Download or read book Proto Japanese written by Bjarke Frellesvig and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-03-13 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proto-Japanese is the reconstructed language stage from which all later varieties of Japanese, including Ryukyuan, descend. It has been studied both as an end in itself (as the genetic code of the Japanese language) and as part of endeavors to clarify the genetic affiliation of Japanese. Based on the state of the field, especially as represented in Samuel E. Martin's seminal work The Japanese Language Through Time (1987), this volume singles out key areas in the reconstruction of proto-Japanese where salient progress has been or promises to be made since Martin. Contributions were invited from scholars working on the following areas: segmental phonology, use of dialect evidence, accent, morphology, and syntax. While the book first of all presents new research which advances our understanding of proto-Japanese, it also gives an overview over the state of the art in the field and its main issues.

Download or read book Issues in Japanese Linguistics written by Takashi Imai and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-03-22 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert

Download or read book Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics written by Yoshiyuki Asahi and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-04-04 with total page 709 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first comprehensive survey of the sociolinguistic studies on Japanese. Japanese, like other languages, has developed a highly diverse linguistic system that is realized as variation shaped by interactions of linguistic and social factors. This volume primarily focuses on both classic and current topics of sociolinguistics that were first studied in Western languages, and then subsequently examined in the Japanese language. The topics in this volume cover major issues in sociolinguistics that also characterize sociolinguistic features of Japanese. Such topics as gender, honorifics, and politeness are particularly pertinent to Japanese, as is well-known in general sociolinguistics. At the same time, this volume includes studies on other topics such as social stratification, discourse, contact, and language policy, which have been widely conducted in the Japanese context. In addition, this volume introduces "domestic" approaches to sociolinguistics developed in Japan. They emerged a few decades before the development of the so-called Labovian and Hymesian sociolinguistics in the US, and they have shaped a unique development of sociolinguistic studies in Japan. Contents Part I: History Chapter 1: Research methodology Florian Coulmas Chapter 2: Japan and the international sociolinguistic community Yoshiyuki Asahi and J.K. Chambers Chapter 3: Language life Takehiro Shioda Part II: Sociolinguistic patterns Chapter 4: Style, prestige, and salience in language change in progress Fumio Inoue Chapter 5: Group language (shūdango) Taro Nakanishi Chapter 6: Male-female differences in Japanese Yoshimitsu Ozaki Part III: Language and gender Chapter 7: Historical overview of language and gender studies: From past to future Orie Endo and Hideko Abe Chapter 8: Genderization in Japanese: A typological view Katsue A. Reynolds Chapter 9: Feminist approaches to Japanese language, gender, and sexuality Momoko Nakamura Part IV: Honorifics and politeness Chapter 10: Japanese honorifics Takashi Nagata Chapter 11: Intersection of traditional Japanese honorific theories and Western politeness theories Masato Takiura Chapter 12: Intersection of discourse politeness theory and interpersonal Communication Mayumi Usami Part V: Culture and discourse phenomena Chapter 13: Subjective expression and its roles in Japanese discourse: Its development in Japanese and impact on general linguistics Yoko Ujiie Chapter 14: Style, character, and creativity in the discourse of Japanese popular culture: Focusing on light novels and keitai novels Senko K. Maynard Chapter 15: Sociopragmatics of political discourse Shoji Azuma Part VI: Language contact Chapter 16: Contact dialects of Japanese Yoshiyuki Asahi Chapter 17: Japanese loanwords and lendwords Frank E. Daulton Chapter 18: Japanese language varieties outside Japan Mie Hiramoto Chapter 19: Language contact and contact languages in Japan Daniel Long Part VII: Language policy Chapter 20: Chinese characters: Variation, policy, and landscape Hiroyuki Sasahara Chapter 21: Language, economy, and nation Katsumi Shibuya

Download or read book Handbook of Japanese Semantics and Pragmatics written by Wesley M. Jacobsen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 1223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume on Semantics and Pragmatics presents a collection of studies on linguistic meaning in Japanese, either as conventionally encoded in linguistic form (the field of semantics) or as generated by the interaction of form with context (the field of pragmatics), representing a range of ideas and approaches that are currently most influentialin these fields. The studies are organized around a model that has long currency in traditional Japanese grammar, whereby the linguistic clause consists of a multiply nested structure centered in a propositional core of objective meaning around which forms are deployed that express progressively more subjective meaning as one moves away from the core toward the periphery of the clause. The volume seeks to achieve a balance in highlighting both insights that semantic and pragmatic theory has to offer to the study of Japanese as a particular language and, conversely, contributions that Japanese has to make to semantic and pragmatic theory in areas of meaning that are either uniquely encoded, or encoded to a higher degree of specificity, in Japanese by comparison to other languages, such as conditional forms, forms expressing varying types of speaker modality, and social deixis.

