Reviews for Minimal Semantics

The average rating for Minimal Semantics based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-02-03 00:00:00 Scott Montgomery Patricia Wetzel's Keigo in Modern Japan: The Various Dimensions of Keigo and Its History "In trying to write about keigo, I found myself in the triple bind of writing about a very complex linguistic phenomenon as well as about the Japanese vocabulary used to describe that phenomenon - and doing so in another language, English. This entire enterprise reflects my struggle to bring the vocabulary that is keigo and the language that is about keigo to English (Wetzel 1)." The Japanese language is one oriented around vertical relationships in society, and while many languages throughout the world have grammars that reflect these social hierarchies, that of keigo, or "honorific language" in Japanese, is nonpareil in its complexity. In her probing history of this unmatched sociolinguistic phenomenon, Patricia Wetzel, in her Keigo in Modern Japan attempts to translate for the English reader why this is so. Her overarching argument is that keigo is - primarily from the perspective of Western linguists - often oversimplified as a linguistic form of social politeness. For Wetzel, to perceive keigo in this light is to overlook its complexity, as well the significance of its use in Japanese society. To be sure, Keigo in Modern Japan is, first and foremost, a history of keigo, but through this historical lens Wetzel is able to look at five salient aspects of keigo which are: keigo as it is analyzed in from a comparative linguistic perspective, how keigo is analyzed through the school of Japanese linguistics, the standardization of keigo, the modernization of keigo, and finally, the significant social applications of keigo. Toward the end of her introduction, Wetzel reinforces the idea that keigo transcends the mere social concerns of politeness and vertical relationships as she opines, "What's more, the idea that the Japanese could simply shed keigo assumes that there is a linguistic space that is not-keigo. Such an assumption constitutes a serious misunderstanding not only of keigo but also of Japan (Wetzel 6)." Though linguistic analysis of keigo dates back to Meiji period reforms around the end of the 19th century, Japanese sociolinguistics is still a relatively new academic discipline. Japanese sociolinguistics emerged around the time of creation of the 国立国語研究所, or Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyujo (National Language Research Institute) in December 1949 (Shibamoto 261). It's important to keep in mind that the concerns of Japanese linguistics differed immensely from that of Western sociolinguistics. Before the 1970's 国語学 or kokugogaku, which roughly translates to "national language studies" was the only existent form of linguistic analysis in Japan. Being an essentially descriptive linguistic discipline, kokugogaku primarily observed how language was used in society. Janet Shibamoto summarizes this intellectual divide succinctly, "Whereas Western linguistics is characterized by interest in cross-language and the nature of the mind, kokugogaku concerns have centered around immediate descriptive goals (Shibamoto 262)." At this point in the text the layer reader might become lost, but this is exactly why translating grammatical analysis of keigo into English was problematic for Wetzel to begin with. The theoretical American linguist's answer to understanding keigo was coming from the school of American structuralism. For American linguists, structuralism seemed like the best intellectual response to understanding keigo, but again, this perspective sought to analyze keigo as a systematic structure with discrete categories. Taking Wetzel's academic background into consideration, this is not surprising. She studied under Eleanor Harz Jorden at Cornell, whose Japanese the Spoken Language is inescapably structuralist as shown in the way the example drills in the text focus on structural patterns in grammar. This is why, despite being somewhat dated as far as some usage is concerned, her text is still taught in Japanese programs throughout the U.S. today. This is where the thesis of her text becomes murky. If keigo is to be understood as the linguistic and cultural cornerstone to Japanese society, then how can a linguistic analysis of keigo, from an intrinsically Western linguistic discipline be adequate in analyzing its complexity? Again, she more or less addresses this problem in the introduction, so her structuralist concerns with keigo in this chapter are not surprising, rather, these grammatical concerns seem like reasonable problems to tackle. In order to illustrate the structuralist concerns of keigo grammar, Wetzel summarizes the approaches to analyzing sentence structure in the context of keigo, particularly that of Samuel E. Martin who, in his 1975 linguistic tome A Reference Grammar of Japanese refer to "exaltation devices," which he divided into different types. In this sense, the structuralist approach proves efficient in analyzing the structure of the Japanese sentence and how this is altered when these sentences are formed with keigo in mind. Wetzel explains these "honorification triggers" as such, "In structural analysis then, the grammar of politeness in Japanese revolves around a series of binary choices: formal or informal (speaker-addressee relationship): polite or not polite (speaker-referent/bystander relationship); if polite, humble (self- oriented) or honorific (other-oriented). This approach differs from native Japanese descriptions of these forms, reflecting the structuralist orientation (Wetzel 9)." So then, her position is that the subject in a sentence ultimately triggers honorification in the Japanese sentence, though the definition of the subject here may vary, and though she acknowledges how useful these grammatical explanations of keigo usage are, she stands by her conviction that there is a glaring divide between the linguistic disciplines of 国語学 and American structuralism, which is namely due to the fact that the former merely describes the use of keigo in social contexts while the latter probes to understand how keigo influences the formation and structure of Japanese syntax. To be clear, "Kokugogaku is by no means immune to the influence of linguistic developments outside Japan, but its foundations and its concerns demonstrate a very different perspective from that of Western linguistics (Wetzel 19)." The important thing to keep in mind regarding the kokugogaku is that while a certain amount of Western influence was responsible for a more grammatically-oriented version of Japanese sociolinguistics, the initial concerns of the kokugogaku remained. According to Roy Andrew Miller, "Their statements about it seem to be far less concerned with keigo as a system existing in its own right than they are with the utility which they find in the system (Miller 606). In other words, Japanese linguists eventually developed a concern with the formal aspects of keigo, but they could not escape their descriptivist preoccupation with its real world, utilitarian applications. Wetzel highlights two things that changed for kokugogaku in the Meiji period: 1) Western influence (post-1868) made linguistic analysis salient, and 2) A system of universal education became a priority. Keep in mind that there was no native Japanese study of keigo until the Meiji period in Japan, so it's likely that interest in linguistic analysis of keigo was essentially ideological. This also influenced the tripartite division of levels of keigo, which were 尊敬語 (high-ranking subject-honorific), 謙譲語 (low ranking subject-humble), and 叮嚀語 (polite language). A fourth division, 美化後 (beautified language) was included, but it was considered marginal in that it was not so much a level of politeness as it was a style of usage. What's significant for Wetzel is how this progression of taxonomies for keigo developed in Japanese linguistics. More importantly, she sees a profound connection between this development and its connection to ideology in Japan. Because Japanese linguistics held descriptive concerns as its highest intellectual priority, the real-world application of keigo could be better understood through the lens of Western linguistics, resulting in an effective and organized ideological tool. She feels that, "The Japanese progression of taxonomies for keigo is every bit as telling about intellectual ideology as are Western exchanges over the existence of a universal grammar (Wetzel 32)."

Review # 2 was written on 2014-10-19 00:00:00 Todd Dvorsky Required reading for schoolwork. Maybe if I were more well-versed in linguistics, I would have found it more interesting because it would have seemed less abstract. Still...very dull reading, despite potentially interesting subject matter. I got excited whenever Wetzel introduced a specific example (for instance: keigo between a married couple nowadays probably indicates that they are having a conflict) but such examples were few and far between. Spent a lot of time looking at intellectuals and self-help books/classes on keigo...wished there had been more about keigo in pop culture and other non-metapragmatic situations involving keigo. Apparently the self-help industry is a big one in Japan (vs. the US) but even so it felt like a lot of the book's discussion was removed from most Japanese people's interactions with keigo.