Shigeko Okamoto
Biographic Data
| ID | 3592034 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shigeko Okamoto |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shigeko |
| FAMILY NAME | Okamoto |
| SIGNATURE | OKAMOTO S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6648-8809 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Sexism and Homophobia in Japanese
This article first discusses the main theoretical and methodological issues addressed by the studies presented in this special issue of Contrastive Pragmatics . It then gives a summary discussion of each study
Girls Shouldn’t Use Rough Language? Diverse Views of Japanese Speech Norms
Speech norms, or ideas about how one should speak, are often taken for granted as common sense. But if we attempt to articulate them, we may in fact find ourselves giving only vague descriptions. This study reconsiders what speech norms are, or how they are conceptualised – a markedly understudied question. It examines native speakers’ metapragmatic comments concerning Japanese girls’/women’s speech norms in posts on an online discussion forum. T…
Gender and Pragmatics
Pragmatics plays a vital role in language and gender research because to adequately understand how gender is involved in the use and interpretation of linguistic expressions in real‐world contexts requires consideration of pragmatic matters, such as indexicality, performativity, stance, politeness, implicature, presupposition, and cultural norms. Conversely, gender is highly important to pragmatics research because considering gender's role enhan…
Gender norms and styling in Japanese conversation
The observation that gender differences in Japanese language use are becoming less prevalent as women increasingly use 'men's language' appears in popular media from time to time. Some empirical studies support this view. However, such observations are usually based on the consideration of only one or two linguistic features, especially sentence-final forms and personal pronouns. In contrast, this study analyzes the use of multiple linguistic and…
Situated politeness
While the theories of linguistic politeness advanced by In this study, I maintain that expressions of politeness are relative to specific social contexts as well as to the speakers' ideas about politeness. An adequate account of linguistic politeness thus requires a close examination of the relationship among linguistic expressions in discourse, speakers' ideas about politeness, and social contexts. As a case in point, the present study examines …
Your politeness is my impoliteness
It is often noted that usage of Japanese honorifics has been changing over the years (see, for example, Keigo no Shishin ‘Guidelines on honorifics’, Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyujo 2007), Yet, ‘average’ Japanese adults are expected to use honorifics correctly, observing their rules, or grammar. But do they all share the same understanding of honorific rules, especially given the ongoing change in usage? If they do not, why? What are its consequences? T…
How Do Female and Male Characters Speak in the Japanese Translation of English Crime Novels
The repertoire of linguistic expressions that index sociopragmatic meanings differs considerably from language to language. This difference becomes particularly noticeable when one language is translated into another. As an example, this study examines dialogs in the Japanese translations of two English crime novels to see how the translator deals with normatively gendered morphological forms in Japanese for which no corresponding forms exist in …
Japanese language and gender research
In the past thirty years, major contributions from Japanese language and gender studies have provided necessary insights from the perspective of a non-European language. Future research will demand ever broader approaches – in particular, I call for investigations of the sociolinguistic life of understudied speakers, such as regional Japanese speakers, to examine how they understand linguistic gender norms and deploy a wide variety of linguistic …
Variability and multiplicity in the meanings of stereotypical gendered speech in Japanese
Recent research on the use of gendered speech in Japanese has demonstrated extensive within-gender diversity, suggesting that the relationship between linguistic forms and gender is variable, not fixed. While this diversity in use suggests a diversity in interpretation, the latter has not been adequately examined in its own right and deserves closer attention, given that it has important implications for the relationship between linguistic forms …
Variability and multiplicity in the meanings of stereotypical gendered speech in Japanese
The Notion of Givenness and the Use of Pronouns and Ellipsis
Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1981), pp. 222-235
Variability in societal norms for Japanese women’s speech
Variability in societal norms for Japanese women’s speech
The use and interpretation of addressee honorifics and plain forms in Japanese
Constructing Linguistic Femininity in Contemporary Japan
This article examines the constitution of ‘Japanese women’s language,’ or joseego, as a prescriptive linguistic norm for women through an analysis of scholarly and media representations of linguistic femininity in contemporary Japan. We distinguish two kinds of interrelated norms as constituting linguistic femininity: norms centered around general stylistic features such as politeness, gentleness, and refinement (the first-order norms) and those …
Japanese language, gender, and ideology
A New Look at Japanese Conversational Styles
Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Phonetics and Phonological Universals (1998)
Social context, linguistic ideology, and indexical expressions in Japanese
Augmentative verbal repetitive constructions in Japanese
Nominal repetitive constructions in Japanese
Nominal ‘Tautologies’ in Japanese
Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on The Grammar of Event Structure (1991), pp. 218-229
Reduplicated Verbs in Japanese as Grammatical Constructions
Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1990), pp. 248-256
Social context, linguistic ideology, and indexical expressions in Japanese
The use and interpretation of addressee honorifics and plain forms in Japanese
Constructing Linguistic Femininity in Contemporary Japan
This article examines the constitution of ‘Japanese women’s language,’ or joseego, as a prescriptive linguistic norm for women through an analysis of scholarly and media representations of linguistic femininity in contemporary Japan. We distinguish two kinds of interrelated norms as constituting linguistic femininity: norms centered around general stylistic features such as politeness, gentleness, and refinement (the first-order norms) and those …
Nominal repetitive constructions in Japanese
Gender norms and styling in Japanese conversation
