Comparison between Japanese children and adults perception of prosodic politeness expressions
Résumé
Previous research has shown that adult Japanese can recognize Japanese expressions of politeness, whether they are presented auditorily only, visually only, or audio-visually together. This paper investigates whether politeness is recognized by Japanese elementary school children. Audio-visual stimuli of a single affectively-neutral utterance were presented to 4th and 5th grade elementary school children, who were asked to rate the degree of politeness and also to indicate the possible situation where such an expression could be used. The results suggest on one hand that both 4th and 5th grade children can distinguish between impolite (arrogance) and polite (declaration, simple politeness, and sincere politeness), but they do not yet have an adult understanding of the special Japanese form of politeness (kyoshuku) used to convey a speaker's ashamedness / embarrassment which is used in Japanese society in order to avoid a conflict situation, or to get a favor from a hierarchically superior person. However, for fifth graders, we see the beginning of awareness of differences among the various levels of Japanese politeness, even including kyoshuku. 5th graders lack the notion of hierarchy associated with kyoshuku and seem to use it with classmates (in order to get favors), not teachers or higher level persons.