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Directives in the Japanese Workplace : Examining Gender Stereotypes and the Perception of Impoliteness Through the Bare Imperative

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Author

  • Nelly Guldbrand

Summary, in English

This thesis examines the interplay between gender and the perception of impoliteness in the Japanese workplace. Firstly, impoliteness is an area in sociolinguistics that discusses face-threatening acts, perceived in situations modified by different aspects, e.g. context and the gender of the interlocutors. Secondly, gendered language is another area within sociolinguistics which gained popularity during the 70s. Women’s speech is described as polite, non-assertive and powerless. Whereas men’s speech is known to be the complete opposite: vulgar, assertive and powerful. Previous studies about directives used in the Japanese workplace suggest that there are differences in how men and women in charge use linguistic practices. Their findings align with the previous gender stereotypes, suggesting that women in charge are politer than men. Due to this, a hypothesis was made: If a woman were to be equally as impolite as a man, would she be perceived as more polite? Inspired by this hypothesis, two main research questions were raised: “How impolite can a supervisor be to a subordinate?” and “Does the respective gender of the supervisor and the subordinate affect the degree of perceived impoliteness?” To investigate this, a questionnaire was sent out to native speakers of Japanese, which was answered by 32 respondents. The questionnaire consisted of two parts. Each part had 6 dialogues with 5 repetitive questions per dialogue (four Likert scale and one open question). Every dialogue had a supervisor commanding a subordinate using the bare imperative. Their genders kept changing. The results suggest that the gender of the supervisor did not affect the perception of impoliteness, but rather the expectations of how they would act, i.e. female supervisors were less expectant to use the bare imperative than their male counterpart.

Publishing year

2024

Language

English

Document type

Student publication for Bachelor's degree

Topic

  • Languages and Literatures

Keywords

  • impoliteness
  • gender
  • gender stereotypes
  • directives
  • bare imperative

Supervisor

  • Benjamin Kirkland Macaulay
  • RIKA HAYASHI