女性职业称呼的流变及现状考察——以「女中」为例

A study on the evolution and current status of the name of female occupation: Taking “jyotyuu(女中)” as a Case

本文通过日本三大全国性报纸之一——《朝日新闻》(1945-2017)的数据库和『中納言KOTONOHA「現代日本語書き言葉均衡コーパス」』(BCCWJ),分析了日语女性职业称呼「女中」的流变及现状,同时考察了引起流变的原因。通过考察我们发现,「女中」这个词语被视为歧视用语,但作为具有历史语义的词语如今仍旧被使用:1945年之后,「女中」的语义萎缩,主要意指侍女和佣人;1945年至2017年,「女中」的使用频率虽总体上升,但使用范围缩减,正逐步被「お手伝いさん」等词取代;20世纪70—80年代,「女中」的使用频率明显降低,而1985年之后其使用频率不减反增。引起流变的主要原因可归结为社会发展和社会运动等社会因素,如要求变革语言的女权主义运动等对语言的影响。此外,《朝日新闻》版面数量和报道数量的变化也是影响「女中」词频的原因之一。

Based on the database of Asahi Shimbun(1945-2017)which is one of the three national newspapers in Japan and Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese(BCCWJ),this paper studies on the evolution and current status of the word"jyotyuu(女中)",a name of female occupation in Japanese.After an investigation into the causes of the evolution,it finds that"jyotyuu(女中)"is regarded as a discriminative term,but it is still used as a word with historical meaning.The senses of the word"jyotyuu(女中)"had been narrowed down after 1945,which meant"a maid or servant"mostly.From 1945 to 2017,although the use frequency of this word generally increased,the use range decreased.Moreover,this word had been gradually replaced by"otetsudaisan(お手伝いさん)".From 1970 s to 1980 s,the use frequency of"jyotyuu(女中)"decreased significantly,but after 1985,it increased instead of decreasing.The paper concludes with major causes of social development and social movement,such as the influence of the feminist movement calling for a language reform.In addition,the changes in the number of pages and reports of Asahi Shimbun are also one of the reasons that affect the word frequency of"jyotyuu(女中)".