Polite society in Japan

It’s too easy to take language for granted—not just what we say but the way our language defines us as individuals, as a people and as a nation.

Today, Patricia Wetzel, professor of Japanese at Portland State, will deliver a lecture titled “It’s not about you: language clutter on the Japanese landscape?” which will examine the cultural impact of Japanese language on Japanese society.

“My goal is to show how something as deceptively straightforward as a pronoun has very complicated sociocultural uses in English,” Wetzel said. “Japanese doesn’t use pronouns at all in the same way. The function that pronouns serve in English is served by ‘polite language’ in Japanese.”

Wetzel’s 2004 book, Keigo in Modern Japan: Polite Language from Meiji to the Present, delves into “polite” Japanese language studies, known in the west as honorifics.

Language is not simply a tool of communication. The words we use, how we use them and the society we live in are inextricably connected in an ever-changing symbiotic relationship. The interaction of language and society in Japan is highly diverse and wide-ranging in its scope.

“I had no plans to study Japanese, but there was a rule for all linguistics majors that you must take a year of a ‘weird’ [i.e., non-Indo–European] language,” Wetzel said, who was a graduate student at Cornell University. “I decided to take Japanese because the woman heading the program was a sociolinguist, which is one of my areas of interest.”

Portland State is famous for its diverse student population. Its international students hail from all over the world, and Japan is no exception.

“Getting out of your own cultural skin makes life exciting,” Wetzel said. “It also gives you a great deal of empathy for those who struggle with American language and culture.”

She recommends taking Japanese 101 courses, or any course on Asian studies for that matter.

“Knowing only one language limits your cultural and social horizons, so try something new and expand them instead,” Wetzel said. “You never know where it will take you.” ■