PhD project
This PhD project investigates the different ways in which honorific forms are used in Japanese other than to express politeness, and how different factors affect perceptions about these uses.
Duration
2024 – 2028
Contact
Daniëlle van der Schaaf
Illustration by Ron Hoekstra from Pixabay
The Japanese language is well-known for its rich inventory of honorific forms (lexical expressions typically used to raise Other and lower the Self), which are intricately woven into the fabric of Japanese society as they affect not only usage but also the grammar itself. Although these forms are typically used to express linguistic politeness, previous research has shown a variety of other functions in a phenomenon referred to as ‘style shifts’ (a sudden and temporary shift from one speech style to another – in this case, from a speech register that does not use honorific forms to one that does).
What are the different ways these forms are used, and how can these be categorised? Why are honorific forms used in these ways, what are the core lexical function(s) they serve? When are this forms used, what factors influence the usage of honorific style shifts, and in what way? And, how does this relate to honorific forms’ typical function of existing politeness, lowering the Self and elevating the Other?
Preliminary research has shown that an important factor here may be that honorific forms function as a marker of distance, be that either horizontal (‘closeness’), vertical (a hierarchical difference), or spatial (formality introduced by the environment). In this way, solving the mystery of how honorific style shifts are used, and how they are influenced by different circumstantial factors, can bring valuable insights in the way people linguistically express psychological distance as it dynamically changes.
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