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2005-2006 Fellows

Yoshiko Matsumoto

Stanford University
Department of Asian Languages

Yoshiko Matsumoto is Associate Professor of Asian Languages at Stanford University.  Her research and publications focus on various structural and social aspects of linguistic pragmatics; in particular, the ways in which certain meanings are conveyed by the speaker/writer and construed by the listener/reader in the textual and social context, with publications such as Noun-Modifying Constructions in Japanese: A frame semantic approach (1997) and “Alternative Femininity and the Presentation of Self in Japanese” (2004).  Matsumoto received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from U.C. Berkeley.

Project Summary

Matsumoto’s book project, Understanding and Misunderstanding Discourse of Elderly Japanese Women examines discursive practices of elderly Japanese women, with particular attention to ways in which their age, gender and individual personae are reflected and performed in their verbal interactions.  Given the abundance of stereotypes of elderly women, for example as feeble and as asexual, the study strives to avoid sources of unconscious bias embedded in the choices of discourse practices to be examined, in the methodology, or in the interpretations posited for specific phenomena.  The ultimate fruit of this project is to encourage greater attention to the latter part of the life-span by illuminating the richness of the language and lives of people in an age group that is largely unknown and by offering evidence against the simple decrement-based “ageist” view.