Gendered Japanese: A synchronic look at contemporary "Joseego"

The concept of Japanese women's language has been widely represented within the literature (Reynolds, 1985; Ide & Yoshida, 1999; Streehan, 2004; Okamoto & Sato, 1992; Shibamoto, 1985; McGloin, 1990). A question this research attempts to answer is, are these cultural and scholarly representations of what Japanese women's language or 'Joseego' is representative of how contemporary Japanese women speak? This chapter examined the spoken discourse of three generations of Japanese women in an investigation of their language use through sentence final particles (SFP's). Findings showed that attitudes towards gendered language use differed across these generations and this was reflected in the use of feminine SFP's that showed a tendency to increase throughout the generations here in this synchronic snapshot of contemporary 'Joseego'.