Communication Strategies

An Elucidation of Miyako Inoues Treatment of Schoolgirl Speech in Vicarious Language
    Miyako Inoue, in Vicarious Language, discusses the significance of tracing the history of Japanese womens language in the history of Japanese development. She defines womens language as a space of discourse-understood as a complex ensemble of practices, institutions, representations, and power (Inoue 1). Inoue argues that Japanese womens language reflects a powerful truth in Japanese culture (1). Such is the case since language, as a space of discourse, manifests the effects of the changes in a societys epistemological and ontological beliefs in the changes in its construction and use in society. Language, in this sense, reflects a societys conception of truth since the development and maintenance of a particular language involves a societys adherence to a specific set of meanings attributed to words. Inoue states this succinctly as she claims, Japanese womens language is an obligatory cultural category and an unavoidable part of practical social knowledge-for both women and men, urban and rural-in contemporary Japan (1). The reason for this, according to Inoue, may be traced to several factors. First, Japanese womens language manifests the amount of civil order and social change in the Japanese society (Inoue 2). Second, Japanese womens language serves as a symbol of Japanese nationhood and tradition (Inoue 3). Finally, Japanese womens language serves as a gauge for the extent of modernization in the country (Inoue 3).  Inoue argues that in order to understand these reasons, it is important to consider the relationship between modernity and modernization, gender, and language use in Japanese society (4). She states, Japanese womens language emerges in the contingent mediation of these three mutually constituting domains of social form in a particular geopolitical location at a particular historical juncture (Inoue 4).
    In line with this, the following discussion provides an elucidation of Inoues claim in relation to her conception of the role of Japanese womens language in shaping Japanese society and Japanese culture. For the sake of clarity, the discussion focuses on Inoues conception of how Japanese school-girl language reflects the relationship between modernity, gender, and language development. By focusing on this aspect, the discussion will provide the following (1) The historical reasons that led male intellectuals of the 19th century to consider schoolgirls as worthy of censorship, (2) The norms transgressed by the schoolgirls during the period, and (3) The link between schoolgirl speech and projects of national modernity.
    Inoue divides her discussion of schoolgirl speech into four parts (1) Jogakusei Neither Producers nor Reproducers, (2) Linguistic Modernity and the Auditory Construction of the Other, (3) The Semiotics of Unpleasant to the Ear, and (4) The Return of Voice and the Construction of the Listening Subject (41-74). This division corresponds with her discussion of the evolution of schoolgirl speech in line with the historical and structural linkages among Japans experience of modernity and modernization, gender, and language use (Inoue 4). This is evident if one considers the main assumptions that she forwards in the abovementioned sections.
    It is important to note at the onset that the assumptions Inoue forwards in the said sections aim to support her argument that the evolution of Japanese schoolgirl speech from 1887 to 1930 manifests the effects of modernity and modernization in the changes in the conception of gender in Japanese society as can be seen in the case of Japanese schoolgirl speech (37-74).  It is important to note that the schoolgirls that Inoue refers to here correspond to the girls and young women of the elite classes who attended the womens secondary schoolsinstituted as a part of the early Meiji modernization project (38). On the other hand, Japanese schoolgirl speech here refers to the strange and unpleasant sounds issuing from the mouths of schoolgirls (Inoue 37). The speech pattern of these schoolgirls differed from those which were used in the period due to the pragmatically salient unit in their utterances (Inoue 48). This pragmatic salience is evident in the nonreferential character of the ending of their utterances (Inoue 53). Inoue notes that the relationship between modernity, gender, and language is particularly evident in the emphasis on the speech patterns of schoolgirl speech in the discussion of these women. The reasons for this will be specified in the later part of the discussion.
    In her introduction of the topic, Inoue provides the following foundational assumptions of her argument. First, language is a social construct (Inoue 38). Second, the social construction of language is evident in its dependence on previous linguistic practices (Inoue 38). Third, language as a social construct merely serves as a manifestation of the power relations in society (Inoue 38-39). Fourth, language as a social construct has a direct effect on the relations of power in society (Inoue 39). These foundational assumptions are based on her conception of the existence of a language ideology (Inoue 39). She states,
(A)uditory practices are embedded in a language ideology, or a linguistic regime of the social, that underlies and produces social knowledge of the structure of language, retroactively regiments it, and delimits certain (pragmatic) effects of its use (Silverstein 1979) Language ideology sets the boundary for what counts as language and what does not, and the terms, techniques, and modalities of hearing and citing. (Inoue 39)
Inoue thereby conceives Japanese womens language as a social construct affected by language ideology as the structure and utilization of the language is delimited by the existing rules that govern the syntax and pragmatics of Japanese language. These rules, on the other hand, are associated with existing social and cultural beliefs, during the Meiji period, which delimits those who utilize the language from enabling the expansion of the pragmatic use of the Japanese language.
