Hey, you’re a girl?: Gendered expressions in the popular anime, Cowboy Bebop Abstract
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- 3.2 Second person pronouns
DE GRUYTER MOUTON 56 Mie Hiramoto 3 Japanese data 3.1 First person pronouns Japanese is known to have gender exclusive expressions, and the features of JWL, including interactional particles, pronouns, lexical items, and discourse styles have been studied extensively (e.g., Ide 1982; Reynolds 1985; Shibamoto 1985; McGloin 1990; Okamoto 1995). Regarding 1PPs, the generic form watashi is considered gender-neutral, while ore or boku are masculine and atashi or atakushi are feminine. Additionally, within the gender-exclusive categories, dif- ferent pronouns carry different connotations; for example, the male forms ore and boku index different degrees/types of masculinity. However, generally, the gender ideology attached to personal pronouns is not as rigid as might be believed from the description above. Scholars have pointed out regional, social, or age differences with regard to deviations from idealized forms (e.g., Reynolds 1985; Sunaoshi 2004). In scripted speech, both conformity as well as deviation from the norm are taken into account when constructing or developing an imag- inary character’s identity. In the Japanese transcription of CB, the following 1PPs were codified for analysis – the masculine forms boku (casual), ore (rough) and washi (elderly); the neutral forms watakushi (formal) and watashi (neutral); the feminine forms atakushi (formal) and atashi (casual). The results from the female group show that Faye predominantly preferred the casual form atashi (84 percent), the guest protagonists used both the neutral watashi (59 percent) and the casual atashi (41 percent), and the side characters used atashi exclusively. Ed and the female villain did not use any 1PPs throughout the entire data. The male group yielded more interesting findings, due to the fact that more variations in 1PP use were observed. The main characters, Spike and Jet, used only the rough masculine form ore (100 percent). Both the guest protagonists and the side characters showed a wide range of 1PP use. While within each of these groups, in them- selves, characters showed markedly different usage of the 1PPs, taking into account the personality of each character, we see a more uniform usage across another boundary, which I will call the ‘toughness’ boundary. Dividing both the protagonists and the side characters into soft-spoken (those who used no expletives or strong imperatives) and rough (those who used expletives or strong imperatives), we see that soft-spoken characters use the more casual form boku almost exclusively, while the rough characters preferred ore. The neutral watashi was used mainly by wealthy or very public characters such as news anchors. The villains used the neutral watashi the most often (54 percent), followed by ore (37 perecent) and boku (9 percent). Authenticated | ellmh@nus.edu.sg author's copy Download Date | 2/13/13 12:05 AM
DE GRUYTER MOUTON Gendered expressions in a popular anime 57 None of the female characters, including the gender-ambiguous main char- acter, Ed, used the masculine forms, and none of the masculine characters used the feminine forms. There was little flexibility within the assignment of the pronouns for both male and female speakers except in a few cases. Faye used a casual form when speaking to in-group members, but used a neutral form with strangers. This alternation was seen in the male group as well, when a character projected multiple personae. The villain from Episode 23 (Brain Scratch), Londes, initially appears as an older cult leader, and as fitting his position, uses watashi exclusively. However, when it becomes known that Londes is actually a 15-year-old boy impersonating a cult leader, he switches to
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Londes’s pronoun alternations (Episode 23: Brain Scratch) [as cult leader] Watashi no nani o shitteru to yuun da? [What makes you think that you know anything about me?] [as a teenager]
[What!? What did I do!? No! This isn’t fair! Why do I have to be like this! Everyone … should have the same body … as … I have. Everyone. No, I don’t …. I don’t want to disappear!] 3.2 Second person pronouns As with the 1PPs, 2PPs are considered highly gender-specific. While there are male-specific 2PPs, there are no overt female-specific 2PPs. While some scholars would argue over the femininity of anata, I have used this 2PP as the casual neutral standard. The following tokens were observed in this study – the mascu- line forms kimi (casual), omae/omee (rough), kisama (vulgar), and temee (vul- gar); and the neutral forms anata (formal) and anta (casual). As noted by Abe (2004: 215), in everyday practice ‘actual uses of second-person pronouns do not necessarily conform to these gender classifications.’ However, as the corpus for this study is idealized, scripted speech, the above categorizations seem valid for the analysis of the data. It must be noted that, generally, personal pronouns are not obligatory components of Japanese speech, and indeed are often omit- ted. Therefore, like the 1PPs, 2PPs were often dropped and some characters do not use these tokens at all. Authenticated | ellmh@nus.edu.sg author's copy Download Date | 2/13/13 12:05 AM Yüklə 233,01 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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