A historical study of politeness in Japanese focusing on adverbs and prefaced expressions

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K16840
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Japanese linguistics
• Research Institution: Hirosaki University
• Principal Investigator: KAWASE Suguru 弘前大学, 人文社会科学部, 講師 (80634724)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: 歴史語用論 / 配慮表現 / 行為指示 / 感謝・謝罪 / 副詞 / 前置き表現 / 定型化 / 標準語

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The purpose of this study is to investigate the historical development of politeness in directives, gratitude, and apologies in Japanese, with a focus on adverbs and prefaced expressions. With regard to directives, we describe the development of prefaced expressions, such as“sumimasenga”(excuse me, but) and“yoroshikattara”(if you want), the influence of the establishment of standard Japanese on such expressions, and the resultant change in the norms of politeness. In regards to gratitude and apologies, we recount the development of the adverb“domo.”In addition, we discuss several related grammatical phenomena that were discovered in our research.

Free Research Field

日本語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

副詞や前置き表現など、述語部分以外の要素に注目して対人的コミュニケーションの歴史を考察する本研究は、従来の配慮表現の歴史的研究で手薄であった部分を解明するものである。また、本研究は配慮表現の歴史的研究の発展に寄与するだけでなく、近年注目されつつある歴史語用論（言語運用の歴史を明らかにすることを目指す方法論）の発展や、日本語文法史において重要な現象の一つである近代語の分析的傾向の解明にもつながるものである。