著者

杉山 純子 スギヤマ ジュンコ SUGIYAMA Junko

雑誌

岐阜大学留学生センター紀要 = Bulletin of the International Student Center Gifu University

巻号頁・発行日

no.2, pp.48-57, 2000-02

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In general, there are some differences between sentence final markers (SFMs) used by female and male speakers in an informal Japanese conversation. I have been teaching Japanese literature to advanced learners of Japanese whose L1s are Korean and Chinese. Of many contemporary writers, these young readers seem to prefer Yoshimoto Banana and Murakami Haruki. Although these two writers share similar views about the world and use very clear and simple, but casual expressions, there are some differences between their uses of SFMs, particularly those of female characters in their novels. This article attempts to determine their tendencies toward the use of SFMs by cluster analysis and principal component analysis based on the SFMs in informal dialogues which occur in Yoshimoto's Amurita and Murakami's Norway no Mori [Norwegian Wood]. In this analysis I adopt the method used in Jin and Murakami's study (1993) on comma placement for deducing authorship on the basis of quantitative analysis. The result of my analysis indicates the following three points: 1. Female characters in Murakami's novel use much more feminine SFMs than those in Yoshimoto's. 2. Female characters in Yoshimoto's novel use mainly neutral SFMs, and a few, lightly more feminine SFMs than both authors' male characters. 3. Male characters in both Murakami's and Yoshimoto's novels use neutral SFMs, although Murakami's male characters have a little more masculine tendency than Yoshimoto's. Thus, it can be concluded that Murakami, a male author, gives his female characters a very feminine voice, while he does not give his male characters a very masculine voice. In contrast, Yoshimoto, a female author, selects relatively neutral SFMs for both her male and female characters. A further and more comprehensive study will be necessary to determine differences between female and male authors' attitudes and feelings toward genderrelated speech styles.