Download or read book Japanese Mood and Modality in Systemic Functional Linguistics written by Ken-Ichi Kadooka and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a cross-linguistic and interdisciplinary exploration of modality within systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Drawing upon the broad SFL notion of modality that refers to the intermediate degrees between the positive and negative poles, the individual papers probe into the modality systems in English and Japanese. The papers cover issues such as the conceptual nature of modality in both languages, the characterization of modulation in Japanese, the trans-grammatical aspects of modality in relation to mood and grammatical metaphor in both languages, and the modality uses and pragmatic impairment by individuals with a developmental disorder from a neurocognitive perspective. The book demonstrates a functional account of Japanese within an SFL model of language with a fresh perspective to Japanese linguistics. It also refers to cross-linguistic issues concerning how the principles and theories of SFL serve to empirically elaborate descriptions of individual languages, which will lead to the enrichment of the theory and practice of linguistics and beyond.

Download or read book Handbook of Japanese Syntax written by Masayoshi Shibatani and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-10-23 with total page 972 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies of Japanese syntax have played a central role in the long history of Japanese linguistics spanning more than 250 years in Japan and abroad. More recently, Japanese has been among the languages most intensely studied within modern linguistic theories such as Generative Grammar and Cognitive/Functional Linguistics over the past fifty years. This volume presents a comprehensive survey of Japanese syntax from these three research strands, namely studies based on the traditional research methods developed in Japan, those from broader functional perspectives, and those couched in the generative linguistics framework. The twenty-four studies contained in this volume are characterized by a detailed analysis of a grammatical phenomenon with broader implications to general linguistics, making the volume attractive to both specialists of Japanese and those interested in learning about the impact of Japanese syntax to the general study of language. Each chapter is authored by a leading authority on the topic. Broad issues covered include sentence types (declarative, imperative, etc.) and their interactions with grammatical verbal categories (modality, polarity, politeness, etc.), grammatical relations (topic, subject, etc.), transitivity, nominalizations, grammaticalization, word order (subject, scrambling, numeral quantifier, configurationality), case marking (ga/no conversion, morphology and syntax), modification (adjectives, relative clause), and structure and interpretation (modality, negation, prosody, ellipsis). Chapter titles Introduction Chapter 1. Basic structures of sentences and grammatical categories, Yoshio Nitta, Kansai University of Foreign Studies Chapter 2: Transitivity, Wesley Jacobsen, Harvard University Chapter 3: Topic and subject, Takashi Masuoka, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies Chapter 4: Toritate: Focusing and defocusing of words, phrases, and clauses, Hisashi Noda, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics Chapter 5: The layered structure of the sentence, Isao Iori, Hitotsubashi University Chapter 6. Functional syntax, Ken-Ichi Takami, Gakushuin University; and Susumu Kuno, Harvard University Chapter 7: Locative alternation, Seizi Iwata, Osaka City University Chapter 8: Nominalizations, Masayoshi Shibatani, Rice University Chapter 9: The morphosyntax of grammaticalization, Heiko Narrog, Tohoku University Chapter 10: Modality, Nobuko Hasegawa, Kanda University of International Studies Chapter 11: The passive voice, Tomoko Ishizuka, Tama University Chapter 12: Case marking, Hideki Kishimoto, Kobe University Chapter 13: Interfacing syntax with sounds and meanings, Yoshihisa Kitagawa, Indiana University Chapter 14: Subject, Masatoshi Koizumi, Tohoku University Chapter 15: Numeral quantifiers, Shigeru Miyagawa, MIT Chapter 16: Relative clauses, Yoichi Miyamoto, Osaka University Chapter 17: Expressions that contain negation, Nobuaki Nishioka, Kyushu University Chapter 18: Ga/No conversion, Masao Ochi, Osaka University Chapter 19: Ellipsis, Mamoru Saito, Nanzan University Chapter 20: Syntax and argument structure, Natsuko Tsujimura, Indiana University Chapter 21: Attributive modification, Akira Watanabe, University of Tokyo Chapter 22: Scrambling, Noriko Yoshimura, Shizuoka Prefectural University

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics written by Yoko Hasegawa and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 1146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The linguistic study of Japanese, with its rich syntactic and phonological structure, complex writing system, and diverse sociohistorical context, is a rapidly growing research area. This book, designed to serve as a concise reference for researchers interested in the Japanese language and in typological studies of language in general, explores diverse characteristics of Japanese that are particularly intriguing when compared with English and other European languages. It pays equal attention to the theoretical aspects and empirical phenomena from theory-neutral perspectives, and presents necessary theoretical terms in clear and easy language. It consists of five thematic parts including sound system and lexicon, grammatical foundation and constructions, and pragmatics/sociolinguistics topics, with chapters that survey critical discussions arising in Japanese linguistics. The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics will be welcomed by general linguists, and students and scholars working in linguistic typology, Japanese language, Japanese linguistics and Asian Studies.

