How are speech styles elaborated for presenting individual personality while bearing in mind social norms? Certain cases in Beppu City, Oita Prefecture, Japan.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how speech styles are elaborated for presenting individual personality. Through the narratives of ten selected interviewees, some social norms internalised by them emerged. Age, status and career are associated to the joo/ge (upper/lower) and the senpai/koohai (senior/junior) relationships. Whether it is the first meeting and the length of relationship are associated to shin/so (intimacy/distance) and uchi/soto (in-group/out-group). In particular the notion of shin/so takes a role for adjusting speech styles. According to the narratives of individual episodes, there are several factors of determination of speech style, which are not necessarily following social norms. The way of constructing relationships, keeping power relations, protection and so on are influenced by regional characteristics, which include factors of determination of speech style such as generation, gender, solidarity, and jibunrashisa (like myself, personality) and so forth.