An Introduction to The National Language Research Institute:
A Sketch of its Achievements
Third Edition(1988)/
HTML Version(1997)
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II.1.11 Some Aspects of Honorific Expressions
- In special reference to discourse
(Report 41, 1971. 231 pages)
The purpose of this report is to show some of the results of
an investigation into honorific expressions spoken in a
local community in Japan. The present study is based on the
materials obtained by a so-called "one-day investigation of
verbal behaviour" carried out in Matue (population about
110,000), the capital of Simane Prefecture in western Japan.
The investigation was a part of the research project on
"linguistic life"(this term covers various aspects of
language use in daily life) in a local community conducted by
the Institute in 1963.
Two points might be mentioned as the characteristics of
the present study: first, the analysis of honorific
expressions in the materials was consistently made from the
point of view of discourse. Since every actual use of
honorific expressions in the materials is always found in a
discourse, many of the conditions relating to the
selection of the elements of honorific expressions should be
revealed by the analysis of discourse. In this study, all
discourses in the materials were classified into several
categories according to their functions in verbal
communication (greetings, conversation for business, chatting
etc.), tone of speech (neutral, joking, ironical,
complaining etc.) and topics (matters in daily life, business,
gossip etc.). And every actual use of the honorific
expressions including polite expressions, exalted expressions,
demand expressions and personal names as well as pronouns
were examined in each category of the discourse. For example,
a definite difference among the morphemes used in exalted
expressions was found in examining the discourses in which they
appeared; -RARE- appeared, in most cases, in the discourses of
gossip and was used for the third person 194 times out a total of
201. On the other hand, -NASAR- mainly appeared in the discourses
of topics related to daily life or business matters and was
used for the addressee 54 times out of a total of 60.
Secondly, the computer system of the Institute was used for
the processing of the materials. The Institute has been
carrying out a large scale investigation into the vocabulary in
newspapers since 1965, using the computer. However, the
present study is the first attempt at the Institute in
processing colloquial language materials. Lists of morphemes and
words with their frequencies and other lists with contexts in KWOC
form were made for further linguistic analysis. Although
cooperative relationships between the linguistic analysis and
the processing by computer remain to be improved in many
respects, the attempt will suggest some clues for the
development of study in this field.
In this study, MINAMI Huzio was mainly in charge of
linguistic analysis and MATUMOTO Akira in charge of processing of
materials.
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