Download or read book Handbook of Japanese Contrastive Linguistics written by Prashant Pardeshi and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Japanese Contrastive Linguistics is a unique publication that brings together insights from three traditions—Japanese linguistics, linguistic typology and contrastive linguistics—and makes important contributions to deepening our understanding of various phenomena in Japanese as well other languages of the globe. Its primary goal is to uncover principled similarities and differences between Japanese and other languages of the globe and thereby shed new light on the universal as well as language-particular properties of Japanese. The issues addressed by the papers in this volume cover a wide spectrum of phenomena ranging from lexical to syntactic and discourse levels. The authors of the chapters, leading scholars in their respective field of research, present the state-of-the-art research from their respected field.

Download or read book An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics written by Natsuko Tsujimura and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-08-28 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third edition of this established textbook has been thoroughly updated and revised. It maintains its broad coverage of topics from phonetics to language variation, and increases its accessibility by incorporating a more descriptive, less theoretical approach. A fully updated new edition of this successful textbook introducing students to a wide range of issues, phenomena, and terminology in Japanese linguistics Includes extensive revisions to the chapters on phonetics, syntax and phonology, and incorporates a less theoretical, more descriptive approach Features the author’s own data, examples and theoretical analyses throughout Offers an original approach by discussing first and/or second language acquisition within each chapter Includes exercises exploring descriptive and theoretical issues and reading lists which introduce students to the research literature, both of which have been updated in this new edition

Download or read book Handbook of Japanese Applied Linguistics written by Masahiko Minami and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-01-15 with total page 615 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Applied linguistics is the best single label to represent a wide range of contemporary research at the intersection of linguistics, anthropology, psychology, and sociology, to name a few. The Handbook of Japanese Applied Linguistics reflects crosscurrents in applied linguistics, an ever-developing branch/discipline of linguistics. The book is divided into seven sections, where each chapter discusses in depth the importance of particular topics, presenting not only new findings in Japanese, but also practical implications for other languages. Section 1 examines first language acquisition/development, whereas Section 2 covers issues related to second language acquisition/development and bilingualism/multilingualism. Section 3 presents problems associated with the teaching and learning of foreign languages. Section 4 undertakes questions in corpus/computational linguistics. Section 5 deals with clinical linguistics, and Section 6 takes up concerns in the area of translation/interpretation. Finally, Section 7 discusses Japanese sign language. Covering a wide range of current issues in an in an in-depth, comprehensive manner, the book will be useful for researchers as well as graduate students who are interested in Japanese linguistics in general, and applied linguistics in particular. Chapter titles Chapter 1. Cognitive Bases and Caregivers' Speech in Early Language Development (Tamiko Ogura, Tezukayama University) Chapter 2. Literacy Acquisition in Japanese Children (Etsuko Haryu, University of Tokyo) Chapter 3. Age Factors in Language Acquisition (Yuko Goto Butler, University of Pennsylvania) Chapter 4. Cross-lingual Transfer from L1 to L2 Among School-age Children (Kazuko Nakajima, University of Toronto) Chapter 5. Errors and Learning Strategies by Learners of Japanese as an L2 (Kumiko Sakoda, Hiroshima University/NINJAL) Chapter 6. Adult JFL Learners' Acquisition of Speech Style Shift (Haruko Minegishi Cook, University of Hawai'i at Manoa) Chapter 7. Japanese Language Proficiency Assessment (Noriko Kobayashi, Tsukuba University) Chapter 8. The Role of Instruction in Acquiring Japanese as a Second Language (Kaoru Koyanagi, Sophia University) Chapter 9. The Influence of Topic Choice on Narrative Proficiency by Learners of Japanese as a Foreign Language (Masahiko Minami, San Francisco State University) Chapter 10. CHILDES for Japanese: Corpora, Programs, and Perspectives (Susanne Miyata, Aichi Shukutoku University) Chapter 11. KY Corpus (Jae-Ho Lee, Tsukuba University) Chapter 12. Corpus-based Second Language Acquisition Research (Hiromi Ozeki, Reitaku University) Chapter 13. Assessment of Language Development in Children with Hearing Impairment and Language Disorders (Kiyoshi Otomo, Tokyo Gakugei University) Chapter 14. Speech and Language Acquisition in Japanese Children with Down Syndrome (Toru Watamaki, Nagasaki University) Chapter 15. Revisiting Autistic Language: Is "literalness" a Truth or Myth? Manabu Oi (Osaka University/Kanazawa University) Chapter 16. Towards a Robust, Genre-based Translation Model and its Application (Judy Noguchi, Mukogawa Women's University; Atsuko Misaki, Kwansei Gakuin University; Shoji Miyanaga, Ritsumeikan University; Masako Terui, Kinki University) Chapter 17. Japanese Sign Language: An Introduction (Daisuke Hara, Toyota Technological Institute) Chapter 18. Japanese Sign Language Phonology and Morphology (Daisuke Hara, Toyota Technological Institute) Chapter 19. Japanese Sign Language Syntax (Noriko Imazato, Kobe City College of Technology) Chapter 20. Sign Language Development and Language Input (Takashi Torigoe, Hyogo University of Teacher Education)

