FROM POLITENESS TO SELF- CONSTRUCTION - Analyzing Women’s Language in a Japanese TV Drama Across Generations

Abstract

Women’s language has long been analyzed in sociolinguistics and feminist linguistics. Previous studies investigate how women’s language is influenced by Patriarchy and societal gender norms, and is tightly associated with politeness. However, the studies are mainly based on surveys and interviews, and media materials are merely employed for research and analysis. The media is used as a means of policing women’s behavior and language, and the gender norms are reinforced through media discourse. Thus, the media could also reflect the changes in gender norms and be valued for analyzing how women’s language changes in fictional narratives. This thesis discusses how women’s language is represented in the latest Japanese TV drama and reflects women’s cognitive changes across generations. This study uses qualitative text analysis and examines female characters’ speech in one TV drama across generations and speech situations, focusing on sentence-final particles and intonation, revealing that women’s language generally reflects traditional gender expectations, but also contains elements and trends of changing these norms and appearing neutral cognitions from language use. By exploring gendered language from fictional dramas, this study expands existing material choices and perspectives to the analysis of women’s language and highlights that though women’s language is associated with gender and social identity, it is also complicated by individual cognition and self-construction.