Emotional Attachments to Japanese Women\u27s Language:Language, Gender, and Affect in Colonialism

This paper demonstrates how Japanese people came to possess strong affective attachments to women\u27s language by analyzing metapragmatic comments about women\u27s speech in two opposite colonization experiences of Japan. During WWII, women\u27s language was suddenly elevated to an imperial tradition and a symbol of patriarchy. This change was mediated by the desire to imagine a superior imperial language to legitimate linguistic colonization of the East Asian countries. During the American Occupation after the war, women\u27s language was both separated from the emperor system and associated with natural sex differentiation. Being de-politicized and naturalized, women\u27s language became the symbol of Japanese tradition, pride, and order, which Japanese intellectuals had lost in the demise in the war. These historical processes engendered construction of both the emotional commitment of people to women\u27s language and an ideal subjectivity of a speaking woman