Language and Culture

Competence

By コトバ君 ・ Japanese Honorifics ・ ~8 min read

Competence

In this book, we’ll look at a range of forms (words, phrases, endings, etc.), each chosen because they help communicate social meanings.

Those meanings don’t live in the forms alone – they emerge from context.

So as learners, our real aim is contextual competence:

the ability to interpret the meanings communicated by forms in context.

In simple terms, it’s like mind-reading:

○ What is this person really doing with this word, in this situation, with this listener?

Decoding and Encoding

Contextual competence is a two-part process:

1. Decoding – understanding the social meanings and intentions of others from their language
2. Encoding – choosing language to express our own social meanings and intentions

Decode

There are two parts to this decoding process:

○ Awareness
Identify the forms that carry social meanings and the contextual factors speakers consider when choosing them.

○ Interpretation
Understand the range of social meanings those forms can have. Make plausible interpretations that explain the relationship between form and meaning in that context.

Encode

In the encoding process, we must use forms to communicate social meanings in ways that are:

○ Identifiable; and

○ appropriate to the Japanese community.

Learning Approach

The goal of contextual competence is to be able to:

○ quickly and effortlessly interpret what Japanese speakers intend; and,

○ communicate our own intentions in ways others can pick up on immediately.

At first, this process is slow:

○ we don’t yet notice all the relevant forms,

○ we can’t always process the context as fast as a native speaker.

To grow this ability, we need to:

1. Pay attention to forms.
2. Try to interpret why they were used.
3. Look for cultural knowledge (the norms, rules, and patterns, natives share)

Our interpretations will often be wrong at first. That’s normal. Only practice makes perfect.

Imagine you’re in Japan, having drinks with colleagues.

A coworker downs some beer and exclaims:

oishii! おいしい！ (“Tasty!”)

You might think through it like this:

○ Awareness:
You notice that oishii おいしい is not polite language (that would be oishii desu おいしいです.)

○ Interpretation:
You know the plain form can be used in informal contexts. You interpret this as:

“They’re using the plain form because the context is informal and everyone is relaxed.”

This is a reasonable guess – but it’s incorrect.

A native speaker would know that:

Switching to the plain form here is a typical way of expressing spontaneous emotion, and has nothing to do with informality.

This kind of misinterpretation is an important part of the learning process. It usually comes from lacking cultural knowledge and not yet recognising the norms that govern a form’s use.

In this book, just like in real life:

○ some deviations from the “normal” pattern (like spontaneous emotion) will be explained explicitly,

○ others you will learn by encountering them in the wild and reflecting.

Staying Foreign

Learning the forms in this book is not about becoming “more Japanese”.

It’s about gaining the ability to be closer to your true self in Japanese.

Questions worth asking yourself:

○ What kind of person are you?

○ What kind of person do you want to be in Japanese?

At higher levels of proficiency, this becomes deeply creative. We can:

○ explore different ways of presenting ourselves

○ create identities through communication

○ choose when to be formal, casual, warm, distant, playful, blunt, etc.

The goal is not:

“Speak and act exactly like a Japanese person.”

The goal is:

“Understand Japanese communication well enough to express
yourself fully –
whether that means being polite and friendly, or (when
needed) rude and unfriendly.”

We’ll learn:

○ norms

○ expectations

○ rules

○ contextual factors

…but this is not a call for assimilation, or a demand to “correct” your identity.

You do you.

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