Subjective construal as a 'fashion of speaking' in Japanese

Yoshihiko Ikegami | University of Tokyo and Showa Women’s University, Japan

The chapter addresses the question of subjectivity in language, in particular, that aspect of subjectivity which is discussed under the rubric of ‘subjective construal’ in Cognitive Linguistics. It is argued that faced with a situation to be linguistically encoded, the speaker of any language can operate either with subjective or objective construal but that there is a marked difference among the speakers of different languages in the extent to which they indulge in subjective rather than objective construal. This is illustrated by referring to Japanese, whose speakers tend to prefer subjective construal (which results in subject-object merger), as contrasted with the speakers of English and probably of western languages in general, who apparently prefer objective construal (which results in subject-object contrast).

Published online: 17 December 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/sfsl.60.14ike

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Izutsu, Mitsuko Narita & Katsunobu Izutsu

2019. Why is Twitter so popular in Japan?. Internet Pragmatics 2:2 ► pp. 260 ff.

Lu, Wei-lun

2017. In Studies in Figurative Thought and Language [Human Cognitive Processing, 56], ► pp. 232 ff.

Tomita, Naoko

2018. In Linguistic Foundations of Narration in Spoken and Sign Languages [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 247], ► pp. 41 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 february 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.