Gender, language and ideology
Subtitle: a genealogy of Japanese women's language
By: Momoko Nakamura, Kanto Gakuin University
Series: Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture -- volume 58
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Amsterdam; Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 253
ISBN-13: 9789027206497; 9789027269294
Subjects: Japanese language; Sex differences; Social aspects; Women; Languages; History
Work titles: Onna kotoba wa tsukurareru
Description: This book examines women's language as an ideological construction historically created by discourse. The aim is to demonstrate, by delineating a genealogy of Japanese women's language, that, to deconstruct and denaturalize the relationships between gender and any language, and to account for why and how they are related as they are, we must consider history, discourse and ideology. The book analyzes multiple discourse examples spanning the premodern period of the thirteenth century to the immediate post-WWII years, mostly translated into English for the first time, locating them in political, social and academic developments and describing each historical period in a manner easily accessible for those readers not familiar with Japanese history. This is the first book that describes a comprehensive development of Japanese women's language and will greatly interest students of Japanese language, gender and language studies, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and history, as well as women's studies and sexuality studies.
Notes: "The Japanese version of this book, Onna kotoba wa tsukurareru [Constructing Women's Language], came out in 2007 and received the 27th Yamakawa Kikue Award, which recognizes outstanding research in women's studies, and I was invited to speak about Japanese women's language by universities, women's organizations, teachers' unions and government agencies all over Japan."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-249) and index.