Words in Context: A Japanese perspective on language and culture

takao suzuki

The book includes an contrastive lexical study of the English lip and the Japanese kuchibiru: In Japanese, you cannot say "hair grew on her lip" because kuchibiru does not encompass the skin above the lip. Lip does not equal kuchibiru.

He discusses covert and overt culture: rice is eaten in both Japan and Italy, but it holds a different place in both places. Its cultural role differs, though the substance is almost the same.

Suzuki discusses how unwanted dogs are killed by their English masters, but the Japanese usually abandon them. He attributes this to differing ideas of man's control over nature. He says the English control their dogs utterly, up to and including their lives. He says the Japanese do not think they control dogs at all.

Kinship terms and self- and other- referents in Japanese are also discussed. He says that Indo-European languages are self-oriented: I am me no matter the circumstance. Japanese (and, I think, other honorific languages) is other-oriented: the speaker cannot express his views unless he can locate the other in a social hierarchy. He says that the Japanese are not accomplished lanaguge-learners because of this other-orientation. It makes them loathe to express their opinions without knowing the addressee's opinion.

He builds up to this argument using the facts that kinship terms are used fictively (calling a stranger "Uncle" or "Big Brother" AND a wife calling her husband "Father") in ways not possible in English. Personal pronouns are generally avoided.

"man does not use words to describe things which exist in the objective world; rather words, which reflect a particular view of the world or a specific way of dissecting, make us feel as though objects with such characteristics and properties actually exist." 54