Ordering a Disordered World through Language: Metapragmatic Dissonance and the “Misreading” of an Indexical Relationship

Abstract

Mainland Japanese middle-school teachers working on Chichijima Island encounter an address pattern they describe as unusual. While students address teachers using last name and honorific title, teachers call students by their first names only. Some of the teachers experience the indexical relationship between the exchanged forms as a nonreciprocal disjuncture, describing it as “too hierarchical;” others experience it as a reciprocal disjuncture, saying it creates a “too close” atmosphere in the school. Many who do not fall back on the culture-internal stereotype are teachers who struggle to maintain authority in the classroom. Here, these teachers’ “misreading” of the indexical meanings associated with the address forms invokes a trope of misunderstanding where a theoretical repair is summoned as a means to fix a problem. Silverstein’s model of indexical orders provides a means to understand the metapragmatic dissonance that characterizes teachers’ discourse.

The class was in a state of undiluted chaos. People spoke loudly to their neighbors or to friends across the room. Boys pushed each other around. One student was doing a dance for the amusement of anyone who would watch. When the teacher walked into the room, the antics did not stop. There was a frenetic intensity to the chaos that, if anything, increased when he entered. The teacher waited a few minutes for the students to collect themselves. When they did not, he called for the class to come to order. A few people quieted; many ignored him. He waited a few moments before trying to bring the class to order again. Eventually the students were calm enough to proceed with class, but they continued to act out in various ways throughout the period.

The scenario I describe above took place at Ogasawara Middle School, the only middle school on Chichijima Island, Japan. The scene reminded me of a few classroom experiences of my youth when the class behaved terribly for a substitute teacher. The chaos witnessed in this scene is not uncommon in Japanese elementary and middle schools, which often have ten-minute breaks between classes. During these breaks, boys wrestle, sometimes quite violently; girls gather around friends’ desks to chat, sing favorite songs, practice dance moves—the breaks were a chance to let off steam during the long school day. Therefore, the behavior in and of itself was not necessarily cause for notice. What was upsetting for the teacher was the degree and the deliberateness of the behavior. While the breaks were indeed a chance to let off steam during the long school day, order usually returned upon the entrance of the teacher. The teaching of this routine begins in elementary school, where teachers actively instill a sense of responsibility for self and behavior. The teacher here waits, because he expects students to demonstrate this sense of responsibility and knowledge of appropriate classroom behavior. However, the class did not come to order with the start of the period. Nor did this class act so poorly for all teachers. They refused to cooperate for this teacher and a few others.

For these teachers, this kind of disorder extended beyond individual classroom periods and perhaps blended with the general dislocating experience of culture shock. Daily interaction at Ogasawara Middle is characterized by the interaction of two cultural systems, shima and naichi, which I gloss as ‘island’ and ‘mainland’ for the purposes of the discussion here.¹ Many of the cultural issues separating these locales involve ideas about the boundaries of casual versus formal behavior, which include formalities surrounding greeting practices and mark linguistic registers. Such differences revolve around ideas of respect, which in the context of being a teacher can translate into authority in the classroom and the ability to maintain order. All of these elements entangle in a web of ideas about personhood and personal identity that manifest themselves in statements on “correct” ways of being, acting, and using language.

In this article, I explore the way this class behavioral problem becomes theorized and implicates an indexical (mis)reading in the process. The “misreading,” in this case, yields “metapragmatic dissonance,” explanatory variation in the social meanings of an indexical sign between or among different speakers. My analyses are based on mainland teachers’ reflective interpretation of a linguistic practice that they newly encountered upon their arrival at Ogasawara Middle. Students there use the form last name (LN) + honorific title sensei ‘teacher’ or simply sensei to address teachers. Teachers at Ogasawara Middle, however, address students by their first names (FN), instead of the more common last name + honorific title address practice found in mainland middle schools. Because this address practice is unfamiliar to the mainland teachers in the school context, they offered different explanations for the unknown exchange pattern. In some metapragmatic discourses discussed below, there is a disjuncture between what the indexical meanings “ought” to be, given the ideological (Silverstein 1985) or stereotypic (Agha 2007) indexical meanings associated with the set of relations between the terms in a given register, and what they are reported to be. Some teachers proffered “expected” meanings, the ones presupposed by the general metapragmatics of their own (“mainland”) address system. Others delineated contextually unexpected meanings (but ones suggestive of or analogous to those found in post–World War II parent-child relationships, discussed below). In part, teachers’ opposing evaluations of the local address practice can be explained by speakers’ different philosophical orientations toward language and their degree of acceptance of nonstandard forms, but teachers’ metapragmatic discourses also reveal that some teachers blamed some of the difficulties they experienced at school on the nonstandard form. While these teachers continued to use the local pattern in the classroom, they speculated that the local pattern was responsible for the disciplinary or other problems they experienced with students. Thus, the “nonstandard” address exchange is proffered as an explanation for social or cultural difficulties.

