- This essay was awarded a distinction.
- This essay attempts a critical review on Lidia Tanaka's paper:
Communicative stances in Japanese interviews: Gender differences in formal interactions'.
- Tanaka's research paper can be found at the bottom of this page.
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Research Critical Review
1. Description of Article
1.1 Research question
In ‘Communicative stances in Japanese interviews: Gender differences in formal interactions’ by Lidia Tanaka, the author attempts to challenge the widely-known notion that communicative strategies used by the Japanese are gender specific. She has done this by examining the communicative styles used by men and women in formal gender-mixed Japanese television interviews.
1.2 Basis for this research
In Japan, the language used by men and women are believed to be dichotomous. According to Horii (1990), Kindaichi (1990) and Kitagawa (1979) the speech style adopted by women are polite, elegant and soft while men’s language is more associated with assertiveness, roughness and strength.
There are a few published studies in the recent years that focuses on the communicative styles of Japanese men and women. Unlike research in the past, researchers have taken a wider view of language and gender as well as the language’s relationship to dominance, ideology and power in the Japanese society (Inoue 1994, 2006; Okamoto, 2004).
Studies that challenge the communicative style of men and women are done by Tanaka, Uchida and Okada. They observe that gender is not the only factor that determines communicative styles. For instance, in Tanaka’s (2004) study, which was examining speech in dyadic television interviews, it was observed that in-group and out-group status, age, and role determine the frequency of the use of specific linguistic-pragmatic items in the interaction. Furthermore, Uchida (1993) carried out a quantitative analysis of the use of honorifics, hedges, interruptions, silence, questions, aizuchi (backchannels or minimal responses), and amount of talk from participants. Uchida also made an additional television interview analysis and found that status and age are more dominant determiners. She concluded that gender is but a mere factor in Japanese communicative styles. In addition, in Okada’s (2006) study, she researched the use and frequency of non-particle questions within meetings of orchestra members in a university. She found that the type of activity determines the use and frequency rather than the gender.
There also exist studies that reinforce the communicative style stereotypes of men and women. Ehara et al (1993) and Yoshi (1996) examined the issue of ‘distortion’ in interactions when men and women performed a ‘patterned’ male or female manner of speech as well as unequal distribution of power in conversations that are mixed-gendered. The results were that the women were cooperative whereas the men were not. In the use of aizuchi, women utilise them to convey some form of interest and to encourage the speaker while men utilise aizuchi to show disinterest by changing the intonation or delaying them. Their conclusion is that power devices like silence and interruptions allow the subordination of women to be maintained. Kochiyama (2003) researched on the use of disagreements in single-gendered and mixed-gendered conversations observed that women lower their antagonism while men exhibit them. It was also observed that women take a more ‘feminine’ speech pattern in single-gender interactions, thus it was concluded that women were ‘bilingual’ because of their ability to adopt ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ speech patterns. Lastly, Itakura and Tsui (2004) examined the use of interruptions by men and women. They found that men used interruptions to tell their opinions while women mainly used interruptions as an ‘embedded’ sequence. They concluded that men are more self-oriented than women.
The latter group of researchers had unique results. It was noted that the researchers were aware of the unusual higher frequency of silences than in normal interactions which were probably due to the ‘test’-like situation the participants were in. There were also issues with data interpretation. For example, any form of ‘issue’ can be comprehended with regard to power. Hence, the author questioned whether power is sufficient for data interpretation.
As listed above, the author stated the existing research on interactions between men and women have created conflicting results. Additionally, there are still many questions that require explanation, especially regarding interactions of men and women of different status in a formal setting. This is because most existing research focused only on the language used by university students. The author emphasised the necessity to research on a wider variety of interlocutors in various settings. Therefore, the author attempts to challenge the notion of communicative strategies being gender-specific as concluded by some recent previous research that reinforced the stereotypes of men and women’s communicative patterns.
