Language of Deference

Suppose someone wants to say "I received a souvenir from X." If X is the speaker's younger brother or sister, it will be appropriate to say Otōto ni omiyage o moratta. Moratta is the predicate that means "receive something from someone in the same or lower ranking (or receive from across/down)" (where this word ranking is to be understood as we discussed above). If the speaker considers X to outrank him, say, X is his teacher Hanada-sensei, it would be appropriate to say Hanada-sensei ni omiyage o itadaita↑ to his classmate. The predicate choice is itadaita↑, not moratta, because itadaita†‘ means "receive something from someone who outranks the speaker."

Donatory expressions-or expressions involving receiving or giving-are not limited to cases in which an object changed possession; it is used when describing a favor done. Suppose one wants to say "My teacher wrote me a letter of recommendation." Here a donatory verb (kudasatta↑ 'gave down to me a favor of') is combined with a special form of a verb (kaite 'write'). So this situation is expressed as Sensei ga (watashi ni) suisenjō o kaite kudasatta↑ (lit. "My teacher did me a favor by writing a letter of recommendation for me"). Some situations which may not be readily seen as "doing a favor" from an English speaker's point of view may in fact involve giving and receiving. For instance, in English one may simply say "Ms. Yanagi came to my recital." But if the speaker feels that Yanagi came all the way to attend a recital-it took time and energy and that the speaker is grateful-he would say Yanagi-san ga kite kudasatta "Ms. Yanagi did me a favor by coming".

The choice of which donatory verbs should be used when depends on the relative ranking of the persons in a situation, as well as who belongs to what group.

Keigo Takes a Special Effort to Learn

Learning all this sounds daunting. Learning social graces in Japan, and this involves control of using keigo, is often something must be consciously and diligently attempted, typically when a young person enters a work situation. This does not happen with any intensity until this point in a Japanese person's life because it is not until this time when one goes out of the familial and school setting and ventures into more open social situations requiring keigo. Although there may be an acknowledged hierarchy in a family, family members do not usually use keigo to each other. There are several exceptions to this rule. One is that family members tend to use more keigo to talk about older member of the family such as grandparents. The man of the household-the father-may elicit more keigo behavior from his wife. Not much more can be said about this with certainty, as keigo behavior differs from one household to another. School children may learn to use some keigo to their teachers progressively as they go through their education.

Thus, it is safe to say that most keigo learning takes place after one leaves school. Company's new recruits often go through weeks of training to become accustomed to the corporate culture, including the proper language behavior involving keigo. Depending on what type of work is involved, one learns the intricacies of keigo there, such as which lexical items are exalting and which ones humbling. Others include which words can be used just to show politeness without any reference to in-group and out-group, how to quickly grasp what one's in-group is. And phone manners. A real skill is involved when answering a phone call, since one would not have advance knowledge who is on the other end-it could be a family member of one's superior (exalt both the family member and superior, humble self), one's coworker's friend (use exalt or neutral for the caller and the coworker, humble self), one's own family member (speak as one would normally), important client (exalt the caller, humble the company including self), one's superior wanting to speak to someone under one's supervision (exalt superior, humble self and underling), coworker reporting in sick (maintain the workplace keigo equilibrium), or just someone who got the wrong number (neutral). If this sounds exhausting, it is!

Hiroshi Nara

Hiroshi Nara is Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests are 20th century Japanese intellectual history and modernity, particularly the development of aesthetic categories and their political implications before World War II.