1.7. GENDER ROLES 45
1.7 Gender roles
Due to the differentformalitylevels in Japanese, a particular style of speech
is often associated with a particular gender - the more polite and reserved
speech being associated with female speech, and the more brash and for-
ward plain speech being associated with male speech. While this is an
understandable association, the problem with associating speech paĴerns
with genders is that people often mistakenly apply backward logic: if the
female speech paĴern is reserved, then reserved speech is female speech.
This isn’t how it works though: typically, speech paĴerns fall into
categories like polite reserved speech, plaininformal speechor honorific
speech, which are used by a particular gender more than the other by
virtue of statistics. However, this does not mean that what is considered
”female speech” is never used by men, or what is considered ”male speech”
isn’t used by women, as there is no such thing as exclusively male or fe-
male speech. A more accurate distinction is to consider speech paĴerns as
directversusindirectorassertiveversusreserved. Women tend to be more
reserved and use less direct speech, and men tend to be more assertive and
use more direct speech. However, when the situation warrants it, there is
nothing to prevent men from using reserved indirect speech, or women
from using assertive direct speech. It’s all about what the social seĴing
warrants.
This said, there are a few words (not speech paĴerns) that are gen-
uinelyeffeminateormasculine, such as the effeminatedubitativeparticle
, or the masculine personal pronoun
. It is important to notice
that the labels used here are ”effeminate” and ”masculine”, and not ”fe-
male” and ”male”. Very effeminate men (such as transvestites or homo-
sexuals) may very well use very effeminate words, and hardcore business
ball-busting career women may very well use very masculine words to
demonstrate their dominance. Again, it’s all about the social seĴing.
1.8 Context language
As mentioned in the section on sentence structure, Japanese is acontext
sensitive language, relying heavily on the reader or listener to be able to
keep track of information during a conversation, and omiĴing any infor-
mation once it has become contextual. Before we look at an example of
this, we will look at how a ”context” differs from a ”subject”, as this can
cause some confusion: in natural language, context and subject are the