Yoko Matsumoto Sturt

A discourse analysis: the semantic relations of power and solidarity in a Japanese film

This paper presents an analysis of dialogue from a Japanese film, in terms of Brown and Gilman's (1960) framework of Power and Solidarity, which was originally developed for the study of pronouns of address in European languages. Brown and Gilman claimed that the use of second person pronouns in many European languages involves two distinct semantic relations; an asymmetrical power relation between social superior and inferior, and a symmetrical solidarity-based relation.

I shall suggest that, in Japanese, the realization of what Brown and Gilman call T and V (e.g. French tu and vous), is made in terms of the choice of speech styles, as opposed to the choice of second person pronouns, or the use of gender-based speech.

This conclusion is supported by discourse analysis from the film, which also demonstrates instances of solidarity-based semantic relations, an absolute power relation, and some discourse strategies (i.e. alignment and topic shift) used in an asymmetrical power relation in the film.

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