To explore why some teachers’ metapragmatic discourses are in opposition to the stereotypic metapragmatics of the “mainland register,” I pause at an intermediary step in the reflexive process of interpreting meaning, at a point where “misunderstanding,” in the form of misreading an indexical relationship, might be said to have occurred, though not recognized as such. Silverstein (1993, 2003) offers a model that outlines this reflexive process, in which an indexical form, in both “presupposing” and “entailing” something about its context, weaves through metapragmatic function (a “schematization” [Silverstein 2003, 193] of the overarching system in place). In the case outlined here, the process results in different interpretations of the same linguistic phenomenon. Silverstein’s (2003) model of indexical orders, based in the idea that indexical forms communicate multiple layers (orders) of meaning simultaneously, offers a way to understand such disparate interpretations. The potential for new meanings arises from the competition between the indexical values of these orders, and, according to Silverstein, such a competition provides the momentum for linguistic change. Later I present evidence for linguistic change in a separate contextual sphere, the parent-child relationship. While I do not make claims regarding parallel indexical shifts in meanings characterizing teacher-student address exchanges, which may indeed be occurring, my use of Silverstein’s model brings an analytical lens to how this process might occur. My data illustrate this model in action from a slightly different perspective, however. Here, the competition of indexical values produces both contextually expected and unexpected interpretations (metapragmatic dissonance) in the context of a cultural milieu that is both familiar and strange. It is the foreign context that brings disarray to the alignment of the indexical orders.

In my final analysis, I observe that some teachers’ misreading of the indexical relationship of the nonreciprocal exchange occurs in tandem with teachers’ appropriation of the trope of miscommunication. Here, I examine this “misreading” as a form of misunderstanding. T. Nevins (2010) argues that misunderstandings occur not only between individuals but also between individuals and abstract social conventions. Some teachers misread the indexical meanings in accordance with their experience of the situation. In an uncomfortable situation, communicational misunderstanding as a “problem” fixed through repair serves as a trope appropriated to solve a social or cultural problem. That is, misunderstanding constitutes a trope whereby repairs are theorized for the purpose of invoking fixes for interpersonal difficulties, created, some believe, by nonstandard address forms. While the kind of problem I discuss, an inability of teachers to maintain classroom discipline or their general lack of authority, may be due to cultural differences or other nonlinguistic explanations, teachers’ overt discussion of these differences usually targets language—in particular, local address practices that differ from those of their own.

Studies using or approaching misunderstanding as an analytical concept illustrate the collaborative work, underlying assumptions, and sheer effort involved in making understanding seem so natural (see Bailey 2004). Linguistic and anthropological discussions of misunderstanding have variously explored the coordination of talk (e.g., Schlegloff 1987), misreading of contextualization cues (Gumperz 1982), learning or socialization opportunities (Ochs 1991), the relationship between intertextuality and misunderstanding (M. E. Nevins 2010), and the way misunderstanding contributes to the assigning of labels (Haviland 2013). Misunderstanding(s) bring the analytic lens to points of interest in interaction because they highlight interactants’ assumptions about a situation (Gumperz 1982), which may be difficult to ascertain through other means. Moreover, they can illustrate interactants’ reflexive awareness of the communicative event, including reasons why it did not proceed smoothly.

Fabian (1995) characterizes misunderstanding as a subset of what Wilhelm von Humboldt called “not-understanding” ([1836] 1988). Because each individual brings to an interaction a slightly different register with slightly different semantic values, there is no absolute meaning overlap between or among individuals. For this reason, von Humboldt (1988, 63, cited in Fabian 1995, 48) claims that “all understanding is always at the same time a not-understanding.” While often the overlap between registers is great enough that understanding does take place, in some instances understanding requires further input, for example, through acts of repair. Often misunderstandings, misinterpretations, or semiotic misreadings are at the heart of miscommunication. Interactants may not recognize that misunderstanding has occurred, however, which is the case of the misreading here. Moreover, such events may themselves index or even summon linguistic change, which may be lurking on the horizon here too.

Teachers’ metapragmatic commentary on the local forms of address provides a very particular window into the meanings that the new forms retain for them. Silverstein ([1981] 2001) has demonstrated that certain linguistic features are more subject to metapragmatic awareness and that speakers are more able to formulate metapragmatic discussion on these features. Errington (1985) further identifies personal pronouns as the most “pragmatically salient” lexemes because they are referential, indexical, and have a personal object of reference, characteristics that likewise describe the address practice (name ± title) discussed here. Moreover, mainland teachers’ unexpected encounters with cultural difference constitute a “sudden change,” on an individual level, and as Parmentier (2012, 240) notes, such moments “do cause a heightened consciousness or awareness of some aspects of the situation.” Following this, teachers are quite conscious of the contrast between the address registers, which are, in fact, variations on the same general pattern. Because the contrast is obvious to speakers, the teachers are able to offer reflections on the indexical meanings these address exchanges assert for them. Yet, despite this increased self-reflexivity on the forms, the interviewees do not recognize the misreading as such.²

I would like to note that not all classes at Ogasawara Middle School misbehaved to the extent documented in the opening example. I discuss a phenomenon that I witnessed at the time of my fieldwork. At the heart of this discussion is the teachers’ metapragmatic dissonance and an explanatory exploration of its providence. Like misunderstanding, metapragmatic dissonance pinpoints an intersection where differing systems of meaning come into contact. And like misunderstanding (see T. Nevins 2010), metapragmatic dissonance is productive because it highlights cultural, identity, or other social disruptions. I begin by delineating the particular situation at Ogasawara Middle School.

Encountering New Relations: Everyday Heteroglossia at Ogasawara Middle School

Actual contact between Chichijima Island and mainland Japan is limited. Located in the Pacific 600 miles south of Tokyo, Chichijima is part of the Ogasawara archipelago and is currently one of only two inhabited islands in the island chain. The only means to reach Chichijima from the mainland is on a ferry that sails every six days and takes twenty-six hours one way. Yet Chichijima’s peripheral location is only part of what externalizes the island vis-à-vis the mainland. Because Chichijima Island was a British colony until 1876 and was administered by the American Navy for twenty-three years after World War II, it retains today both an ethnically mixed population and certain distinctive “non-Japanese” practices. Its distance from the Japanese mainland further helps to maintain these local particularities that are somewhat different from mainland norms.

Although 600 miles from mainland Tokyo, Chichijima is administratively part of metropolitan Tokyo and therefore is part of the Tokyo school district. In Japan, teachers are hired by the prefecture, or in this case the city, and rotate every three to six years to different schools within that administrative district. In Tokyo, teachers must teach in three delineated areas, more or less segmented according to the city’s “major socioeconomic subdivisions” (Lewis 1995, 11). While not all of the teachers at Ogasawara Middle were originally from Tokyo, all of them are mainlanders who have passed the teacher’s examination process in Tokyo and have worked in the Tokyo school system. None of the teachers are from Chichijima, and none had lived there previously. Therefore, teachers who arrive on Chichijima encounter certain new practices that might be described as cultural differences. In their interviews with me, teachers did not conceptualize all local (“island”) practices as different, but they did make island/mainland distinctions regarding some practices. Some of the noted differences found at Ogasawara Middle School include a lack of student perseverance (gaman), a lack of honorific language used toward teachers, and a differential system of address. These differences were part of a wider school concern that students’ language was not polite enough. Students’ linguistic practices paralleled local ones influenced by an island ideology regarding a more casual or informal presentation of self (Long 2007). Other island differences, such as making family more central than work, were in opposition to mainland business-culture ideologies that located (male) identities in the workplace. This emphasis on family was scripted into school practice by allowing the students to go home for lunch (which some islander parents did as well).³

What makes the situation at Ogasawara Middle School interesting is that the school is not automatically the authoritative voice, as has traditionally been the case in Japanese schools. The island’s distance from the mainland weakens the school’s ability to define and institutionalize “mainland” or national norms at a school where the cultural imagination for self is somewhat different. Nevertheless, because all of the teachers and administrators who work at the school, as well as the administrators in the local board of education, transfer to the school/island to work, and because the structure and organization of the school and curriculum follow the standardized form dictated by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for all Japanese public middle schools, the school is not strictly an “island” institution either. Moreover, parents were divided as to whether the school should be more relaxed in its expectations or provide students with the rigorous instruction needed to later succeed on the mainland. As economic opportunities are limited on the island, this was a real concern for some parents, and about one-third to one-half of graduating middle school students hope to attend high school on the mainland. Thus, the school was a complicated blending of practices, where all of the voices at the school (“island” and “mainland”) oscillated between accepting hegemonic mainland practices and striving to maintain local ones (Moskowitz 2010). The tension between these opposing positions and the school’s own uncertainty, at times, regarding which direction to pursue undermined the school’s general authority to assert a hegemonic position.

It is in this context that teachers’ comments, positive and negative, arise and have significance. The cultural issues regarding self and self-presentation are important in the school context, especially in Japan were much overt attention is paid in schools to shaping particular kinds of selves. Many of the teachers interviewed conceptualized their roles as greater than the teaching of particular subjects. The teachers’ talk conveyed a sense that in socializing various skills—communication skills, proper manners, instilling a sense of humanity in students or in teaching the social knowledge needed for navigating a variety of situations—they were making adults. In interviews with me, they described their jobs as “constructing people” (ningen keisei, hito o tsukutte) or as modeling particular kinds of selves and real-life situations for students to develop and grow in. Although sometimes questioned at Ogasawara Middle, the Japanese school’s traditional authority extends to instruction on ways of being, and many teachers at Ogasawara Middle viewed this endeavor as their responsibility.

In what follows, I explore teachers’ metapragmatic discourses on the local pattern of address. I enter this discussion through the commentary of Okita sensei,⁴ one of the teachers at Ogasawara Middle School, who alludes to the local address practice in a comment he offers about local greeting practices. A lack of or improper execution of greetings was a point of concern for some teachers.

In everyday life on mainland Japan, greeting others—one’s neighbors, classmates, teachers, and so on—is said to be a sign of politeness, goodwill, and good manners. Many authors note, however, that the standard English translation for aisatsu as ‘greetings’ does not capture the range, meaning, or place of aisatsu in Japanese (Hendry 1986; McVeigh 2000; Wetzel 2004). As Wetzel (2004, 93) explains, “A term that better captures the function of aisatsu might be ‘discursive bookends’, for the simple reason that aisatsu grounds most interactions in Japan. Not only does it lend structure; it also tells the participants what kind of interaction is at hand, who is involved, what their relationship is, and what is at stake.” Greetings, structured by the address forms utilized, are key interactional moments which establish social relationships. Notably, Okita sensei, one of the teachers opposed to the local address patterns, evaluates proper greetings in terms of address. In probing further into the issue of greetings, I asked him if the parents on Chichijima greet others, or aisatsu. “Ah, not really. As I mentioned [earlier in the interview], parents yobisute to each other, so they don’t really greet. At least not a proper greeting.”

Yobisute refers to the practice of dropping the honorific title from an addressee’s name, either first or last. A compound composed of the verbs “to call” and “to throw away,” the literal meaning of the term thus suggests “the throwing away of a (proper) naming/calling.” Okita sensei seems to suggest that “proper” aisatsu cannot be expressed without a certain amount of formality or a certain adherence to protocol that is lost in dropping the honorific title. In other words, Okita sensei suggests the “phatic” elements in greetings between neighbors, classmates, and so on are subordinated to or meaningless without the maintenance of decorum or a certain formality in relationships. “Parents yobisute to each other, so they don’t really greet.”

Of the range of cultural differences the mainland teachers encounter on Chichijima, the practice of yobisute is the local practice that they find the most unusual. As noted, in mainland middle schools, teachers typically address students according to the standard practice used for addressing adults in Japanese society, which is to use the last name (LN) and an honorific title (in middle schools, san or kun [roughly, “Ms./Mr.”]). At Ogasawara Middle, however, teachers addressed students by first name (FN) only, a practice that some authors claim is unusual in Japan, even among close friends (e.g., Yanagisawa 1995).

In exploring teachers’ reactions to yobisute, I am interested in the ways that teachers described the practice and the meanings it conveyed to them. Metapragmatic discourse offers “a privileged window into ideological norms associated with the register” (Agha 1993, 137). While many of the teachers did in fact yobisute (i.e., drop the honorific title when addressing students), the majority did not, in interviews with me, condone the practice, per se. Teachers’ discourses in these interviews varied greatly, which is perhaps not surprising given that yobisute in the school context seems to represent one of the most foreign practices that new teachers encountered on Chichijima upon their arrival. Some detested the practice, some embraced it, and some wavered back and forth. The way in which the teachers react to, interpret, and negotiate the meanings of an unknown indexical pattern of address—which, like aisatsu, necessarily means defining or indexing a relationship with an other (here, the teacher-student relationship)—offers insight into the process of indexical interpretation outside of stereotypical uses (Agha 2007). In this article, I discuss a situation I encountered on Chichijima and do not assert claims about the state of address forms or honorific usage more generally in Japan.

Initial Reactions to Yobisute

To begin, I offer comments from two teachers in order to introduce some of the meanings that the local address pattern retained for the mainland teachers. In what follows, I ask Miura sensei about his initial reaction to yobisute.

NM:

Were you surprised? When you got here and people yobisute?

MU:

Ah, yes, the family name? People call each other by the first name. I guess I was pretty surprised by that. And the children, too. How do you say? It was overfamiliar Japanese [narenareshii nihongo]. If they used overfamiliar Japanese, then it felt overfamiliar. There was no distance between teacher and child. It felt too close.

Miura sensei’s initial reaction was one of surprise. He describes an atmosphere that felt “overfamiliar” and which lacked a proper distance between student and teacher. These feelings will be echoed by other teachers below, although not by Kouno sensei in the following excerpt. Kouno sensei mentions that the practice was strange, something new that he encountered on Chichijima. However, Kouno sensei also raises a somewhat unexpected point: that a child has a right to be addressed with the honorific title.

KN:

Of course it was strange when I got here and everyone called each other by their first name. But once I got used to it, I also dropped the last name. On the mainland you call someone by their first name if, for example, there are two Suzukis. If you say “Suzuki-kun,” they both look up. So you use the first name, “the Kenichi one.” You say something like that. That’s normal. If the last names are different then you usually use the last name even if you are close with the person. On the mainland, you use last names. And then, in adding san and kun, there is also a child’s right [kenri] to consider.

Kouno sensei’s delineation sets up a mainland/island divide and articulates one of the central distinctive features distinguishing the two address registers: “On the mainland you use last names.” That the practice is “of course” strange suggests that yobisute is not something one generally encounters, at least not in the general middle-school context being referenced. According to Kouno sensei’s example, first names are used in exceptional circumstances, such as when there are two students in the class with the same last name, and even persons who are “close” address each other by last name. Kouno sensei additionally notes that yobisute raises the issue of rights, suggesting that it is a student’s right to have the honorific title attached to his or her name. That is, it is a student’s right to receive the respect that the title confers.

Assessments such as “overfamiliar” or the broaching of child’s rights stem from the interconnection of structural, pragmatic, and ideological spheres (Silverstein 1985). In order to understand teachers’ reactions to Ogasawara Middle School address practices, it is necessary to first outline the structure of the address system. While in reality, the norms regarding linguistic practices intersect with facets of speaker identity (e.g., class, gender, and other locations of or presentations of self) and thus play a role in honorific usage (Okamoto 1999), I focus mainly on the sets of pragmatic and ideological meanings that are associated with various kinds of Japanese forms of address. I do not have space here to delineate the entire system of address in Japan, but I will give an overview of the terms of concern in the interactional situations discussed here. As Silverstein (2003) observes, analysts themselves sometimes fall into the trap of reproducing usage ideologies. Because this essay remains analytically at the level of ideology and because I am interested in noting the features that might constitute the metapragmatics of a mainland register, I allow the lines between ideology and practice to remain blurred. The examples given in the section that follows offer both some rules regarding and documented examples of usage.