1.3 Data
The author chose to collect data from 10 mixed-gender Japanese television interviews from 4 programmes. A total of 11 hours and 20 minutes. The list is: Sawayaka intabyuu, Tetsuko no Heya, Ningen yuuyuu, and Suteeji Dooa. The author decided to apply both quantitative and qualitative analysis in her research. The quantitative analysis covers all programmes whereas the qualitative analysis covers only 2 episodes from Suteeji Dooa, 40 minutes episodes broadcasted by NHK (Nippon Hoosoo Kyoku).
In the author’s quantitative analysis, she constructed a TCU (Turn Construction Units) distribution table of her findings. She found that the female hosts had uttered unfinished questions while the male hosts did not. However, the female guests uttered lesser unfinished utterances than male guests. In terms of the use of interruptions within the interviews, it was found that while female hosts were interrupted more than male hosts, the male guests were interrupted more than female guests. These data challenge the belief that women are more polite than men. The author claims that it is difficult to understand whether other participants used other mechanisms to portray dominance in turn-taking conversations. She also reported that the gathered results draw attention to the significance of role and situation as determinants of interlocutors’ communicative styles instead of gender. The author questioned whether the interruptions of female hosts could be due to their authority as interviewers or some form of resistance to dominance.
In the qualitative analysis, the author chose both programmes from Suteeji Dooa that have both male hosts and female guests.
1.3.1 Programme 1
The host of this programme is a popular Noh actor Kiyokazu Kanze and the guest is Hiroko Nakamura, a distinguished pianist in Japan. Looking into speech style, both use a very polite form of language as they use the most formal style of honorifics. However, it was observed that the male host was more formal towards the female guest. The author speculates that this happens could be due to the guest being older than the host, or because both participants were strangers. It could also be due to this type of interaction which is an out-group. The author also stated that the use of honorifics in the perspectives of Brown and Levinson, Ide and Matsumoto converged in this situation. In terms of the usage of hedging, both participants have utilised the same amount, and the male host uses them more occasionally despite the fact that it is normally associated with female speech styles. Both participants use hedges as a form of negative politeness to maintain the territory of the speaker (Brown and Levinson 1987) because of social or psychological distance. Furthermore, both participants have also used disagreements in their communicative strategies. They expressed them indirectly and politely. For example, the male host used softeners ammari (not quite), dewa naikana (isn’t it like), and to omoimasu n desu (I think) to correct the female guest. He also said expressions like sore wa mou which is a form of agreement or acceptance before stressing his viewpoint to the guest. Additionally, the host used aizuchi, however it is not clear whether he used it as a form of eagerness and enthusiasm or annoyance or disinterest. An instance of disagreement performed by the guest is by saying the word demo (but) in a non-overt manner.
1.3.2 Programme 2
In this programme, the host is Ken Yasubara, a literary critic, and the guest is the famous pianist Mitsuko Uchida. In their use of speech style, both participants did not use a lot of honorifics. The author noted that their conversations experienced some style shifts and that the participants used them for a few reasons. The host used informal variants of speech when he was speaking to himself and when he was embarrassed because he did not know how to answer the guest’s question. The author commented that the host’s reason for doing this as a form of positive politeness to save his face. The guest also made a change of speech style when she pressed the host to give her an answer before shifting back when she gives in and tells the answer to the host. Moreover, it was observed that the guest was challenging the host. For instance, the female guest challenged the validity of one of the host’s comment, a sign on uncooperativeness. She also reverted a question back to the host when he asked. The author speculated the reason for the guest’s actions is due to her higher status which leads her to ignore some politeness rules.
Based on both qualitative analyses of the programmes, she stated that the usage of turn-taking moves or linguistic and pragmatic items should not be given immediate association with the speakers’ gender or stance.
1.4 Conclusion
The author stated she has illustrated that connecting gender with communicative styles is untenable, and that pragmatic, turn-sequential and linguistic manifestations should not be solely linked to a certain stance. The linguistic behaviour expressed by the participants of this study displays the importance of setting and the massive amount of effort needed to ascribe communicative styles in a binary manner. She also stated that further study is required to understand what takes place in other variants of mix-gendered interactions.
