All welcome! Please RSVP by 21/10 as we will be providing refreshments after the seminar
Thanking and Politeness in Japanese: Balancing Acts in Interaction
Dr. Jun Ohashi (Asia Institute, University of Melbourne)
Weds 23 October 2013
12 noon to 1 pm, refreshments to follow
Japanese Studies Centre, Auditorium. Building 54, Monash University Clayton campus, Wellington Rd., Clayton [map]
This seminar is a previews Dr. Ohashi’s book of the same title, which will be published by Palgrave Macmillan later this year. It synthesizes his previous work on thanking, politeness and Japanese pragmatics and crystallises the theoretical underpinnings of thanking, how it is realized linguistically and the social meaning and significance of this aspect of Japanese communication. The book employs three empirical studies to reveal conversational participants’ collaborative work in thanking episodes, specifically, their acts of balancing obligations. It illuminates the mutually dependent nature of social interaction in Japanese and beyond, and suggests a new theoretical framework in understanding what is expected in social interaction across the languages. This is a definitive work on how Japanese people thank one another, and will provide ongoing value to second language Japanese teachers, textbook writers and academics seeking to make sense of, and define, this beautifully subtle, complex yet essential speech act in Japanese.
Preface
At a ground floor reception area of a medium sized hotel near Kyoto station, two middle-aged women wearing traditional kimono are talking face-to-face and bowing to each other. The way each reciprocates the other’s bow produces an effect similar to a seesaw in motion. One bow begets another, and so on. A group of Western tourists just ten meters away look on with queer expressions of astonishment doused in curiosity. Needless to say, they had not a clue as to what was happening. They and I were witnessing an everyday Japanese o-rei ritual; a set of culturally shaped conversational behaviours marked by frequent exchanges of bows in a thanking episode.
As a Japanese native speaker who has been educated in Japan until undergraduate level, I have observed and have been involved in many Japanese thanking episodes. However, my experience in the Kyoto lobby was marked out to me because of my experience living outside Japan. As a sojourner, returning to my native country, I was for the first time able to imagine how outsiders, the tourists, may find the mores of Japan hard to fathom. In other words, I had reached the juncture between my unconscious acceptance of all Japanese culture as completely normal, and the eye of an outsider trying to make sense of what is a truly complex and somewhat unconventional social practice.
The couple dispersed and the tourists moved on, but for me the encounter had a lasting impact. This research has in many ways grown out of that experience. What would it take for the tourists to fully understand the thanking episode, and how would that explanation be articulated? Undoubtedly, extra-linguistic information such as bowings presents one of the keys to understanding how Japanese thank each other. The specific utterances and the underlying notions of face and politeness all contribute to a greater understanding of Japanese communication, social expectations and etiquette. It is hoped that this work will offer an explanation of this phenomenon and contribute to our knowledge of Japanese society as a whole.
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Japanese Studies Centre Faculty of Arts Building 54, Clayton Campus, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia Tel : +61 3 9905 2260 Fax : +61 3 9905 3874 Email : japanese-studies-centre@monash.edu
Website: www.arts.monash.edu.au/mai/jsc/