Socializing Identities Through Speech Style: Learners of Japanese As a Foreign Language

Drawing on Och's two-step model of indexical relations, Cook (East Asian languages and literatures, U. of Hawaii, Manoa) examines how learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) and their host family members express their identities through style shifts between use of the polite speech-level marker, the masu form, and non-honorific plain form during family dinnertime conversations. The study analyzes data from 25 dinnertime conversations--videotaped and audiotaped simultaneously--of nine JFL learners, three British and six Americans, ranging from novice to advanced proficiency levels, enrolled in a year-in-Japan program in Tokyo-area universities. The research explores how host family members teach learners language socialization, both implicitly and explicitly, as evidenced by the shifting use of the masu form to index different social situations. It demonstrates the positive impact of study abroad experiences on the development of second language pragmatics. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Haruko Minegishi Cook is a Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She earned a PhD in Linguistics from University of Southern California. Her main research interests include language socialization, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and pragmatics. She has published in major journals and edited volumes a number of articles on the Japanese sentence-final particles, honorifics, and style shift from a constructivist perspective.