    It is important to note that by considering language as a social construct, Inoue was able to implicitly provide her reason for her conception of schoolgirl speech as a form of language. By showing the historical dependence of the syntax and pragmatics of an existing language, Inoue was able to point out that despite the perceived strangeness and unpleasantness of schoolgirl speech during the Meiji period, the male intellectuals were still able to recognize and understand this speech, as a result of its roots in the Japanese language itself. Her discussion of schoolgirl speech was thereby able to address the evolution of language in line with the developments of the period. In addition to this, she was also able to address the correlation of Japanese womens language with the Japanese conception of the female figure. She states,
(T)he modern Japanese woman came into being as a culturally meaningful category in and through her imputed acoustic presence. Citational practices amounted ultimately to consolidating the metapragmatic category of schoolgirl speech and thereby belong to a discursive space where male intellectuals produced and contained the knowledge of the schoolgirl and her voice in a way that she, as an acoustic substance, became knowable only as an (assimilated) other. (Inoue 39)
    According to Inoue, the states focus on schoolgirl speech may be attributed to the historical conception of Japanese womens language as a manifestation of the countrys national identity and national tradition (42). In the case of the Japanese schoolgirls, additional surveillance was implemented on their practices as they constituted the initial women to be formally educated in the country. As symbols of the recognition of womens rights in Japan during that period, they also served as symbols of the modernization of the country. Given that education was equated with nationalization and modernization, it followed that the state implicitly required the education of women to nationalize women (Inoue 42). Inoue argues that due to the schoolgirls position as a newly formed subject and hence an empty subject, her actions were continually placed in the spectacle which led the Japanese male intellectuals of the 19th century to opt for the definition of the schoolgirl (43). The definition that they opted for suited the symbol that she was supposed to portray during that time. Evidence of this is apparent as the beginning of the censorship of schoolgirl speech coincided with the criticism of the governments modernization project. Inoue claims, Schoolgirl speech emerged as a problem precisely at the time when state officials and intellectuals attempted to reinvent modern Japan as autonomous from, uncontaminated by, and mutually exclusive with the West (45).
    It is at this point that one perceives the explicit relationship between the censorship of Japanese schoolgirl speech and the modernization project in Japan. It is important to note that since the modernization project of the country required the countrys adaptation of the tenets and practices of modernity that ought to be defined by its own national tradition, there is a necessity for the different manifestations of the modernization project in the country to coincide with the governments conception of the countrys national identity. Since the schoolgirl speech defied the norms set in the construction of utterances during the period, their speech was considered nonsensical in order to prevent the proliferation of their speech patterns in society. In the process of doing this, women were silenced during the period thereby enabling the continuation of a gender hierarchy and later on class hierarchy in Japan. Inoue states, Reducing the cultural significance of her speech to its non-referential aspect denies and represses her referential voice, her will to mean and signify something in a rational manner (54).
    The means through which schoolgirl speech was used as a tool for enabling the continuation of class hierarchy in Japan is evident in the equation of schoolgirl speech with vulgar speech due to its dismissal of honorific terms (Inoue 60). Since the schools were made accessible to the members of the lower class as Japan continued its modernization project, the conception of schoolgirl speech as vulgar speech allowed the attribution of derogatory traits to those who utilized the speech pattern. Inoue argues that since schoolgirl speech defied the norms of the speech-gender nexus, it was continually depicted as a nonsensical and vulgar speech pattern thereby enabling the conception of women, in both the elite and lower classes of society, to maintain their subservient position towards the male members of Japanese society (63). In line with this Inoue argues that the reason for the derogatory terms associated with the schoolgirl speech may be attributed to its differentiation of men and women which allowed the conception of the female as a modern subject (67). She states,
The schoolgirls voice is unpleasant to the ears because it disrupts the symbolic alignment between modernity and masculinity for she is female and modern...The schoolgirls voice is unpleasant to the ear precisely because it is a (distorted) double of his voice...Encountering his (auditory) double, or the little otherness in him, is a horrifying reminder that the subject is inherently split and insufficient and that the wholeness of the subject...-Japans male modern subject-is an impossible deal. (Inoue 67-69)
    Within this context, it is evident that the historical reasons that led male intellectuals of the 19th century to consider schoolgirls as worthy of censorship may be attributed to their refusal to recognize the newly created female subject of modernized Japan. This newly formed female subject utilized language as a means of transgressing the existing norms of society. These schoolgirls created and utilized new language patterns to create new modes of objectivity and new spheres of power in Japanese society. Schoolgirl speech is thereby connected to the countrys project of modernity as its creation and its censorship is a result of the countrys inability to synthesize its previous traditions and beliefs with that of modernity. This does not necessarily entail that Japan has failed in its project of modernizing the country. This merely states that the process of change does not occur swiftly since buildings and infrastructures as well as policies and social practices are not the mere bases for a countrys adherence to modernity. The main basis for this lies in the peoples recognition of the epistemological and ontological assumptions of modernity and their manifestation of their adherence to these assumptions in their beliefs and practices in daily their lives.