"Gendered Voicedness": Style Variations in Direct Quotations as Evidence for Gender-Indexing in Japanese Conversational Narratives
Tetsuya Sato
In this paper I explore 'gendered voicedness' of direct quotation in Japanese conversational narratives based on Bakhtin's notion of "double-voiced discourse" (1981:324). According to Bakhtin (ibid.), double-voiced discourse in the novel "serves two speakers at the same time and expresses simultaneously two different intentions: the direct intention of the character who is speaking, and the refracted intention of the author." It is a productive concept in analyzing and elucidating style variations within quoted speech in relation to gender.
The speaker's gender identity and language use in Japanese conversation has been extensively studied (cf. Okamoto and Sato 1992; Okamoto 1994, 1996; Matsumoto 2001). However, 'gendered' speech in direct quotation has not been paid much attention so far (except Inoue 1996). Through the examination of direct quotation in audiotaped Japanese conversations, I argue that 'gendered' language ideologies are manifest in direct quotation, where the quoter performs the quotee's 'female/male' identity through talk. That is, by directly quoting other's speech, the quoter performs the socio-cultural identity of the quotee, including his/her gender identity as an integral attribute to that individual. More specifically, when the speaker incorporates other's voice (i.e. speech) in storytelling, treating it as if it is verbatim, he or she utilizes his or her metalinguistic/ metapragmatic knowledge of gender-indexing linguistic resources in reproducing how the original speech was delivered. Conversely, direct quotation seems to be a reasonable place to look for evidence for 'gendered' language use in Japanese.
Observe the following example of a direct quote. Speaker M is reporting to her friends a conversation with her mother regarding aging.
213 M: [babaa].
old-woman
214 toka tte,
like QT
215 fuzakete yuu to,
teasingly say then
When I said to my mom teasingly, "old woman," or something like that,
-> 216 ... anta mo,
you also
-> 217 koo nan no yo.
this become NOM FP
"You're gonna be like this too, you know,"
218 <@ tte @>.
QT
In lines 216 and 217, M directly quotes her mother. In the sentence-final position of this direct quotation, M uses the nominalizer particle no followed by the authority particle yo (Suzuki 1990). This no yo combination is traditionally classified as a "super-feminine form" (Okamoto and Sato 1992:481).
This paper is organized as follows. First, I review previous literature on (1) direct quotation as verbatim, (2) direct quotation as (re)creation, (3) multivoicedness of quoted speech, and (4) "gendered voicedness" as style variations in direct quotation. Second, I illustrates "gendered voicedness" observed in the present conversational data. Third, I conclude that speaker's essentialized knowledge of gendered language is manifest in direct quotation and offer suggestions for future studies in this area.
All the conversations were casually exchanged among friends and family members. The participants vary in terms of age and gender but all speak primarily Standard Japanese. The data for this study consists of fourteen audio-taped naturally occurring conversations in Japanese (approximately 108 minutes total).[1]
The present data show that some variations do go along with so-called feminine/ masculine linguistic forms, while others show inconsistency. However, I hope to illustrate that it is possible to identify the gender identities of the quotees in discussion with use of multiple interpretive sources, primarily through linguistic forms and additionally through propositional meanings and socio-cultural knowledge. To this end, I argue that, instead of discounting or eradicating the construct of 'feminine/masculine' forms all together, there are reasons for linguistic forms and gender identity being closely associated with each other (cf. Inoue 1996), which deserves further investigations. Moreover, there still seem to be potential ways to access 'gendered' language ideologies within the speaker's speech, such as direct quotation in Japanese.
References
Backhtin, Mikhail M. 1981.The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Inoue, Miyako. 1996. The political economy of gender and language in Japan. Unpublished dissertation. Washington University, St. Louis, MS.
Matsumoto, Yoshiko. 2001. Gender identity and the presentation of self in Japanese. In Sarah Benor, Mary Rose, Devyani Sharma, Julie Sweetland and Qing Zhang, eds., Gendered Practices in Language, 1-18. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Okamoto, Shigego and Sato, Shie. 1992. Less feminine speech among young Japanese females. In Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz, and Birch Moonwoman , eds., Locating power: Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference, 478-488. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group.
Okamoto, Shigeko. 1994. Indexing meaning, linguistic ideology, and Japanese women's speech. In Mary Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, Laurel A. Sutton, and Caitlin Hines, eds., Cultural performances: Proceedings of the third Berkeley women and language conference, 569-581. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Women and Language Group.
Okamoto, Shigeko. 1996. Indexical meaning, linguistic ideology, and Japanese women's speech. Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 290-301.
Suzuki, Ryoko. 1990. The role of particles in Japanese gossip. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society 16:315-324.