A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Person References by Japanese and American Children  

Oleh:

Ide, Sachiko

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language Sciences (Full Text) vol. 1 no. 2 (1979), page 273-293.
Fulltext: 01_02_Ide.pdf (653.07KB)

Isi artikel

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and compare the use of "I-words" and "you-words," and their equivalents, as used by Japanese and American children of six years old and under. Focus is placed on different uses of person references according to variations of the situational context. First, it is hypothesized that Japanese children use a greater variety of personal referential forms than do American children. This reflects Japanese people's inclination to identify self in terms of the situation within which one is placed. A second hypothesis is that sex distinction in the use of person references is observed more in Japanese. The methods used for this research were observations of children at nursery schools and mothers' completion of questionnaires. The data have been coded into eight flow charts which illustrate the mechanisms of selecting a variant among various referential forms according to the situation. Both the first and second hypotheses have been proved. In addition, culturally or sexually meaningful factors were found acting as selectors which show the poss~ility of the correlation between language and the interpersonal and intrapersonal factors of the speakers.

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