Hierarchical Interdependence Expressed Through Conversational Styles in Japanese Women's Magazines

Abstract

There has been a common belief that the Japanese language has clear distinctions between male and female language use, and that such distinctions are not gender but sex differences. However, recent research re-examines this belief and shows that men and women's different use of speech styles is a sociocultural construct. In line with this research, this paper critically analyzes the language used in a popular form of self-help literature—Japanese women's magazines—and presents an account of the cognitive process whereby discourse positions women and women personalize the discourse. Deconstructing a discourse and the text behind the discourse helps to account for how language is used to control readers, how they perceive the social context through this language, and how they relate it to their personal experience. The paper argues that the polysemous nature of conversational styles, which represent hierarchy and solidarity, is strategically used in the magazines to construct the context in which the social images of a woman are stereotyped. The paper also argues that the `genderlect' (gendered women's speech style) in everyday conversation is a continuum of gendered speech styles in literary discourse.