Our eyes, says Takao Suzuki, author of this sociolinguistic text, "do not see things objectively and impartially like cameras. Our perceptions are always subject to cultural selection." Indeed, we do not use words to describe things but only to reflect a particular view of them. We are like the blind men who describe the elephant according to what parts of it they touch: It is like a tree if you stroke the leg, like a snake if you handle the trunk.
Giving something a name, says Suzuki, simply means that we have recognized the value of treating one portion of the world separately from all the other sections and fragments.
We all have different ways of doing this, with cultural assumptions ruling everything. We bring meaning by applying what we know, whether this is appropriate or not. In studying a foreign language, therefore, we project upon it the structure of our own language and construct parallels that are not, in fact, accurate.
In particular, the author is dissatisfied with "a still prevalent tendency among Japanese people to disregard the different value systems which give meaning to individual words, to translate into Japanese certain concepts which are valid only within the framework of Western civilization."
The major example Suzuki discovers in this book is the personal pronoun and the different ways it is used in Japanese -- ways which have hitherto not been studied, says the author, because the differences do not occur within the framework of Western linguistics, which has served as the model for modern linguistics in Japan.
The dictionary tells you that "anata" means "you," but it doesn't, at least not in the same way that "you" means "you" in English. If you attempt to use it in this fashion you will either be insulting someone of a higher status or else calling somebody else something like "darling."
The fact that personal pronouns are so avoided in Japanese conversation indicates that they are not really words that directly indicate either speaker or addressee but are words which indirectly refer to them; that they are, as the author states, "taboo-related."
The problem, if that is what it is, is one of "role conformation." While this occurs in all languages, it is at its most complicated in Japanese. While most cultures count two or three ways involving pronouns, in Japan "eight different ways of role confirmation constantly take place." This indicates how much importance is attached to roles based on superior-inferior opposition in everyday human relationships.
Such opposition is a major means of identification. Indeed, "the Japanese ego may be construed as being in an indefinite state with its position undetermined until a specific addressee appears and is identified by the speaker."
The other-oriented structure of self-designation is a determining cultural factor. The language is so role-structured that role ("otosan," "okasan") is invariably privileged. A common result is that Japanese couples call each other by these terms, indicating that they act more frequently as their children's parents than they do as each other's spouses.
There are other results as well. Kinship terms prevail, and within a given family group a higher-status member refers to himself with the same term that an inferior uses to address him.
There is much more to the book than its discussion of personal pronouns but they indicate the thrust of Suzuki's argument -- that language includes a number of expectations that communicate more than do the words themselves.
This new edition is an unabridged translation of "Kotoba to Bunka," a work originally published in Japanese in 1973 and appearing in an abridged English translation in 1978. This abridged version omitted the entire fifth chapter of the present work and an exegesis of the central thesis. I cannot imagine why this occured.
One reason might be that the fifth chapter, "Values Which Give Meaning to Facts" opens with a subheading: "Are the Japanese Cruel?" Though it is soon apparent that the cruelty spoken of is that purportedly inflicted on animals in this country, the English connotations of "cruelty" are such that a taboo could have been perceived. And in the more consensus-ruled taboo-ridden sections of Japan (which often include publishers) you can't be too careful.
In any event, the deed has been rectified and we now have the text precisely as Dr. Suzuki intended it -- and a very interesting one it is.
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