The way the structure of the Japanese honorific system keigo is grasped and presented influences the understanding and appropriate use of the honorific forms this system includes. Functional categorization makes it easier to perceive principles that are not immediately evident. This paper argues for the superiority of the new 5-category division into sonkeigo ('deferential speech'), kenjōgo ('humble speech'), teichōgo ('formal polite speech'), teineigo ('polite speech') and bikago ('refined speech'), recently promulgated by the Ministry of Education, over the traditional and wide-spread 3-category division into sonkeigo, kenjōgo and teineigo. It proposes that the new system offers significant functional advantages in that it better captures the ways social relations are expressed within the Japanese honorific system and that it sets out more clear-cut categories which better reflect the differences between the forms available to the speaker. Through description and comparison of the more notable frameworks proposed by Japanese linguists over the past fifty years, the paper seeks to demonstrate that the 5-category system is not just another more extensive model but also represents a logical outcome of developments in this field of scholarship.
It is easy to understand why Taiwanese students play the part of the name assigned to them in English class, but why do so many of them continue to use this name long after their school years? A survey of young Taiwanese adults, with follow-up interviews, investigated how and why they acquire and use an English name. The results mirror previously reported tendencies and suggest some new insights into the motivation and functionality of this practice. The data show that self-identification with their Western name offers pragmatic social and cultural advantages, including international identity, escape from rigid cultural formalities impeding social advances, establishing friendliness without getting too close, as well as self-expression. As concerns the often discussed nature of English names, the results indicate that the selection of an English name is influenced by Chinese name selection practice, the tendency to make the name unique or somehow related to the Chinese name, and especially by its intended role. As in previous studies, we found some unusual names, but these were used mainly as a nickname in communication with peers.
One current issue concerning Japanese given names is the increasing number of names lacking gender-distinctive features in their graphic and/or phonological form. Unlike in the past, recently even some of the most popular names are given to both boys and girls. This paper explores this phenomenon in the context of the changes in name selection in the last several decades, analyzing names given to 4,567 boys and 4,806 girls born 2008-2016. Comparing these two name sets from the point of view of their orthography, length, structure, and kanji selection brought forth the main distinctive features between current male and female names. A further analysis revealed some features common to the gender-neutral names, and various aspects related to losing gender distinction. The explanations of the parents' reasons for selecting the particular name, included in the corpus, provided some insight into why some parents select names that do not indicate the gender of their child.
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