validity of this claim, however, is compromised by several methodological problems in prior research in this area: (1) the subjective comparison of bare percentages without any statistical verification of male–female differences; (2) the neglect of the intersecting relationships among a variety of potential constraints which simultaneously influence the speaker's choice of the variable; and (3) the exclusive focus on single-sex interactions. Conducting multivariate analyses of conversational data from both single-sex and cross-sex peer interactions, this preliminary study demonstrates the overgeneralization of gender-linked differentiation in past work due to the neglect of the relative strength of potential intersecting factors. The results also reveal statistically significant degrees of stylistic intragender variability across different types of gender composition, which counters the static approach to a social variable of gender in the traditional sociolinguistic paradigm.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , October 1998 , pp. 289 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abe, K. (1989). Sei yakuwari to hatsuwa no kinoo [Sex roles and pragmatic functions]. Eibei bungaku kenkyuu. Nihon Joshi Daigaku Eigo Eibungaku-kai. 75–93.Google Scholar
Bayley, R., & Pease-Alvarez, L. (1997). Null pronoun variation in Mexican-descent children's narrative discourse. Language Variation and Change 9:349–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, A. (1984). Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13:145–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilous, F. R., & Krauss, R. M. (1988). Dominance and accommodation in the conversational behaviours of same- and mixed-gender dyads. Language and Communication 8:183–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bortoni-Ricardo, S. M. (1985). The urbanization of rural dialect speakers: A sociolinguistic study in Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brouwer, D., Gerritsen, M., & de Haan, D. (1979). Speech differences between women and men: On the wrong track? Language in Society 8:33–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, P. (1980). How and why are women more polite: Some evidence from a Mayan community. In McConnell-Ginet, S. et al. (Eds.), Women and language in literature and society. New York: Praeger. 111–149.Google Scholar
Cameron, D., & Coates, J. (1988). Some problems in the sociolinguistic explanation of sex differences. In Coates, J. & Cameron, D. (Eds.), Women in their speech communities. London: Longman. 13–26.Google Scholar
Coates, J. (1988). Introduction. In Coates, J. & Cameron, D. (Eds.), Women in their speech communities. London: Longman. 63–73.Google Scholar
Coates, J., & Cameron, D. (Eds.). (1988). Women in their speech communities. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Douglas-Cowie, E. (1978). Linguistic code-switching in a Northern Irish village: Social interaction and social ambition. In Trudgill, P. (Ed.), Sociolinguistic patterns in British English. London: Arnold. 37–51.Google Scholar
Eakins, B., & Eakins, G. (1976). Verbal turn-taking and exchanges in faculty dialogue. In Dubois, B. L. & Crouch, I. (Eds.), The sociology of the languages of American women. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (1988). Adolescent social structure and the spread of linguistic change. Language in Society 17:183–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (1989). The whole women: Sex and gender differences in variation. Language Variation and Change 1:245–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (1992). Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Reviews of Anthropology 21:461–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelsky, C. (1981). Who's got the floor? Language in Society 10:383–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erman, B. (1992). Female and male usage of pragmatic expressions in same-sex and mixed-sex interaction. Language Variation and Change 4:217–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishman, P. (1983). Interaction: The work women do. In Thorne, B., Kramarae, C., & Henley, N. (Eds.), Language, gender and society. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. 89–101.Google Scholar
Fujii, N., & Ono, T. (1994). The occurrence and non-occurrence of the Japanese direct object marker o in conversation. Unpublished manuscript, University of Oregon and University of California, Santa Barbara.Google Scholar
Giles, H. (1980). Accommodation theory: Some new directions. York Papers in Linguistics 9:105–135.Google Scholar
Giles, H., & Powesland, P. F. (1975). Speech style and social evaluation. London: Academic.Google Scholar
Giles, H., & Coupland, N. (1991). Language: Contexts and consequences. Pacific Gove, CA: Brooks/Cole.Google Scholar
Goodwin, M. H. (1980). Directive-response speech sequences in girls' and boys' task activities. In McConnell-Ginet, S. et al. (Eds.), Women and language in literature and society. New York: Praeger. 157–173.Google Scholar
Goodwin, M. H. (1990). He-said-she-said: Talk as social organization among Black children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Graddol, D., & Swann, J. (1989). Gender voices. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Guy, G. R. (1980). Variation in the group and the individual: The case of final stop deletion. In Labov, W. (Ed.), Locating language in time and space. New York: Academic. 1–36.Google Scholar
Guy, G. R. (1990). The development of a morphological class. Language Variation and Change 2:1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, G. R. (1991). Contextual conditioning in variable lexical phonology. Language Variation and Change 3:223–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasegawa, Y. (1993). Hanasi-kotoba ni okeru “mu-kansi” no kinoo [Functions of particle deletion in spoken Japanese]. Nihongo Kyooiku 80:158–168.Google Scholar
Hinds, J. (1976). Aspects of Japanese discourse structure. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.Google Scholar
Hinds, J. (1982). Ellipsis in Japanese. Edmonton: Linguistic Research.Google Scholar
Ide, S. (1990). How and why do women speak more politely in Japanese? In Ide, S. & McGloin, N. H. (Eds.), Aspects of Japanese women's language. Tokyo: Kurosio. 63–79.Google Scholar
Ide, S., Hori, M., Kawasaki, A., Ikuta, S., & Haga, H. (1986). Sex differences and politeness in Japanese. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 58:25–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jorden, E. H., & Noda, M. (1987). Japanese: The spoken language, Part I. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, P. (1972). Explanation in phonology. In Peters, S. (Ed.), Coals of linguistic theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Kuno, S. (1972). Functional sentence perspective: A case study from Japanese and English. Linguistic Inquiry 3:269–320.Google Scholar
Kuno, S. (1973). The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1966). The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1969). Contraction, deletion, and inherent variability of the English copula. Language 45:715–762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (1972a). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1972b). Some principles of linguistic methodology. Language in Society 1: 97–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (1981). Field methods of the project on linguistic change and variation. (Sociolinguistic Working Papers 81.) Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Lab.Google Scholar
Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and women's place. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Le Page, R. B., & Tabouret-Keller, A. (1985). Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maltz, D. N., & Borker, R. A. (1982). A cultural approach to male-female communication. In Gumperz, J. J. (Ed.), Language and social identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 196–216.Google Scholar
Martin, S. (1975). A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mashimo, S. (1969). Hujingo no kenkyuu [A study of women's language]. Tokyo: Tookyoo-doo.Google Scholar
Masunaga, K. (1988). Case deletion and discourse context. In Poser, W. J. (Ed.), Papers from the Second International Workshop on Japanese Syntax. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Matsuda, K.(1992). Accusative case marker -o deletion in Tokyo Japanese. In C. P. Canakis, G. P. Chan, & J. M. Denton (Eds.), Proceedings of the 28th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (Vol. 1). 356–366.Google Scholar
Maynard, S. K. (1981). The given/new distinction and the analysis of the Japanese particles -wa and -ga. Papers in Linguistics 14:132–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McConnell-Ginet, S. (1988). Language and gender. In Newmeyer, F. J. (Ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge survey. Volume IV: Language: The socio-cultural context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 75–99.Google Scholar
McGloin, N. H. (1986). Feminine wa and no: Why do women use them? Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 20:7–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGloin, N. H. (1990). Sex difference and sentence-final particles. In Ide, S. & McGloin, N. H. (Eds.), Aspects of Japanese women's language. Tokyo: Kurosio. 23–41.Google Scholar
McGloin, N. H. (1993). Shuu-joshi [Final particles]. Nihongo-gaku 12:120–124.Google Scholar
Milroy, L. (1980). Language and social network. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mulac, A., Wiemann, J. M., Widenmann, S., & Gibson, T. W. (1988). Male/female language differences and effects in same-sex and mixed-sex dyads: The gender-linked language effect. Communication Monographs 55:315–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myhill, J. (1992). Typological discourse analysis: Quantitative approaches to the study of linguistic function. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Nichols, P. C. (1980). Women in their speech communities. In McConnell-Ginet, S. et al. (Eds.), Women and language in literature and society. New York: Praeger. 140–149.Google Scholar
Nichols, P. C. (1983). Linguistic options and choices for Black women in the rural South. In Thorne, B. et al. (Eds.), Language, gender, and society. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. 54–68.Google Scholar
Nichols, P. C. (1984). Networks and hierarchies: Language and social stratification. In Kramarae, C. et al. (Eds.), Language and power. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. 23–42.Google Scholar
Peng, F. C. C., Hori, M., Horiguchi, J., Ide, S., Takahara, O., & Tanaka, M. (1981). Male/female differences in Japanese. Tokyo: The East-West Sign Language Association.Google Scholar
Philips, Susan U. (1980). Sex differences and language. Annual Reviews of Anthropology 9:523–544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, S. (1980a). Deletion and disambiguation in Puerto Rican Spanish. Language 56:371–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, S. (1980b). The notion of the plural in Puerto Rican Spanish: Competing constraints on (s) deletion. In Labov, W. (Ed.), Locating language in time and space. New York: Academic. 55–67.Google Scholar
Preston, D. (1989). Sociolinguistics and second language acquisition. New York: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Preston, D. (1991). Sorting out the variables in Sociolinguistic theory. American Speech 66:33–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, E. (1987). Sara Gorby, Yiddish folksinger: A case study of dialect shift. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 67:83–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, E. (1992). The ZPG letter: Subjects, definiteness, and information status. In Mann, W. C. & Thompson, S. A. (Eds.), Discourse description: Diverse linguistic analyses of a fund-raising text. Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins. 295–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rand, D., & Sankoff, D. (1990). GoldVarb Version 2: A variable rule application for the Macintosh. Montreal: Université de Montréal.Google Scholar
