Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality, 2024
Year: 2024
DOI:
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A Note on Japanese Gay Men’s Talk: Onee Go So Extreme and Intense but Empathic
Soichi Kozai
ABSTRACT:
Japanese are known as a reserved people (Imada and Ellsworth 2011 among many). However, a particular type of gay men (onee) who mince no words in stating their opinions is seen on TV shows every day. They have gained popularity over the last dozen years and are welcomed by the Japanese society now. I will show you how they speak such an incisive language and why their sharp-tongues are allowed. I used pragmatic and sociolinguistic approaches to analyze their language. Onee started to emerge after around the millennium. Most of them are physically male but their gender is all female. The ways how they gesture, behave and speak are those of women’s (Maree 2013 and others). Of these, their language is the most notable feature that distinguishes them from other LGBT members. As you know, Japanese male and female speakers use different social dialects. Onee speak as if they are exaggerating the female language, and they communicate their thoughts straightforwardly. One onee in the fashion industry made a comment on some girls wearing slim T-shirts (Uematsu 2006). (See below.) Karada ni kuikonnda line ga itaitasikute, marude ningenn roast-beef yo. body D intruded-in line N pathetic as-if human roast-beef SF ‘It’s pathetic that bras have intruded into their excess fat, making them look like human roast-beef.’ It is full of harsh wards, and it sounds very feminine. S/he says someone is like roast-beef tied up with string and asserts it strongly by the sentence final particle, yo. Trudgill (1974) found women are likely to use the overt prestige forms to make even hyper-corrections. This is happening in the above example. The particle yo is usually used by women of the upper class, and it always comes with some other particle to mitigate the talk. However, onee never mind that. In addition, onee occasionally use vulgar forms associated to the masculinity (Labov 1963). How can they go so extreme and intense, yet get accepted by Japanese? With more examples and further pragmatic analysis, I will show how and what linguistic tools are manipulated by onee to make their talk appreciated and accepted.
keywords: Japanese; Gay; Empathy; Sociolinguistics; Pragmatics