評論
打印
Young ladies' New Language
新女性，新語言
The use of deferential（敬重的）language is symbolic of the Confucian ideal of the woman, which domiantes conservative gender norms in Japan. This ideal presents a woman who withdraws quietly to the background, subordinating her life and needs to those of her family and its male head. She is a dutiful daughter, wife, and mother, master of the domestic arts.
敬語的使用是儒家理想婦女的標志，它統治著日本保守的性別準則。這種理想表現為婦女安靜地退居幕后，將自己的生活和需要屈從于家庭和男性主人的需要。她是有義務的女兒，是妻子和母親、家務藝術的大師。
The typical refined Japanese woman excels in modesty and delicacy; she "treads softly（謹言慎行） in the world," elevating feminine beauty and grace to an art form.
典型的優雅日本婦女在謙遜和精巧上非常優秀，她們“謹言慎行”，把婦女的美麗與優雅提升到了藝術的層面。
Nowadays, it is commonly observed that young women are not conforming to the feminine linguistic（語言的） ideal. They are using fewer of the very deferential "women's" forms, and even using the few strong forms that are known as "men's." This, of course, attracts considerable attention and has led to an outcry in the Japanese media against the defeminization of women's language.
現在，年輕婦女不再遵從婦女語言的理想已經是普遍現象了。她們更少使用非常恭順的女性用語，甚至使用少量強硬的男性用語。當然，這吸引了廣泛的注意，并引起了日本媒體對婦女語言的非女性化傾向的疾呼。
The fact that young Japanese women are using less deferential language is a sure sign of change — of social change and of linguistic change. But it is most certainly not a sign of the "masculization" of girls. In some instances, it may be a sign that girls are making the same claim to authority as boys and men, but that is very different from saying that they are trying to be "masculine."
年輕日本女性使用越來越少的敬語毫無疑問是社會變化和語言變化的標志。但是幾乎可以肯定的是，它不是女孩子男性化的標志。在某些例子中，這是女性要求得到和男性一樣的權威的標志，但是這和說她們嘗試男性化大不相同。
Katsue Reynolds has argued that girls nowadays are using more assertive language in order to be able to compete with boys in schools and out. Social change also brings not simply different positions for women and girls, but different relations to life stages, and adolescent girls are participating in new subcultural forms. Thus what may, to an older speaker, seem like "masculine" speech may seem to an adolescent like "liberated" or "hip" speech.
勝家·雷諾茲認為女性現在使用更為肯定的語言是為了在學校和社會中和男性進行競爭。同樣，社會變化帶給婦女的不單是不同的社會位置，還包括生命階段的不同關系，少女還參與到嶄新的亞文化形式中去。所以這些對于年長者來說看似“男性化”用語，對青少年來說就像是解放宣言。
