This study examines student perspectives on gender differences in Japanese speech. Expanding on a small-scale survey by Siegal & Okamoto (2003) that investigated the views of eleven Japanese-language college teachers, this study analyzes 238 questionnaire responses from 220 Japanese-language students at four universities and a US government…

This study analyzes the conversational styles of two dyads who engaged in a semester-long, video-mediated telecollaboration between Japan and America. While one dyad expressed the greatest satisfaction and developed the autonomy to continue the project beyond the curricular requirement, the other dyad expressed the greatest frustration, requiring…

The roles played by English borrowings in modern Japanese literary works are examined. After a brief summary of previous studies, this paper describes the style repertoire and the kinds of stylistic effects produced in Japanese literature by English borrowings, such as attention attractors and in-group-identity markers. (23 references) (Author/LB)

Presents a case study in which the use of intricate varieties of levels of honorifics in Japanese is more complicated than traditional sociolinguistics has shown. The buraku (Japanese barrio) treated here is situated in the west part of Honshu, Japan, and consists of 13 households. (CHK)

Discusses the claim that male/female speech style differences in Japanese have the function of indexing the social role of the speaker and that identifying oneself as belonging to the male or female gender has no implication of a higher or lower status in society. The interview's findings imply that students need to be informed of the…

This paper examines the following points: (1) how Japanese personal pronouns are used according to the speakers' social constraints, and (2) differences between males and females of the same occupational group in their use of personal pronouns. The dialect analyzed is the speech of Japanese faculty members at the University of Hawaii. A speaker of…

This volume contains working papers on a variety of topics in linguistics. They include: "A View of Phonology from a Cognitive and Functional Perspective" (Joan Bybee); "The Geography of Language Shift: Distance from the Mexican Border and Spanish Language Claiming in the Southwestern United States" (Garland D. Bills, Eduardo…

The working papers contained in this volume include the following: "Intercultural Communication and the Analysis of Conversation" (Nessa Wolfson); "Methods of Inquiry into Cultural Expression in Speech Behavior" (Ruth Benander); "'I Really Like Your Lifestyle': ESL Learners Learning How to Compliment" (Kristine…