Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology Cultural Models and Real People

Japanese Language, Gender and Ideology is a collection of previouslyunpublished articles by established as well as promising young scholars inJapanese language and gender studies. The contributors to this edited volumeargue that traditional views of language in Japan are cultural constructscreated by policy makers and linguists, and that Japanese society in general,and language use in particular, are much more diverse and heterogeneous thanpreviously understood. This volume brings together studies that substantiallyadvance our understanding of the relationship between Japanese language andgender, with particular focus on examining local linguistic practices inrelation to dominant ideologies. Topics studies include gender and politeness,the history of language policy, language and Japanese romance novels and fashionmagazines, bar talk, dictionary definitions, and the use of first-personpronouns. The volume will substantially advance the agenda of this field, andwill be of interest to sociolinguists, anthropologists, sociologists, andscholars of Japan and Japanese.

Shigeko Okamoto is Professor Linguistics and Japanese in the Department of Linguistics, California State University, Fresno.

Janet S. Shibamoto Smith is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis.