Khari’s Reviews > Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People > Status Update

"These how-to books thus promote the notion that women's attractiveness depends on their appearance (beauty), which is in part determined by their good upbringing and education, including the knowledge of honorifics."

This is probably true, one of my samples of manga is a Pretty Cure spinoff where all of these silver spoon young ladies are in a boarding school and their language is INCREDIBLY formal and stilted.

No one ever asks 'why' in these studies.

Women have no place in society, therefore they are more aware and concerned about appearances.

Uh. Egalitarian societies still tend to have women concerned of and aware of appearances. The question is WHY women are concerned about appearances, if it is something that is universal, and it certainly seems so, to the point that it's in the animal kingdom, the question is WHY?

Ooooh!
Finally! I'm actually learning something from this book. I knew about 尊敬語 and 謙譲語 but 美化語 is new to me.

Makes complete sense. Onaka tsuita. Isn't lifting up the stomach, it's just making it sound prettier.

You're damned if you make the sex of a woman, you're damned if you don't.

Feminist linguistic studies, the ultimate expression of the phrase 'shifting the goal posts'.

I can't wait to read one that says having a gender system is the ultimate franchisement of women.

Gosh. You cannot win.

This is one book about feminism "She identified several conventional sexist practices, including (1) unnecessarily marking women 'female company president' etc."

The other feminist book, about erasing women from data sets gets made because they just say 'doctor' or 'president' instead of 'female doctor' because obviously everyone just imagines a male if you say 'doctor' or 'president.'

Wow. I found something I agreed with in this book!

to paraphrase: Not enough linguists go out and look at actual language use.

So true!

The difference is that I find this in all linguists, she seems to only find it among those she disagrees with. I wonder if she disagrees with...oh, who was it that wrote the entire book on questionnaires of what women think is gendered language? Maynard?...no...Takemaru!