Macro-sociolinguistic study of honorifics adoption affected by speaker's attributes

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K13443
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: International University of Health and Welfare (2020-2021); Tokyo University of Social Welfare (2018-2019); Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (2017)
• Principal Investigator: YANAGIMURA Yu 国際医療福祉大学, 国際交流センター, 助教 (50748275)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 敬語 / 敬語教育 / 日本語教育

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We conducted a research on the usage, acquisition, and change of Japanese honorifics. We accumulated an extended data on Japanese honorifics and proposed a new hypothesis. A comparative analysis was conducted on materials from the Okazaki Survey on Honorifics, a large-scale longitudinal survey conducted by the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, and the new survey that succeeded it. The following results were obtained. (1) There are two patterns of intra-speaker age-related change in Japanese honorifics: "late adoption" and "early adoption," and which pattern each individual exhibits is related to speaker's attributes. (2) The use of "respectful" and "humble" forms, i.e., honorifics for the person in a sentence, has been decreasing over the survey period. (3) Applying the above results to honorific education for foreign learners of Japanese, we analyzed the learners' knowledge, misuse, and problems with honorifics.

Free Research Field

社会言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究では、世界でも稀な大規模経年調査資料を用いて、敬語習得パターンの話者内・話者間の共時的変異と通時的変化というダイナミックな過程を記述・分析した。これにより、敬語使用に関して、長期スパンに渡る個人内での加齢変化を実時間で捉え、社会言語学分野における実証的貢献を行った。また、日本語の敬語使用全体についても、対者敬語化・丁寧語化という大きな歴史的変化傾向に関わる現象を実証的に記述した。これは日本語の敬語論・敬語史分野における大きな学術的インパクトを持つ。さらに、社会的意義としては、以上の成果を敬語教育分野へと応用することで、外国人日本語学習者に対する敬語教育への貢献を行った。