Politeness when native Japanese speakers and Uzbek Japanese learners give warnings about prohibited acts: a cross-sectional study

Introduction

This study is interested in the relationship between signs indicating prohibitions and linguistic expressions in countries around the world, especially in Asian countries. We are interested not only in what kind of linguistic expressions are used in signs indicating prohibitions, but also in how a speaker of a language would warn someone who is committing a prohibited act after seeing a prohibition sign. For instance, they can order a person smoking in a non-smoking area not to smoke, request the person not to smoke, or inform the person of the fact that smoking is prohibited. We are interested in warning strategies in Japanese and other Asian languages. Interests include not only Japanese as a first language, but also Japanese as a second language. The purpose of this study is to clarify pragmatic features when native speakers of Japanese and Uzbek learners of Japanese give warnings about prohibited acts. Japanese and Uzbek, both of which are Asian languages, are agglutinative and have a subject-object-verb structure and similar usage of auxiliary verbs: e.g., both -te miru in Japanese and -b koʻrmoq in Uzbek mean “to try to Verb” using verbs derived from the word “to see” (Yamazaki 2017). For this reason, one might expect that Uzbeks could learn Japanese grammar relatively easily. However, even if learners are familiar with Japanese grammar and can produce grammatically correct sentences, they may not be able to successfully implement Japanese speech acts that include warning about prohibitions.

There are two reasons for focusing on Uzbek learners of Japanese. First, as Japanese language education has flourished in Uzbekistan in recent years (Iwasaki & Umarova 2019: 231), we expect research on Uzbek learners of Japanese will continue to develop. In order to avoid communicative misunderstandings between Uzbek Japanese learners and native Japanese speakers, it is necessary to clarify the pragmatic characteristics of learners. Second, our 2021 survey¹ examined warning of prohibitions by native speakers of Japanese, as well as by Chinese, Korean, and Uzbek learners of Japanese, but failed to elucidate the characteristics appertaining to Uzbek learners. To address this oversight, this study raises the following research questions: 1) Which politeness strategies do native Japanese speakers and Uzbek Japanese learners use more frequently when warning of prohibitions? 2) What what pragmatic features other than the politeness strategies do the two language groups display?

Methods

Results

Table 2 indicates the DW-type categories and examples found in the Jap. and UJap. data. Contrary to our expectations, we did not find any examples of categories other than the imperative, want statement, and hint. Also, we did not find any examples of categories other than imperative, obligation statement, suggestory formula and hint in the Uzb. data⁷. Negative imperative forms that would stop the hearer’s action were classified as imperative. The desiderative form in which the speaker wishes the hearer to stop an action, were classified as want statements⁸. Vague warning without a specific form was classified as hint. We can say that these three languages lack diversity in relation to the DW-type.

Table 3 shows the categories of the RDW type. We gave the auxiliary verb mitai “looks like” as an example of hedged infringement-indication in the table. In addition, there are also hedges such as omoimasu “I think that” and tte kaite aru “It says that” in both Jap. and UJap. verbal phrases. Regarding the category fact-checking, this study shows that Jap. had examples of this but UJap. did not.

When the predicate of a warning sentence had any of the four predicates listed in the “Data analysis” section and the infringement was explicitly noted without hedging, the sentence was classified as explicit infringement-indication. When the predicate of infringement-indication was hedged, the sentence was classified as hedged infringement-indication⁹. For sentences in which the hearer is asked if his or her action is prohibited, the sentence was classified as fact-checking. The sentences in which explicit infringement-indication was interrogativized were classified into this category.

Figure 1 presents the percentages of each category of the head acts for which at least one example was found. Regarding explicit infringement-indication, which is the most direct in the RDW-type, the UJap. group used it almost twice as much as the native groups. In regards to hedged infringement-indication, which is more indirect than explicit infringement-indication, the Jap. group used it about 1.5 times more than the other groups. The Jap. participants used very few imperative forms compared to the UJap. and Uzb. participants. Regarding hint, Uzb. used it the most and UJap. used it the least.

