〈距離〉を軸としたモダリティーとポライトネスの包括的語用論

Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness can be read as one of 'distance' in interpersonal communication. There is a great advantage to the common scale of 'distance' in considering functions of modality as well. Firstly, this makes it possible to treat modal meanings which are expressed by honorifics or address in one view. Secondly, it enables us to treat both propositional attitudes, which are communicated with indexicals or sentence-final particles, and interpersonal attitudes, which are communicated with honorifics or address, uniformly on the scale of relative 'distance' as reflex of speakers' psychological distance towards hearers. Thirdly, different senses of distance in different topics of reference and different kinds of speech acts can be treated inclusively.

This research aimed at finding out how propositional or interpersonal attitudes, which are expressed by address, indexicals, and sentence-final particles, were related to interpersonal senses of distance, and was successful in describing them systematically. Furthermore, by comparing pragmatically Japanese, Korean, and Chinese in terms of ways of organizing 'distance' into the language system, intriguing differences in ways of expressing interpersonal senses of distance were found ; that is, there was a strong preference to formality and stereotype in Japanese, and in contrast, there was a pronounced tendency toward substantiality and non-formality in Korean and Chinese.