Are “powerless” communication strategies the Japanese norm?

Abstract

Parallels between female communication strategies in the West and Japanese communication strategies are striking. Power figures prominently in descriptions of male-female behavior in the West and, by implication, in descriptions of Japanese linguistic behavior. Similarities between Western female and Japanese communication styles are taken not as an indication that Japanese linguistic behavior is feminine, but as indicative of the problems inherent in analyzing linguistic behavior in culturally bound terms such as power. (Japanese sociolinguistics, language and the sexes, intercultural communication)

Gender and the use of pragmatic particles in Indonesian

“…It is an open question whether women or men in Madagascar and Java (and in other cultures with an honorific/deferential register such as in Japan and Korea) behave in a more conversationally facilitative manner. Wetzel (1988) suggests that male speakers of Japanese use strategies that have elsewhere been labelled as female, or powerless, but that in Japan those strategies have a connotation of maturity rather than of powerlessness. She does not, however, address the question of differences between male and female Japanese speakers, nor consider the roles of competition and facilitation in conversational style.…”

Expletives: Men only?

“…Wetzel (1988) points out that among the Japanese, our so-called "powerful" language would be viewed as immature, for they value those patterns of communication that indicate sensitivity to the other, signals of empathy, and solicitation of agreement. "The cultural underpinnings of a unified set of linguistic behaviours in the West (such as those that connote power or powerlessness) may be radically different from what underlies similar behaviour in Japan" (p. 562).…”

The Effect on Mock-Juror Decision-Making of Power-of-Speech Within Eyewitness Testimony and Types of Scientific Evidence

“…Future research could vary participants' ethnicity À for example, much Japanese language would be considered powerless in Western cultures but the norm in Japan (Wetzel, 1988).…”