The third report of language and society– 総合職共働き人事コンサルのブログ

This my second report of language and society.
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The first part is an explanation of “style” and “politeness”. The definition of “style” in class is “speech that reflects and constructs the context, social setting, rather than the characteristics, identity, of the speakers”. It means that the style in language is a way of speaking which is affected by around situation. The situation is based on around condition when we are speaking and an influence of situation show preference compare to influence of distinctiveness of each person. Factors of style are location, interlocutor, and topic. Next, there is about the definition of “politeness”. Politeness is the one factor which decides the one way rather than another to convey our massage (Holmes 270) and degree of politeness is come from social distance, solidarity, and relative power or status. If we have a positive politeness, we use the style which emphasizes on solidarity and in the case of we have a negative politeness, we use the style which emphasizes on social distance. Factors of politeness are status, formality, repetitive effect, social relationship, and gender. Status is the post of such as working place. High status peoples tend to use more imperative directives to subordinates. Formality is that formal situation requires formal language which means that people tend to use more politeness speech style in a formal situation. Repetitive effect is that routine requests are less polite. It means that our speech style change to casual style by increasing the meeting time. The next one is social relationship. Social relationship is that intimates tend to use more imperatives for directives. In other word, if people have a close relationship, people use an informal speech style. A last factor is gender. This factor describe that females tend to use more polite forms. There are factors of politeness.
In my life, various speech styles is used which is influenced some factors such as talking with family and superior of club. At first, these two cases will be described. In family, I tend to use casual style Japanese such as “dayone” or “desho” which are use in end of a sentence. Almost all Japanese use these styles (“dayone” or “desho”) with only friends and these styles can be called low politeness style. A formal end of a sentence is “desuyone” or “desuka” which is high politeness style. In my family, there are some examples of changing between these two styles. The first is relationship between me and my grandmother. When I talk with my grandmother, I use formal end of a sentence. The factor make me so is interlocutor in the style. When I talk with other that grandmother in my house, I use casual end of a sentence. But in case of I talk with grandmother, I change the speech style. It means that the factor of interlocutor is working. And in this example, the factors of politeness of grandmother are working, which are social relationship and gender. In the point of social relationship, I do not have a good relationship with my grandmother compare to the other families. And I think that my grandmother do not like me. In a result, my grandmother and I use high politeness style. The second point is about gender. Of course, my grandmother is female so she tends to use high politeness style. Some people think that your mother is female, but she does not use formal style. But the second point is about this point. The second is difference of a way of display of anger between father and mother. In my house, father and mother get angry to me sometime. In this case, they tend to change a speech style but a changed style is difference. This difference shows the influence of factor of degree of politeness. In this case, factors of style are almost same. The location is my house and interlocutor is me and topic is almost same. But the way of display of anger is difference. It can be thought that the factors of politeness make difference of display of anger. The factors which affect the way of display of anger are social relationship and gender. There is difference of relationship. The relationship between me and mother is close compare to the relationship between me and father. And, of course, there is gender difference between father and mother. As a result, my mother uses formal speech style. For example, she says that “you should think about what you did”. In a contrasting situation, my father uses casual and intemperate speech style such as “I could not understand what you are thinking about”. This difference is come from the factors of social relationship and gender.
In school club, the factor of speech style and politeness is working too. In the case of club, factor of location have a big influence and status and repetitive effect operate to the degree of politeness. In my relationship with my junior fellow, the influence of location is big. Hierarchical relationship should be kept in a club. Therefore, I force my junior follow to use formal speech style and I use casual speech style. But when we talk in a return path or bar, we use a casual style each other. In this case, a factor of location is working and makes us use casual speech style. In the degree of politeness, status and repetitive effect make a big influence. If I talk with one year my junior, I am easy to use low politeness style. In other side, when I talk with two or three years my junior, it is difficult to use low politeness style and use high politeness style each other. A factor of status is working. But sometime, we use low politeness style with two or three years my junior. In this case, person who is used low politeness style talk with me every time we see each other. A factor of repetitive effect is working in this case. Therefore, factors are influence each speech style and degree of politeness is not only one but also several factors.
Works Cited
Holmes, Janet. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics Third Edition. Edinburgh: Longman, 2008.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2000.