Masculine pronouns are not only for boys: Japanese girls breaking traditional relationships between gender and language in a school context

IF 1.1 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS
Ayumi Miyazaki
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Abstract

Abstract Based on a longitudinal ethnography at a Japanese junior high school, this paper explores how ideologies of Japanese women’s language are subverted through girls’ everyday linguistic ideological work of breaking presumed linkages between female gender and language. Girls at Sakura Junior High School employed masculine and non-traditional first-person pronouns and created new sets of indexicalities. The ethnography tracks how the girls did this in three important ways: 1) They used the most masculine pronoun, ore, and attached positive metapragmatic meanings (such as “cool,” “powerful,” “independent,” and “assertive”) to their use of this pronoun. In doing so, they established a powerful ore register and persona for girl users. 2) They also interpreted their use of boku, a plain masculine pronoun, as gender-appropriate for girls, whereas they negatively regarded boy users of boku as weak mama’s boys. 3) They attached strongly negative metapragmatic meanings to feminine pronouns and created an unfavorable feminine register and persona for these pronouns from which they disaligned themselves. The girls’ persistence in aligning masculine and non-traditional registers did not point to any evidence of their desire to take on a male identity, but rather to their creation of positive indexicalities about masculine pronouns and to their engagement in the social capital of maleness that accompanies male speech. Consequently, girls’ ideological work contextually constructed new indexical fields where girls established their own space in which they severed the naturalized relationships between language, identities, and social categories.
男性代词不只是男生的专利:日本女孩在学校打破性别与语言之间的传统关系
摘要 本文以日本一所初中的纵向人种学研究为基础,探讨了日本女性语言的意识形态是如何通过女生打破女性性别与语言之间假定联系的日常语言意识形态工作而被颠覆的。樱花初中的女生们使用了男性化和非传统的第一人称代词,并创造了一系列新的索引性。人种学研究从三个重要方面追踪了女孩们是如何做到这一点的:1) 她们使用了最男性化的代词 ore,并在使用这一代词时附加了积极的元语用意义(如 "酷"、"强大"、"独立 "和 "自信")。这样,她们就为女孩用户建立了一个强大的 ore 语域和角色。2)她们还把使用 boku 这个普通的男性代词解释为适合女孩的性别,而把使用 boku 的男孩负面地视为软弱的 "妈妈的孩子"。3)她们对女性代词附加了强烈的负面元语用意义,并为这些代词创造了一个不利于女性的语域和角色,从而使自己与之脱节。女孩们坚持使用男性化和非传统的语域,这并不表明她们渴望拥有男性身份,而是表明她们创造了关于男性代词的积极索引,以及她们参与了伴随男性话语而来的男性社会资本。因此,女孩们的意识形态工作在语境中构建了新的索引领域,女孩们在其中建立了自己的空间,切断了语言、身份和社会类别之间的自然化关系。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
International Journal of the Sociology of Language
International Journal of the Sociology of Language Arts and Humanities-Language and Linguistics
CiteScore
2.30
自引率
0.00%
发文量
66
期刊介绍: The International Journal of the Sociology of Language (IJSL) is dedicated to the development of the sociology of language as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches – theoretical and empirical – supplement and complement each other, contributing thereby to the growth of language-related knowledge, applications, values and sensitivities. Five of the journal''s annual issues are topically focused, all of the articles in such issues being commissioned in advance, after acceptance of proposals. One annual issue is reserved for single articles on the sociology of language. Selected issues throughout the year also feature a contribution on small languages and small language communities.
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