Don’t call me obasan ‘aunt’
Address practices towards aunts and conceptualisation of the kinship term obasan in contemporary Japanese
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.24964Keywords:
address terms, kinship terms, JapaneseAbstract
This study investigates the use of the kinship term obasan “aunt” as an address term in Japanese by analysing three types of data: metalinguistic discourse in online discussion; the most typical collocates for the term in a large corpus of Japanese websites; and the results of a survey of native speakers. The study demonstrates that address practices towards aunts appear to be changing. The most typically collocated adjectives and adjectival nouns with obasan as a term of reference in the corpus reveal an overwhelmingly negative conceptualisation of the term in contemporary contexts. The survey results show an increasing trend towards addressing aunts with their names and nicknames instead of obasan. The analysis shows an almost pejorative connotation of the fictive use of obasan, and this appears to interfere with its literal use as an address term towards actual kin, hence the decrease in its usage.
References
Agha, A. (2007). Language and social relations. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ahn, H. & Kim, C. (2021). Korean cultural conceptualizations of two uncles: Ajeossi and samchon using a usage-based approach. Corpus Pragmatics, 5(4), 511–538. https://doi.org.ezproxy.library.sydney.edu.au/10.1007/s41701-021-00110-7
Befu, H. & Norbeck, E. (1958). Japanese usages of terms of relationship. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 14(1), 66–86. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3628844
Brown, L. (2017). “Nwuna’s body is so sexy”: Pop culture and the chronotopic formulations of kinship terms in Korean. Discourse, Context & Media, 15, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2016.10.003
Drew, P. & Heritage, J. (1992). Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Endo, O. (1992). Josei no yobikata daikenkyuu [Studies of address terms for women]. Tokyo: Sanseido.
Enfield, N. J. & Comrie, B. (2015). Mainland Southeast Asian languages. In N. J. Enfield & B. Comrie (Eds.), Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia: The state of the art (pp. 1–27). Berlin: De Gruyter.
Fleming, L. & Slotta, J. (2018). The pragmatics of kin address: A sociolinguistic universal and its semantic affordances. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 22(4), 375–405. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.sydney.edu.au/10.1111/josl.12304
Ide, S. & Ueno, K. (2011). Honorifics and address terms. In G. Andersen & K. Aijmer (Eds.), Pragmatics of society (pp. 439–470). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
Ishii, K. & Jarkey, N. (2002). The housewife is born: The establishment of the notion and identity of the shufu in modern Japan. Japanese Studies, 22(1), 35–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/103713902201436732
Ishiyama, O. (2019). Diachrony of personal pronouns in Japanese: A functional and cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Lee, N. (2019). A pragmatic and sociolinguistic perspective to subject expression in spoken Korean: With focus on first and second person. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Canberra: Australian National University.
Lee, N. (2021). How big is your family?: The extended use of kinship terms in Korean. Paper presented at the 17th International Pragmatics Conference, Winterthur.
Lee, S. & Shanmuganathan, T. (2019). Reconceptualizing Aunty as an address term in urban multilingual Malaysia. World Englishes, 39(1), 198–213.
Liu, X. (2021). “I’ll never call them by their names, because it’s rude”: Kinship terms used by Chinese native speakers in daily interactions. Paper presented at the 17th International Pragmatics Conference, Winterthur.
Maynard, S. K. (2001a). Expressivity in discourse: Vocatives and themes in Japanese. Language Sciences, 23, 679–705. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(00)00024-3
Maynard, S. K. (2001b). Falling in love with style: Expressive functions of stylistic shifts in a Japanese television drama series. Functions of Language, 8(1), 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.8.1.02may
Nakamura, M. (2021). The indexical regimentation of a male youth style in Japanese: Two approaches of metapragmatic discourse on a Q&A website. East Asian Pragmatics, 6(1), 9–37. https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.18267
Nakassis, C. V. (2014). Suspended kinship and youth sociality in Tamil Nadu, India. Current Anthropology, 55(2), 175–199. https://doi.org/10.1086/675246
Okamoto, H. & Otsuki, N. (2003). Josei ni kansuru nenrei sabetsu no kenkyuu [A study of age and gender discrimination]. Fukushima: Fukushimaken Danjo Kyosei Sentaa.
Richey, J. L. (2013). Confucius in East Asia: Confucianism’s history in China, Korea, Japan, and Viet Nam. Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies.
Sepehri Badi, A. (2013). Nihongo to perushago no koshoo ni kansuru taishookenkyuu [A contrastive study of Japanese and Persian address terms]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Tokyo: Hitotsubashi University.
Smith, R. J. (1962). Japanese kinship terminology: The history of a nomenclature. Ethnology, 1(3), 349–359. https://doi.org/10.2307/3772947
Suzuki, T. (1973). Kotoba to bunka[Language and culture]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Takubo, Y. (1997). Nihongo no ninshoo hyoogen [Personal reference expressions in Japanese]. In Y. Takubo (Ed.), Shiten to gengokoodoo [A viewpoint and speech act] (pp. 13–44). Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan.
Tanaka, H. (2013). Obasan wa naze kirawareru ka [Why are obasan disliked?]. Tokyo: Shueisha.
Teikoku Jikkoo Kyooikukai. (1933). Chuutoo-gakkoo sahoo yookoo kaisetsu [Educational guidelines for secondary schools]. Tokyo: Teikoku Kyooiku Gakkai.
Yonezawa, Y. (2019). Constructing fluid relationships through language: A study of address terms in a Japanese drama and its pedagogical implications. Journal of Japanese Linguistics, 35(2), 189–211. https://doi.org/10.1515/jjl-2019-2010
Yonezawa, Y. (2021). The mysterious address term anata ‘you’ in Japanese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Dictionaries
Daijirin (1989). Tokyo: Sanseido.
Daijirin (2019). Tokyo: Sanseido.
Daijisen (2012). Tokyo: Shogakkan.
Gakken Kokugo Jiten (1988). Tokyo: Gakken.
Gensen (1989). Tokyo: Shogakkan.
Iwanami Kokugo Jiten (2019). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Kadokawa Kokugo Jiten (1977). Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten.
Kodansha Nihongo Daijiten (1989). Tokyo: Kodansha.
Kodansha Nihongo Daijiten (1989). Tokyo: Kodansha.
Kodansha Nihongo Daijiten (1995). Tokyo: Kodansha.
Kojien (2018). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Sanseido Gendai Kokugo Jiten (1989). Tokyo: Sanseido.
Sanseido Kokugo Jiten (2019). Tokyo: Sanseido.
Shinmeikai Kokugo Jiten (2020). Tokyo: Sanseido.
Shogakkan Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (1973). Tokyo: Shogakkan.
Shogakkan Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (2001). Tokyo: Shogakkan.
Shogakkan Nihongo Shinjiten (2005). Tokyo: Shogakkan.