The observation that gender differences in Japanese language use are becoming less prevalent as women increasingly use 'men's language' appears in popular media from time to time. Some empirical studies support this view. However, such observations are usually based on the consideration of only one or two linguistic features, especially sentence-final forms and personal pronouns. In contrast, this study analyzes the use of multiple linguistic and…
Japanese language and gender research
In the past thirty years, major contributions from Japanese language and gender studies have provided necessary insights from the perspective of a non-European language. Future research will demand ever broader approaches – in particular, I call for investigations of the sociolinguistic life of understudied speakers, such as regional Japanese speakers, to examine how they understand linguistic gender norms and deploy a wide variety of linguistic …
Augmentative verbal repetitive constructions in Japanese
Reduplicated Verbs in Japanese as Grammatical Constructions
Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1990), pp. 248-256
Nominal ‘Tautologies’ in Japanese
Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on The Grammar of Event Structure (1991), pp. 218-229
Nominal repetitive constructions in Japanese
Augmentative verbal repetitive constructions in Japanese
Social context, linguistic ideology, and indexical expressions in Japanese
A New Look at Japanese Conversational Styles
Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Phonetics and Phonological Universals (1998)
Japanese language, gender, and ideology
Constructing Linguistic Femininity in Contemporary Japan
This article examines the constitution of ‘Japanese women’s language,’ or joseego, as a prescriptive linguistic norm for women through an analysis of scholarly and media representations of linguistic femininity in contemporary Japan. We distinguish two kinds of interrelated norms as constituting linguistic femininity: norms centered around general stylistic features such as politeness, gentleness, and refinement (the first-order norms) and those …
The use and interpretation of addressee honorifics and plain forms in Japanese
Variability in societal norms for Japanese women’s speech
Variability in societal norms for Japanese women’s speech
The Notion of Givenness and the Use of Pronouns and Ellipsis
Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1981), pp. 222-235
Variability and multiplicity in the meanings of stereotypical gendered speech in Japanese
Variability and multiplicity in the meanings of stereotypical gendered speech in Japanese
Recent research on the use of gendered speech in Japanese has demonstrated extensive within-gender diversity, suggesting that the relationship between linguistic forms and gender is variable, not fixed. While this diversity in use suggests a diversity in interpretation, the latter has not been adequately examined in its own right and deserves closer attention, given that it has important implications for the relationship between linguistic forms …
Your politeness is my impoliteness
It is often noted that usage of Japanese honorifics has been changing over the years (see, for example, Keigo no Shishin ‘Guidelines on honorifics’, Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyujo 2007), Yet, ‘average’ Japanese adults are expected to use honorifics correctly, observing their rules, or grammar. But do they all share the same understanding of honorific rules, especially given the ongoing change in usage? If they do not, why? What are its consequences? T…
How Do Female and Male Characters Speak in the Japanese Translation of English Crime Novels
The repertoire of linguistic expressions that index sociopragmatic meanings differs considerably from language to language. This difference becomes particularly noticeable when one language is translated into another. As an example, this study examines dialogs in the Japanese translations of two English crime novels to see how the translator deals with normatively gendered morphological forms in Japanese for which no corresponding forms exist in …
Japanese language and gender research
In the past thirty years, major contributions from Japanese language and gender studies have provided necessary insights from the perspective of a non-European language. Future research will demand ever broader approaches – in particular, I call for investigations of the sociolinguistic life of understudied speakers, such as regional Japanese speakers, to examine how they understand linguistic gender norms and deploy a wide variety of linguistic …
Situated politeness
While the theories of linguistic politeness advanced by In this study, I maintain that expressions of politeness are relative to specific social contexts as well as to the speakers' ideas about politeness. An adequate account of linguistic politeness thus requires a close examination of the relationship among linguistic expressions in discourse, speakers' ideas about politeness, and social contexts. As a case in point, the present study examines …
Gender norms and styling in Japanese conversation
The observation that gender differences in Japanese language use are becoming less prevalent as women increasingly use 'men's language' appears in popular media from time to time. Some empirical studies support this view. However, such observations are usually based on the consideration of only one or two linguistic features, especially sentence-final forms and personal pronouns. In contrast, this study analyzes the use of multiple linguistic and…
Gender and Pragmatics
Pragmatics plays a vital role in language and gender research because to adequately understand how gender is involved in the use and interpretation of linguistic expressions in real‐world contexts requires consideration of pragmatic matters, such as indexicality, performativity, stance, politeness, implicature, presupposition, and cultural norms. Conversely, gender is highly important to pragmatics research because considering gender's role enhan…
Girls Shouldn’t Use Rough Language? Diverse Views of Japanese Speech Norms
Speech norms, or ideas about how one should speak, are often taken for granted as common sense. But if we attempt to articulate them, we may in fact find ourselves giving only vague descriptions. This study reconsiders what speech norms are, or how they are conceptualised – a markedly understudied question. It examines native speakers’ metapragmatic comments concerning Japanese girls’/women’s speech norms in posts on an online discussion forum. T…
Sexism and Homophobia in Japanese
This article first discusses the main theoretical and methodological issues addressed by the studies presented in this special issue of Contrastive Pragmatics . It then gives a summary discussion of each study
Linguistics (19 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Gender Studies in Language (10 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Politeness (7 works)