Japanese Polite Forms and Pragmatic Functions

Japanese linguistic politeness has long been observed by linguists, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, historians, educators and many others who are interested in Japanese language and culture. It has become a common impression that Japanese people as a whole, whether they are old or young, well educated or less educated, rich or poor, men or women, behave in a polite manner in human contact situations, whether such situations are public or private. Japanese linguistic politeness has become an inseparable part of the Japanese social and cultural patterns or an expected social behavior in the Japanese society. However, most previous researches remain at a superficial level by describing such a polite social behavioral pattern in various human contact situations without exploring the nature and sources of such a polite behavior. Unlike most traditional definitions of linguistic politeness which focus on surface language forms as observed in the Japanese language in relation to the expected Japanese social manner, this paper, from some psycholinguistic perspectives, defines ‘politeness’ as a social strategy in the Japanese culture beyond surface language forms themselves. This paper presents three arguments: (1) The so-called ‘polite’ or ‘honorific’ language forms as commonly employed by the speaker in various communicative settings do not necessarily always indicate that the speaker must be a ‘polite’ person. The so-called ‘polite’ language is more about a particular language form itself than about the speaker himself/herself. (2) The relationship between language forms and functions is not always or necessarily one-to-one (i.e. one form for one function). This is because one language form may serve different functions in different speech contexts. It is the speaker who makes the most appropriate choice of a particular language form (in this case, a polite language form) in order to achieve the most desirable outcome (i.e. the intended result). (3) All speakers in the same speech community make rational choices of particular language forms to achieve their communicative intentions in particular social and cultural settings (cf. Elster 1986, 1991). In other words, the speaker’s choice of a particular language form at a certain point during a discourse is not only constrained by a set of commonly observed social and cultural principles and rules but also is intentionally manipulated by the speaker himself/herself. In other words, such an intentional manipulation of language or language forms is motivated by the speaker’s communicative intentions. In so doing, in the first place the speaker is fully aware of the norms and principles of language use as observed by speakers in the same speech community, and thus the speaker is also aware of the fact that any intentional ‘violation’ or ‘manipulation’ of such norms and principles will offer him/her the most desirable outcomes as expected. It is in this sense that we say speakers not only employ polite language forms as a pragmatic strategy in human communication but also manipulate them as a linguistic means to achieve their communicative intentions. Also, it is in this sense that we say speakers are recognized as ‘rational actors’ because they know which linguistic means serves their communicative intentions with most desirable outcomes as perceived.