2. Evaluative Commentary
Tanaka’s research looks into the use of communicative styles by Japanese men and women in mixed-gender formal interactions. She attempts to challenge the stereotype that Japanese men and women generally conform to binary speech styles. Based on her data from her quantitative and qualitative analysis of formal television interviews, the results Tanaka achieved are definitely in disagreement with some new studies in the similar field who are done by researchers Yoshii (1996) and Ehara et. al (1993), Kochiyama (2003), as well as Itakura and Tsui (2004). This is because their results reinforce the gender-specific stereotypes. Tanaka, however, has concluded that gender must not be the only factor that associates with a particular communicative stance in any linguistic, pragmatic, and turn-sequential manifestations.
Furthermore, Tanaka’s data has agreed to her thesis. For instance, although female hosts are often interrupted, the male hosts adopted a more polite stance, and the male guests also had more unfinished utterances than female guests. In the usage of honorifics, one male host even overly-used honorifics toward his female guest. It was speculated it was due to the woman’s age, his unfamiliarity with the guest or that it could be from his upbringing. This does not conform to the stereotype that men use less polite language than women. It was also interesting that one of the females in the qualitative analysis did not use any hedging and surprisingly challenged the male host despite her gender and younger age. A clash of what is still widely preconceived with women being cooperative in their communicative stance. Tanaka’s research has contributed to the field of Japanese language communicative strategies. Despite that the field is still not widely studied on, she has made a good attempt to discuss the data in supporting her research question.
One of Tanaka’s problems in her research is the choice of sources used for her data, which are the television interviews. The television interviews could be scripted. According to Mulac (cited in Brownlow, Rosamond and Parker 2003), scripted interviews are more likely to reflect expected gender differences in language than natural interactions. The participants might have been told to act or say things in a certain manner to make the interview interesting to the consumers. For example, requiring the male hosts to be more polite to the female guests to please them. The females could also be asked to disagree or be a bit aggressive towards the hosts to make the interview more appealing. Doing so may affect the participants’ communicative styles and would, in turn, make the collected data inaccurate. Additionally, if Tanaka is inclined to particularly focus on formal interactions for her study, she could have attempted to analyse the Japanese business language such as from business meeting interactions, or analyse news debates that are broadcasted on television or available on the internet although they could still be scripted if analysed without some form of verification beforehand.
In Tanaka’s qualitative analysis, she chose 2 episodes from Suteeji Dooa. Both the hosts and guests are male and female respectively. Although the author stated that she chose these 2 episodes for the similarity in the programme format, she could have also done a qualitative analysis on interactions of female hosts and male guests. Not attempting this has left quite a big gap in her study.
The use of romaji in transcribing the conversations should also be highlighted. Despite the availability of the English translation at the bottom of the romaji transcription, the author should have included a transcription of Japanese characters with the romaji. The reason is that the author could have made minor alterations of meaning in her translation. A Japanese reader will not be able to fully comprehend what is said with only romaji because they are not able to pick up the pitch of words from what was transcribed. This is because a word in romaji could have multiple meanings due to homonyms (Murakami and Hotta 2011) unless it is transcribed with a considerable amount of kanji to evade homonym confusion (Schreiber 2014; Japan Today 2012). For example, hashi can both mean chopsticks or bridge, and kami could mean god, hair or paper. If other researchers want to follow up her study, they might have some problems accessing the most accurate information if they have no access to the data Tanaka has used for her paper.
There are also some minor mistakes that seem worth paying attention. In Tanaka’s quantitative analysis, her tabulated data (Table 2) and distribution graph (Fig. 2) for the frequency of interruptions are not aligned. In addition, in section 4.2.1.1., the author has mentioned “underlined bold words” in her conversation analysis transcriptions, but there were none in her excerpts. These have caused some momentary confusion for the reader.
Conclusively, the author has failed to take into consideration that the source of her data, as well as the disproportion in the gender of the hosts and guests in the qualitative analysis, could affect the overall data and results of her findings. This has to lead me to conclude that her findings may not be completely accepted as an established fact. However, she still executed a good attempt to support her assumptions as well as provided insight on the use of Japanese honorifics, hedging, and disagreements. A suggestion for further research would be observing informal mixed-gender interactions and analyse the communicative strategies between interlocutors of different, status, gender, age and situation for a more broader view of the field.
References
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Reviewed research paper