Introduction

Politeness is one aspect of the Japanese culture that is embedded in the language system. Japanese people are taught from a young age to be polite to others. In terms of language we are taught to use 敬語 (keigo), to others. The Toyoko hiroba is very unique in the sense that keigo is not used at all.

all over the world, in complex societies, dominated groups (and sometimes also majority groups) have positive-politeness cultures, [and] dominating groups have negative-politeness cultures

(Philipsen & Huspek, 1985)

As the quote above suggests, often, dominant groups have a culture to be impolite. This can be bidirectional in that, while being dominant allows for impoliteness, at the same time being impolite creates dominance.

Not using 敬語 (keigo)

As stated in the introduction of this page using keigo is the very basics of the Japanese language. In fact, it is more unnatural to not use keigo rather than using it, meaning that to a certain extent, it needs to be forced. Keigo is not used even amongst people of different age which is very unusual. As it can be seen in the diagram below there are different types of keigo that is used to show politeness and in the hiroba none is used. There are ways to put the speaker down as well as raising the listener. The lack of this shows that the Toyoko kids neither want to self deprecate themselves nor praise others.

Example

One time as I was observing a large group of Toyoko kids, two girls were standing up filming dancing videos. Then, the police came near them to inspect something. It was unrelated to them but the police was putting a tape on the ground to measure something, perhaps distance between something. They were in the way so they moved out of the line slowly but the girls did not. So, one guy told them “お前らちょっとこっちこい”; the closest translation being “come here”. In English it does not sound rude, however the lack of keigo made this sentence sound much ruder than it could have been.

Speaking loudly

The loudness of voice is a feature of paralinguistic that I did not discuss in the previous page. In the simplest terms, most times speaking quietly shows submissiveness while speaking loudly shows dominance. This is because speaking loudly implies that they do not care about other people. A lot of the Toyoko kids speak very loudly, louder than their music sometimes. This shows and establishes dominance towards others.

Example

In the previous example about using offensive jokes, they were speaking very loudly. This is why even though I was not too close them I could catch a lot of what they were saying. One of the guys’ conversations after the girls left was about dying their hair. ”明日髪染めるわ”; this translates to I’ll die my hair tomorrow. Even such impulsive and irrelevant comments were spoken very loudly.

Using offensive jokes

There are many types of humor and some type of humor like dark humor is funny due to its offensiveness. Offensive jokes are made on a day to day basis, but the line between jokes and a straight up offense is not very clear. In the Toyoko hiroba, offensive jokes fly around everywhere. At first I thought that they were all a very close group of people and it was normal have these kinds of jokes. But I realized that some Toyoko kids make these jokes even on first contact. This shows openness but at the same time plays a role in establishing a dominant relationship.

Example

A group of three guys were conversing with two girls. The girl was talking about her situation at home. I caught phrases like ”家出” and ”ぶたれる”; translates to run away from home and gets hit. Then they were joking about her home situation and one guy joked “じゃあ家行っていい？”; This means then can I go to your house? Later the guys asked for the girls twitter account and joked “フォローしないけどいい？”; meaning is it ok if i don’t follow?

Conclusion

Dominance using language in the Toyoko hiroba is mainly established by being impolite. Starting from not using keigo, to offensive jokes and speaking loudly, all contribute to creating a dominance relationship. One other factor I would like to note is gender. Not always, but often, many of these use of language described above was used by males. I observe more females in the area than males, but maybe there is a power distance between male and female in the hiroba that is not so obvious.