Rickford, J., & McNair-Knox, F. (1994). Addressee- and topic-influenced style shift: A quantitative sociolinguistic study. In Biber, D. & Finegan, E. (Eds.), Sociolinguistic perspectives on register. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 235–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosaldo, M. (1974). Women, culture and society: A theoretical overview. In Rosaldo, M. & Lamphere, L. (Eds.), Women, culture and society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1–16.Google Scholar
Rosenberger, N. R. (1994). Indexing hierarchy through Japanese gender relations. In Bachnik, J. M. & Quinn, C. J. Jr. (Eds.), Situated meaning: Inside and outside in Japanese self, society, and language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 88–112.Google Scholar
Sankoff, D. (1985). Statistics in linguistics. In Encyclopedia of statistical sciences (vol. 5). New York: Wiley. 74–81.Google Scholar
Sankoff, D. (1986). Variable rules. In Ammon, U. et al. (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: An international handbook of the science of language and society. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Sankoff, D. (1988). Sociolinguistics and syntactic variation. In Newmeyer, F. J. (Ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge survey. Volume IV: The socio-cultural context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 140–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, D., & Labov, W. (1979). On the uses of variable rules. Language in Society 8:189–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shibamoto, J. S. (1985). Japanese women's language. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Shibamoto, J. S. (1987). The womanly woman: manipulation of stereotypical and nonstereotypical features of Japanese female speech. In Philips, S. U., Steele, S., & Tanz, C. (Eds.), Language, gender and sex in comparative perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shibamoto, J. S. (1990). Sex-related variation in the ellipsis of wa and ga. In Ide, S. & McGloin, N. H. (Eds.), Aspects of Japanese women's language. Tokyo: Kurosio. 81–104.Google Scholar
Shibatani, M. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sukle, R. J. (1994). Uchi/soto: Choices in directive speech acts in Japanese. In Bachnik, J. M. & Quinn, C. J. Jr, (Eds.), Situated meaning: Inside and outside in Japanese self, society, and language. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. 113–142.Google Scholar
Swann, J. (1988). Talk control: an illustration from the classroom of problems in analyzing male dominance of conversation. In Coates, J. & Cameron, D. (Eds.), Women in their speech communities. London: Longman. 123–140.Google Scholar
Tamori, I. (1977). NP and particle deletion in Japanese discourse. University of Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics 5:243–263.Google Scholar
Tannen, D. (1990). You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation. New York: Morrow.Google Scholar
Thakerar, J. N., Giles, H., & Cheshire, J. (1982). Psychological and linguistic parameters of speech accommodation theory. In Fraser, C. & Scherer, K. R. (Eds.), Advances in the social psychology of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, B. (1988). Differences of sex and sects: Linguistic variation and social networks in a Welsh mining village. In Coates, J. & Cameron, D. (Eds.), Women in their speech communities. London: Longman. 51–60.Google Scholar
Tsutsui, M. (1981). Ellipsis of wa in Japanese. In Makino, S. (Ed.), Papers from the Middlebury Symposium on Japanese Discourse Analysis. Tokyo: The Toyota Foundation.Google Scholar
Tsutsui, M. (1983). Ellipsis of ga. Papers in Japanese Linguistics 9:199–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsutsui, M. (1984). Particle ellipsis in Japanese. Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Uchida, A. (1992). When “difference” is “dominance”: A critique of the “anti-power-based” cultural approach to sex differences. Language in Society 21:547–568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vance, T. (1987). An introduction to Japanese phonology. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Walters, K. (1989). The interviewer as variable in quantitative sociolinguistic studies. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Watanabe, Y. (1986). Two kinds of ellipsis in Japanese discourse: A quantitative text study. Studies in Language 10:337–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiner, E. J., & Labov, W. (1983). Constraints on the agentless passive. Journal of Linguistics 19:29–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wetzel, P. J. (1988). Japanese social deixis and discourse phenomena. Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 22:7–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wetzel, P. J. (1994). A movable self: The linguistic indexing of uchi and soto. In Bachnik, J. M. & Quinn, C. J. Jr. (Eds.), Situated meaning: Inside and outside in Japanese self, society, and language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 73–87.Google Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, M. (1988). The influence of changing group vitality on convergence toward a dominant norm. Language and Communication 8:285–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, M. (1993). Linguistic analysis of dialect “correction” and its interaction with cognitive salience. Language Variation and Change 5:189–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yamashita, H. (1979). Nihon no kotoba to kokoro [The Japanese Language and Mind]. Tokyo: Kodansha.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, D. H., & West, C. (1975). Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversations. In Thorne, B. & Henley, N. (Eds.), Language and sex: Difference and dominance. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. 105–129.Google Scholar