The Discursive Construction Of Hierarchy In Japanese Society

The Discursive Construction of Hierarchy in Japanese Society

Seniority-based hierarchy (jouge kankei) is omnipresent in Japanese group dynamics. How one comports, depends on one’s status and position vis-à-vis others. To-date, no study shows what constitutes this hierarchy, where and when individuals growing up in Japan first come into contact with it, as well as how they learn to function in it. This book fills in the lacunae. Considering jouge kankei as a social institution and adopting a discourse analytic approach, this volume examines the ways in which institutional jouge kankei as an enduring feature of Japanese social life are created and reproduced. The monograph analyses how seniority-based relations are enacted, legitimised, transmitted, and reified by social actors through language use and paralinguistic discursive practices, such as the use of space, objects, signs, and symbols. It also looks at how established rules could be challenged. The empirical data on which findings are based are gathered through 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork from 2015 to 2018 in Japanese schools, with certain types of data (school club etiquette books and uniforms) being presented and analysed for the first time. This volume also shows continuity and change of jouge kankei from school to work.

Understanding Japanese Society

Language Contact. Volume 2

Targeting a full range of students and scholars, this volume provides a total of 50 chapters illustrating the linguistic dynamics and the dynamics of (inter)individual, and societal language contact as well as the dynamics of multidisciplinary language contact studies. Fueled by a wealth of data from a rich variety of contact situations, its geographically balanced case studies are governed by the triangulation between a focus on language structure and change, a sincere drive of sociopolitical and academic agency, and the confrontation with an everyday reality that can be unkind to (and ignorant of) those two factors. The volume clearly demonstrates the social relevance of our trade in a time burdened with ecolinguistic challenges.