Figure 1. Percentages of head acts (Directive-Warning and Representative-Directive-Warning types)’ categories.

As shown in Table 4, we divided the three RDW-type categories into four in terms of predicate form. The first “Prohibited to V”-form means that the hearer’s action is not permitted according to a rule. The second “Not possible to V”-form has the meaning that the hearer cannot perform the action. Using the third “Wrong to V”-form and the fourth “Right not to V”-form, the speaker communicates that the hearer’s act is bad and not good based on the speaker’s value judgment¹⁰. If the speaker warns by using the second, third and fourth forms without adding an expression like “It’s a rule” or “There’s a no photography sign over there,” the basis for their warning is not due to a rule, but a value judgment. However, if the speaker uses the first form, they can warn the hearer on the basis of the rule, even without giving a reason for the warning. Concerning the third “Wrong to V”-form, we set two forms: dame and ikenai. As described below, we found differences in the utilization of these two forms between the Jap. and UJap. groups.

Figure 2 shows the percentages of the four predicate forms in the RDW-type categories. The Jap. group used the “Prohibited to V”-form which conveys the fact of prohibition most frequently at about 70%. The Uzb. group used the “Not possible to V”-form most frequently at about 50%. The UJap. group used “Wrong to V”-form as often as “Prohibited to V”-form at about 40% for both forms. When subclassifing the “Wrong to V”-form in the Jap. and UJap. data, in the Jap. group, we found 36 words for dame and 8 words for ikenai, and in the UJap. group, we found 19 words for dame and 58 words for ikenai. In other words, for the “Wrong to V”-form, the Jap. group used the word dame more frequently, while the UJap. group used the word ikenai more frequently.

Figure 2. Percentages of Representative-Directive-Warning type’s predicate forms.

As Table 5 shows, Jap. and UJap. groups did not produce any examples of preparator and getting a pre-commitment in the supportive moves. The Uzb. participants also gave no examples of these categories. The DCT data revealed that an apology¹¹ almost always preceded a head act.

As shown in Figure 3, apology was the most frequent in the supportive moves. The UJap. group used apology about 20% more frequently than the native groups.

Figure 3. Percentages of supportive moves’ categories.

Figure 4 shows the number of apologies by social parameter. While Jap. participants apologized only to +SD, namely unknowns, UJap. participants apologized to not only +SD but also -SD, whom the speaker knows well. However, for -SD and x=y, the hearers who are close to the speaker, the UJap. group did not apologize as much.

Figure 4. Number of apologies by social parameter.

Participants noted that they do not warn the hearer in some situations. We categorized the case as “Don’t do FTA.” Table 6 indicates the number and percentage of DW, RDW, supportive moves, and Don’t do FTA. The total number was highest for the UJap. group. The group used supportive moves more than the other groups, about twice as often. All the groups used the RDW-type more than the DW-type. In particular, the Jap. group used RDW about eight times more frequently than DW.

Figure 5 indicates that all the groups implemented the “Don’t do FTA” strategy for +SD, namely unknowns. Among the three groups, the UJap. group had the least number of people who implemented “Don’t do FTA,” In other words, the learners’ group warned about prohibitions most frequently.

Figure 5. Percentages of Don’t do “face-threatening act (FTA)” by social parameter.

Discussion

One of the significant findings from this study was that Uzbek learners of Japanese tended to be verbose. Analysis of the data in Figure 3 and Table 6 revealed that the UJap. group used more supportive moves, especially apology, than the Jap. and Uzb. groups, although the native groups avoided verbose utterances by providing only the necessary information. The verbosity of the learner group would not have been influenced by their native language, but by the characteristics of the learner language. If Uzb. as well as UJap. had a higher total number of semantic formulae, the UJap. verbosity could have been said to be influenced by the native Uzbek language, but this is not likely. Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1986: 177) asserted that lengthening of speech act patterns and addition of supportive moves in languages spoken by learners, especially advanced learners, are due to the learners’ lack of confidence. They want to get their message across but are not confident in their speaking ability. Cenoz (1995: 5) said that grounder, which provides reasons and explanations to justify the need to make a request, was the most common in the supportive moves that learners used in request. Ito (2002) reported that lengthening of speech act patterns (especially reasons for refusal) occurred in refusal expressions in Japanese made by groups of native Malay speakers. UJap. subjects tended to be at the intermediate level of Japanese language proficiency (N3-N2 levels), but as Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1986: 177) previously noted, the subjects exhibited “lengthening of speech act patterns” found in advanced level learners.

Unlike the previous studies of request and refusal, this study showed that apology was more common than grounder. In the scenario where the spaker warned about a prohibition, many Uzbek learners of Japanese may have assumed that the speaker does not need to actively explain the reason for the warning because the situation pertaining to the warning is clear and that the speaker expects the hearer to know that one is not allowed to take pictures in certain areas of a museum or use their cell phone in certain areas of a hospital. For this reason, UJap. participants probably implemented the negative politeness strategy of apology to express their feeling of being sorry for having to issue a warning rather than to give reasons for the warning. Also, UJap. participants apologized to both strangers and those who they knew, while Jap. participants apologized only to strangers. The more extensive use of apology in UJap. than in Jap. means that Uzbek learners of Japanese may apologize more readily than Japanese.

An analysis of the head acts, the core of warning of prohibitions, revelaed that Jap. warning was indirect and that it was a rule-based warning, while UJap. warning was direct and that it was based on the speaker’s value judgment. See the RDW-type’s categories in Figure 1. The results showed that the Jap. group used indirect hedged infringement-indication more frequently than the UJap. and Uzb. groups and that the UJap. group used direct explicit infringement-indication more frequently than the Jap. and Uzb. groups. To a limited extent, the DW-type’s data tended to indicate that Jap. was indirect and UJap. was direct. While the Jap. group did not use the highly direct imperative at all, the UJap. group used it only occasionally, as did the Uzb. group. Also, the Jap. group used almost twice as many hints with the highest level of indirectness compared to the UJap. group, although the overall number was small. The Jap. group tried to get the hearer to stop the prohibited act by moderately communicating the fact that the hearer’s action was not permitted. In contrarst, the UJap. group tried to get the hearer to stop the action by baldly communicating that based on their opinion, the hearer’s action was wrong. Generally, learners of a language have been found to be more direct than native speakers in some studies (Cenoz 1995: 5). For instance, Fukushima (1990) pointed out that offer and request by Japanese learners of English were more direct than the forms used by native English speakers. The Jap. group’s indirectness in this study was expressed by the negative politeness strategy of hedge. Many UJap. participants probably did not use hedged forms, because hedged forms in Japanese are difficult for the learners or because the learners do not know that the Japanese use the hedged forms as a politeness strategy.

As Figure 2 shows, the Jap. group used the “Prohibited to V”-form most frequently to convey the fact that the hearer’s action was not permitted according to a rule, while in addition to that form, the UJap. group also frequently used the “Wrong to V”-form to convey that the hearer’s rule violation was wrong. Many Jap. participants warned the hearer while gesturing towards the prohibition sign at the same time. This transferred the responsibility for warning to the museum or hospital. In contrast, about half of the UJap. participants themselves took on the responsibility that originally belonged to those institutions and conveyed the opinion that hearer’s action was wrong. The reason the UJap. participants frequently used the “Wrong to V”-form was not due to the influence of their native language, but the non-native language, because the Uzb. group used the “Not Possible to V”-form most frequently, but rarely used the “Wrong to V”-form. The UJap. group may have frequently used the “Wrong to V”-form due to the influence of a Japanese textbook. Of the “Wrong to V”-forms, Jap. participants used the word dame frequently. However, UJap. participants used the word ikenai, which appears early in Japanese language learning; the word ikenai appears in Lesson 15 of a major Japanese language textbook Minna no nihongo elementary I (Three A Network 2012: 126). The UJap. group may have wanted to give a warning by using the “Prohibited to V”-form but since the expression was difficult, the group may have been forced to use the more user-friendly word ikenai. All the language groups used the RDW-type more frequently than the DW-type (see Table 6). It is unclear whether or not the frequent use of the former type is due to the influence of a specific language, such as Japanese, Uzbek, or Uzbek-Japanese. If the language itself is unrelated to this phenomenon, then some individuals simply may not want to use the DW-type as a warning.

We found that the three language groups did not warn strangers (see Figure 5). When warning violators of the prohibited act, all the groups implemented the “Don’t do FTA” strategy for unknowns. Participants assumed that if they warned an unknown, this could result in a hostile response. A further analysis of the figure showed that the UJap. group was more likely not to implement “Don’t do FTA” for an unknown than were the Jap. and Uzb. groups. This feature indicates the possibility that Uzbek learners of Japanese may inadvertently warn in situations where native Japanese and Uzbek speakers do not.

Although participants of the three language groups could show indirectness in the DW-type as well as in the RDW-type, they did not use any indirect strategies of the DW-type except for hint. While request categories and DW-type categories of warning were the same, the frequency of use was different. Harting (2008: 125) showed that in request situations, more than 50% of the Japanese participants used the highly indirect query preparatory and about 20% of them used the moderately indirect want statement. However, in the warning situations, none of the groups used such indirect DW strategies. The participants may have avoided using such indirect strategies because the strategies were too euphemistic or because directive speech acts were not appropriate for the warning of prohibition scenarios.

None of the three language groups used a preparator or attempted to get a precommitment in the supportive moves. In the warning of prohibition scenarios, although the speaker does not have the authority to prohibit, they can serve as a spokesperson for the authority. Because of this role, the participants may have thought that there was no need to use a preparator to inform the hearer that a warning was about to be given, nor does the speaker feel the need to try to secure a pre-commitment before the warning. The participants in all the language groups would not have used such circuitous strategies because the speaker does not need to adopt a humble attitude toward the hearer in warning situations.

When compensating for warning, the Jap. group implemented the two politeness strategies of positioning the warning as a rule and of using hedged forms. Brown and Levinson (1987: 206) pointed out that in the strategy “State the FTA as a general rule,” one way of communicating that the speaker does not want to intrude but is merely forced by circumstances is to state the FTA as an instance of rule, regulation, or obligation. With the “Prohibited to V”-form, many Jap. participants did not want to warn, but may have wanted to imply that they had to warn due to the museum’s rule. Although the use of the “Prohibited to V”-form has the advantage of allowing the speaker to transfer the responsibility for the warning to an authority, there is a danger that the expression alone may lead the hearer to feel that the speaker is an overbearing person who enjoys wielding authority. To avoid this risk, the Jap. group also frequently implemented the second politeness strategy of hedge. As one of several hedge forms, Brown and Levinson (1987: 152) cited the hedge that may be used to distance the speaker from a command by indicating that the speaker’ speech act is attributed to a third-party command. For example, by saying, Satsuee-kinshi tte kaiteruyo “It says no photography,” the speaker can explicitly convey that a third-party, the museum, forbids the action. Also, the statement Soko, tachiiri-kinshi mitaidayo “There, looks like it’s off-limits,” indicates that the hearer’s action is an assumption and uncertainty on the part of the speaker. The speaker may be mitigating his/her accusation by the hedged form mitai. Since the UJap. group did not use those politeness strategies as much as the Japanese group, the UJap. participants appear to have issued blunt warnings. However, they implemented the politeness strategy of apology, feeling sorry for doing the FTA. Brown and Levinson (1987: 187, 189) suggested that by apologizing, the speaker communicates that he or she does not wish the hearer to lose face, thereby partially compensating for the infringement. Many UJap. participants may have believed that the Japanese typically use the apology as a politeness strategy in any situations, or may have thought that an apology was a way of saving the hearer’s face in a situation that could create the tension associated with giving a warning. The fact that the UJap. participants apologized more frequently than the Jap. participants indicates the possibility that Uzbek learners might apologize unnecessarily even in situations where the Japanese do not apologize. Japanese language teachers should tell learners that there is no need to apologize before giving a warning.

Conclusions

Referring to prohibition and request studies, this study created a classification scheme for warning about prohibitions and compared the speech act used by native Japanese speakers and Uzbek Japanese learners. The Japanese participants frequently used hedged infringement-indication in the RDW-type. They implemented the politeness strategy of hedge to convey the content of a warning in a moderate manner. Also, by using the “Prohibited to V”-form, they implemented the politeness strategy in which one states the warning as a rule. Simply using the “Prohibited to V”-form runs the risk that the hearer feels that the speaker is an overbearing person who enjoys wielding authority. To avoid this risk, the Japanese speaker used the hedge’s politeness strategy (e.g., “It says it’s prohibited”) to make it clear that the right to prohibit rests with the public authority, not with themselves. On the other hand, the Uzbek learners of Japanese tended to apologize. Because of frequently using explicit infringement-indication, it seems as if they gave a blunt warning. To compensate for doing the FTA, the learners implemented the politeness strategy of apology. However, the learners’ overuse of apology means that they may apologize excessively in situations where the Japanese do not.

We found the two pragmatic features other than the politeness strategies. First, native speakers of Japanese, Uzbek learners of Japanese, and native speakers of Uzbek implemented the “Don’t do FTA” strategy only for unknowns; that is, none of the language groups warned complete strangers. However, as shown in Figure 5, more than half of the participants of all three groups did not respond in this way. Each of the DCT’s questionnaire statements did not ask whether the warning was given in the first place. In the DCT, if we ask not only “What do you say to the hearer to warn him/her?” but also “Do you warn the hearer in this situation?,” the majority of the participants may not warn unknowns. Regarding the second pragmatic feature, all the language groups used the RDW-type more than the DW-type. Although the participants could have chosen conventional indirect warning strategies among the DW-type, they did not use them at all. It is not clear whether speakers consider indirect expressions to be too euphemistic in the context of warning of prohibitions, or not. A future survey will allow us to obtain opinions on the use of indirect expressions in the DW-type.

The present study developed a classification scheme for warning about prohibitions, based on the Japanese and Uzbek Japanese data, and referring to the Uzbek data. In the future, we will use this framework to analyze this speech act of learners of Japanese other than Uzbeks and native speakers of Asian languages other than Japanese. By examining data from a large number of languages, we can develop a more general classification scheme, and will clarify why the RDW-type was used more frequently than the DW-type and the reason for the non-use of indirect strategies in the DW-type, as these issues were not fully addressed and clarified in this study. In response to the need to expand the study of Uzbek Japanese, we conducted a pragmatic study focusing on Uzbek learners of Japanese as well as native Japanese speakers. In the past, opportunities for Uzbeks to visit Japan were rare. They studied Japanese to learn about Japanese culture and to improve their Japanese language skills, including grammar, reading and listening comprehension, in preparation for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Pragmatic competence as an output may not have been much needed. However, in 2019, Japanese policy made it possible for Japanese companies to accept Uzbeks as technical interns, and many Uzbeks are now coming to Japan. In the future, it will be important to investigate the actual situation of Japanese language use by Uzbek learners from the viewpoint of pragmatics, including warning of prohibitions, and to apply the results to their Japanese language learning.

Ethics and consent information

Retrospective ethical approval for this study on the 01/05/2023.

All participants provided implicit consent by completing the online questionnaire.