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Are “powerless” communication strategies the Japanese norm?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Patricia J. Wetzel
Patricia J. Wetzel
Affiliation:
Department of Foreign LanguagesPortland State University
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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, inter-cultural communication)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 555 - 564
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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