Download or read book Japanese written by Yoko Hasegawa and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-08 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A succinct overview of the Japanese language, looking at grammar, vocabulary, meaning and sound structure, as well as sociolinguistics and history.

Download or read book Japanese Syntax and Semantics written by S.-Y. Kuroda and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1. Two main themes connect the papers on Japanese syntax collected in this volume: movements of noun phrases and case marking, although each in turn relates to other issues in syntax and semantics. These two themes can be traced back to my 1965 MIT dissertation. The problem of the so-called topic marker wa is a perennial problem in Japanese linguistics. I devoted Chapter 2 of my dissertation to the problem of wa. My primary concern there was transformational genera tive syntax. I was interested in the light that Chomsky'S new theory could shed on the understanding of Japanese sentence structure. I generalized the problem of deriving wa-phrases to the problem of deriving phrases accompanied by the quantifier-like particles mo, demo, sae as well as wa. These particles, mo, demo and sae may roughly be equated with a/so, or something like it and even, respectively, and are grouped together with wa under the name of huku-zyosi as a subcategory of particles in Kokugogaku, Japanese scholarship on Japanese grammar. This taxonomy itself is a straightforward consequence of distributional analysis, and does not require the mechanisms of transformational grammar. My transformational analysis of wa, and by extension, that of the other huku zyosi, consisted in formally relating the function of the post-nominal use of wa to that of the post-predicative use by means of what I called an attachment transformation.

Download or read book The Structure of the Japanese Language written by Susumu Kuno and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1973-01 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Conventional grammars tell us when we can use given grammatical patterns. However, they almost invariably fail to tell us when we cannot use them. Many of the chapters of this book are concerned with the latter problem. They attempt to explain why some sentences that should be grammatical according to the explanations given in conventional grammars are in fact ungrammatical. In this sense, the book can be called a grammar of ungrammatical sentences.... It deals only with those problems of Japanese—and only a handful of them—that are either completely ignored or erroneously treated in conventional grammars. For these features I hope that the book will give the reader a revealing account of a kind seldom found in other Japanese grammars or in grammars of any other languages." —from the author's Preface Some features of Japanese are peculiarities of the language, while others are shared by English and various other languages of the world. At times two features, one in Japanese and one, for example, in English, that may look totally unrelated on casual inspection turn out to be a manifestation of the same principle, either syntactic or semantic, which governs the two languages. Whenever possible each feature of Japanese that the book discusses is contrasted with the features in English that are overtly or covertly related to it, and the similarities and differences that exist between the two languages with respect to this feature are examined. Thus the book can also be called a contrastive grammar of Japanese and English. The book reveals a wide variety of semantic and syntactic factors (some of them not very well known to linguists working on English) that control the usage of certain grammatical patterns. It also shows what kinds of sentences the linguist working on a nonnative language should check with native speakers of the language to prove or disprove his initial hypothesis. So in a third sense, Professor Kuno's study might be called a textbook of field methods in linguistic analysis. Because The Structure of the Japanese Language is both descriptive and analytical (the generalizations given in the book have been developed within the framework of the theory of transformational grammar but are presented without recourse to the complex formalisms of the theory), it will prove useful both as a basic handbook of supplementary reading for second-year or more advanced courses in Japanese and as a source of material for students and researchers doing work in Japanese or non-Indo-European linguistics. This is volume three in the series, Current Studies in Linguistics.

