Self-reference in Japanese and Thai : a comparative study

Abstract

This study sets out to investigate the self-reference systems in spoken Japanese and Thai with a view to comparing and contrasting the two. The study is primarily concerned with self-reference in the metropolitan varieties of spoken Japanese (Tokyo) and Thai (Bangkok). After a review of previous treatments of self-reference terms and pronouns in Japanese and Thai, four types of self-reference terms - pronouns, status terms, personal names and other nouns - are analysed to show their meanings and ranges of usage. The analysis is based on data from a combination of sources: (a) an extensive self-report questionnaire survey organised especially to highlight three types of speaker contrast: Japanese/Thai, student/employee and male/female speakers; (b) examples of Japanese/Thai natural conversation, for example, mass media extracts; (c) personal observations and informal interviews with representative native speakers. In most cases (b) and (c) confirmed the data collected in (a), suggesting the general validity of questionnaire results of this type. The self-reference systems in Japanese and Thai are discussed from a comparative perspective. The comparison shows differences and similarities in formal categories and in patterns of usage. In general, relationships of intimacy and power in the Japanese and Thai self-reference case are more problematic and complex than was proposed in the two-dimensional model by Brown and Gilman ( 1960), involving parametric variation referred to there as "power" and "solidarity". While these high.-level variables can furnish a first approximation to the Japanese and Thai cases and provide relevant insights, more specific factors such as gender, age, kinship relationship, occupation, formality, overhearer presence and emotional switch were found to be important in arriving at a fuller picture of how self-reference operates in the two languages. In particular, age and gender were found to be especially important factors in self-reference term selection but they do not operate exactly the same in the two languages. The notion of pronoun scope has been used in this study to account for how certain pronominal forms are selected and also to facilitate intra-language and cross-language comparisons. Substantial diachronic change has marked both the Japanese and Thai systems. Overt prescriptive training was found to have some effect on speaker's choices - more so in Japanese than in Thai. These and other sources of variation to the general picture outlined in this study are considered.