In their study of multilingual behavior in Palau, Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain take pains to isolate many different variables (speakers’ gender, age, what ability the speakers reported themselves having, their actual language usage, what members of the family they were speaking to, and even the speakers’ workplaces), and analyze them for any correlations. The information was additionally analyzed with a consideration of Palau’s history of language contact with Japan and America during World War II, and then used to discuss the ‘“Gender Paradox," proposed by Labov (1990, 2001), which suggests that women are both sometimes conservative and sometimes innovative in terms of linguistic variation and change’.
Explaining their methods of research and data gathering along the way, Matsumoto and Britain argue that to divide language analysis by gender in this way (a male/female binary, which does not take other factors into account) may be too crude to be useful, and also that whether people’s language use is conservative or innovative is not some random, paradoxical phenomenon, but something related to and explainable through the speakers’ social context.
Their article states first of all that “self‐reported Japanese oral language ability and sex, independently, most highly correlate with Japanese language use”. Also, “the higher a speaker's ability in Japanese, the more he or she uses Japanese in family conversation” and vice versa, but “neither age nor generation were picked up … suggesting that statistically speaking, neither contributes to the pattern of Japanese language use and ability”. In other words, women are more likely to have high Japanese language use than men, a result which seems to fit in with conventional wisdom of women being more innovative (sometimes), but Palau is unlike other communities that show how the older generations are fluent in a language but the younger generations are not (language death).
Here, both the older grandparent generation and the young grandchild generation speak Japanese, and knowledge of social context is necessary to show the difference in language use: it was a first language for the grandparents, who learned it naturally at home or even in Japan and then taught it to their children, the parents, but for the grandchildren who are more likely speak Palauan and English as their first languages, it is a prestige language learned in school for economic gain and the tourism industry: “Thus, use of Japanese by the grandparent and parent generations may represent conservative behavior … However, use of Japanese by the children's generation may be seen as innovative behavior”.
In other words, and seemingly following the "Gender Paradox", men were innovative in learning Japanese and then English based on changes in colonial rule, and are now conservative in not learning Japanese as much in modern times, and women are conservative if retaining Japanese as a first language and innovative if learning it as a second language.
2. Additional thoughts
I was curious about the WWII history of Palau, which honestly I had never heard of before, and found a website which gives some photos and testimony from Palauans during that time. It was interesting to me to make comparisons of Palau and Hawaii, which also has people of Japanese ancestry and also treats Japanese as one of its most useful languages for tourism and economical gain...
Trying to find out more information about what exactly the Gender Paradox means, I also found the homepage of its proponent, William Labov, which contains some other interesting information about linguistics and linguistic change.
MATSUMOTO, KAZUKO and DAVID BRITAIN. 2003. Investigating the sociolinguistic gender
paradox in a multilingual community: A case study from the Republic of Palau.
International Journal of Bilingualism 7(2): 127-152.
5 comments:
I also found the WWII and Palauan connection really interesting. Before reading this article, I had no idea how much Palau was really involved in WWII and with the Japanese. I also find it interesting how the Japanese language is still remains there. However, the English language also seems to becoming more popular. These two languages and the way they interact with gender is quite intriguing. The men seem to be leaning towards learning more English while the woman seem to maintain some of the Japanese. I think that men seem to be wanting to learn English more because they see that it will benefit them in the tourist aspect. However, I think the women find that it is still useful to hold on to Japanese.
As you have mentioned in your blog, there are some similarities here in Hawaii. Most of the time only the grandparents are fluent in Japanese are younger generations only speak English. I think that English has become a very powerful language for both men and women due to its global connection. However, I do believe that it is still important not to lose other language as well.
Thanks for the summary. By the fact that culture can be reflected through language, it seems like Japanese influence on Palau helped created this notion of “gender paradox.” We can imagine how language is used conservatively and innovatively in Palau. I know some Palauans and it is true that women seem to have this conservative perspective similar to Japanese culture. Men have this innovate way of speaking because that is just part of culture. Since Japan had great influence within Micronesia, we can also see how gender paradox relates to other islands of Micronesia. Palau is a respected nation in the Micronesia because of their successful independence.
Like Ralph said, Japan has had a significant role throughout Micronesia during their time of rule. I know many older people, like my grandparents, who speak Japanese fluently because of this. However, my parents and the rest of the adults in their generation don't speak Japanese, rather the native language Chamorro and English. I think it's really cool that Palau is still able to maintain the Japanese language. I think it could also help them in the tourism business since many of their tourists do come from Japan. I also think it portrays the conservativeness of the Palauan women to be holding onto the Japanese language.
It was also interesting to see that it was the men who were embracing English because of its advancements. It's really something to see how two different introduced languages can thrive in an area that already has its own native language.
I found the changing presence of Japanese in the Palauan community quite interesting. It's amazing how Japanese was on an upswing with Japanese immigration, then practically died out in the next generation when Japanese political influence fell, and now the is a new upsurge with children learning it in school as a foreign language. This also brings us back to what we were talking about in our last class meeting with women learning a prestige language to possibly obtain higher social status, or in this case possibly a better job in the growing Japanese tourism economy.
The article says that in terms of linguistic changes women tend to be more conservative but sometimes more innovative than men, which is called “Gender Paradox” in this article. The reason looks very interesting and reasonable to me. Because women are less likely to have work in the new society, they have less reason to learn the new language, while men are required to learn it to get a job. However, when learning the language is considered a chance to improve their social status, women appear to be more willing to learn it.
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