Download or read book Language Policy in Japan written by Nanette Gottlieb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-10 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last thirty years, two social developments have occurred that have led to a need for change in language policy in Japan. One is the increase in the number of migrants needing opportunities to learn Japanese as a second language, the other is the influence of electronic technologies on the way Japanese is written. This book looks at the impact of these developments on linguistic behaviour and language management and policy, and at the role of language ideology in the way they have been addressed. Immigration-induced demographic changes confront long cherished notions of national monolingualism and technological advances in electronic text production have led to textual practices with ramifications for script use and for literacy in general. The book will be welcomed by researchers and professionals in language policy and management and by those working in Japanese Studies.

Download or read book Handbook of Japanese Psycholinguistics written by Mineharu Nakayama and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-06-16 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The studies of the Japanese language and psycholinguistics have advanced quite significantly in the last half century thanks to the progress in the study of cognition and brain mechanisms associated with language acquisition, use, and disorders, and in particular, because of technological developments in experimental techniques employed in psycholinguistic studies. This volume contains 18 chapters that discuss our brain functions, specifically, the process of Japanese language acquisition - how we acquire/learn the Japanese language as a first/second language - and the mechanism of Japanese language perception and production - how we comprehend/produce the Japanese language. In turn we address the limitations of our current understanding of the language acquisition process and perception/production mechanism. Issues for future research on language acquisition and processing by users of the Japanese language are also presented. Chapter titles 1. Learning to become a native listener of Japanese (Reiko Mazuka) 2. The nature of the count/mass distinction in Japanese (Mutsumi Imai & Junko Kanero) 3. Grammatical deficits in Japanese children with Specific Language Impairment (Shinji Fukuda, Suzy E. Fukuda, & Tomohiko Ito) 4. Root infinitive analogues in Child Japanese (Keiko Murasugi) 5. Acquisition of scope (Takuya Goro) 6. Narrative development in L1 Japanese (Masahiko Minami) 7. L2 acquisition of Japanese (Yasuhiro Shirai) 8. The modularity of grammar in L2 acquisition (Mineharu Nakayama & Noriko Yoshimura) 9. Tense and aspect in Japanese as a second language (Alison Gabriele & Mamori Sugita Hughes) 10. Language acquisition and brain development: Cortical processing of a foreign language (Hiroko Hagiwara) 11. Resolution of branching ambiguity in speech (Yuki Hirose) 12. The role of learning in theories of English and Japanese sentence processing (Franklin Chang) 13. Experimental syntax: word order in sentence processing (Masatoshi Koizumi) 14. Relative clause processing in Japanese: psycholinguistic investigation into typological differences (Baris Kahraman & Hiromu Sakai) 15. Processing of syntactic and semantic information in the human brain: evidence from ERP studies in Japanese. (Tsutomu Sakamoto) 16. Issues in L2 Japanese sentence processing: similarities/differences with L1 and individual differences in working memory (Koichi Sawasaki & Akiko Kashiwagi-Wood) 17. Sentence production models to consider for L2 Japanese sentence production research (Noriko Iwasaki) 18. Processing of the Japanese language by native Chinese speakers (Katsuo Tamaoka)

Download or read book Making Sense of Japanese Grammar written by Željko Cipriš and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2002-04-30 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making Sense of Japanese Grammar explains in a lively and highly informative manner basic principles that underlie a wide range of phenomena in Japanese. Students--irrespective of proficiency level and linguistic training--will find clarification on matters of grammar that often seem idiosyncratic and Japanese-specific, such as avoiding the use of certain pronouns, employing the same word order for questions, hidden subjects, polite and direct forms. Organized for easy access and readability, Making Sense of Japanese Grammar consists of short units, each focused on explaining a distinct problem and illustrated with a wealth of examples. To further enhance their usefulness, the units are cross-referenced and contain brief comprehension exercises to test and apply newly acquired knowledge. A glossary and keys to the exercises are at the back of the book. This volume may be used as a supplementary classroom reading or a helpful reference for students of all levels. Both students and instructors, even those trained in linguistics, will find its accessible explanations of grammatical concepts helpful. Grounded in sound scholarship and extensive teaching experience, Making Sense of Japanese Grammar brings a fresh and liberating perspective to the study of Japanese.

Download or read book Japanese Language in Use written by Toshiko Yamaguchi and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2007-10-13 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces pragmatics, discourse, language, and culture in the Japanese context. It covers: Language in context; Japanese in conversation; Honorifics and politeness; Language and gender; and Young people's language.