The Japanese System of Address: An Overview

Honorific titles are one element in a larger system of Japanese honorifics (keigo). While last names are used alone (LN only) as address terms in certain contexts, most often an honorific title is attached to the last name (LN + title). In addition to proper names, honorific titles can also attach to pronouns, occupations, and other nouns (McClure 2006). Middle schools use separate honorific titles for girls and boys (san and kun, respectively), thereby gendering a system that is ungendered in other contexts (Moskowitz 2014). Outside of the school context, san is a gender-neutral term that indicates family membership, not marital status, and is the default, standard polite title. In addition to san, other title options include sama, a polite form that is used to elevate the addressee, and chan, the diminutive title used for children, relatives, or female friends (see McClure 2006). Kun tends to be used (though not exclusively) toward male addressees of equal or lower status. Sensei, which may be used toward teachers, professors, authors, movie directors, artists, medical doctors, and politicians (Takenoya 2003), may be used alone or attached to the last name. The other honorific titles may not be used alone. As will be shown below, yobisute (LN only) is a common address practice among males in certain peer groups, while FN + chan is a typical address form for females in similar peer groups.

According to Suzuki (1978), names and pronouns are address terms for the younger and status inferior but never for the older or status superior. Older relatives and status superiors are addressed by a kinship term or a post-designating term (such as a position in a company).⁵ Therefore, in standard mainland practice, an older sister will address younger siblings by FN only and receive a kinship term (oneisan ‘older sister’) in return from them.⁶

Takenoya’s (2003) data reveal two patterns for use: one for addressing another of higher status and a second that appeared for equal or lower status addressees. Whether forms are reciprocated or not constitutes an additional layer indexing relationships, and reciprocal versus nonreciprocal uses can be considered in terms of two planes: hierarchy and closeness of relationship. A study conducted by Yanagisawa (1995) modeled after Brown and Gilman’s (1960) classic study of pronouns in several European languages illustrates the address forms utilized in hierarchical versus close and not-close interactions. Taking Brown and Gilman’s two semantic axes of “power” and “solidarity” as her theoretical starting point, Yanagisawa sought to identify the nonreciprocal and reciprocal patterns for use among the male students in a university context in Japan. She found that on the nonreciprocal power dimension, male students addressed their professors with LN + title (LN + sensei) or title (sensei) only. Professors addressed the students with LN + kun. Similarly, younger male students gave and received different address forms to and from older students due to a status differential based on years of schooling. Yanagisawa found that younger male students addressed older male students using LN + san, or sempai, a respectful term that designates this senior relationship to the self.⁷ The younger students received, in turn, LN only from their sempai.

On the reciprocal, solidarity dimension, male students in the same year addressed each other by LN + kun. However, once a friendship developed and individual students became closer, the male students in her study shifted to a mutual LN only for address. Notably, in none of these three sets of relationship types (status equivalent, distant; status equivalent, close; or status differential) did individuals progress to a first name basis, which lead Yanagisawa to conclude that LN dominance was one of the main characteristics of the Japanese address system.

The patterns constituting Yanagisawa’s findings are useful for considering the place of yobisute as well as the role of first names within the “standard” Japanese system of address. Both forms intersect with the hierarchical versus close/not-close relationship patterns identified above. First, both first names and yobisute can mark a relational hierarchy when not reciprocated. In Japanese, first names in general are avoided in many social contexts and are not allowed if there is any status differential between the interlocutors (Takenoya 2003). Yanagisawa (1995) observes that it would be considered highly inappropriate for a Japanese student to use an address form that included the first name when addressing a professor, regardless of the closeness of the relationship. Similarly, as noted, first names cannot be used to address relatives in preceding generations, such as one’s mother or, traditionally, an older sibling (Suzuki 1978; Ishikawa et al. 1981).

Historically, in aristocratic households, both the adults and children of the family addressed the servants in yobisute. In turn, family members received either a status term indicating their rank or the most polite honorific title, sama (Lebra 1993, 180). Lebra believes that yobisute to servants in aristocratic households maintained the extreme status divide and constituted a form of depersonalization. Furthermore, concubines, who were often the uterine mothers of the household head’s children, were called in yobisute. The extreme divide between address forms—LN + sama versus FN only—not only created a distance between the interlocutors, but that difference was decidedly vertical: LN + sama elevated the aristocrat while FN yobisute dehumanized the servant in the exchange.

Among married couples, men address their wives on a first-name basis (Lee 1976; Ishikawa et. al. 1981). While Lee (1976) found that women do not reciprocate FN only to their husbands, other studies have found that a mutual FN only or the use of nicknames is common among young married couples (Ishikawa et. al. 1981; Shibamoto Smith 2004). Thus, the mutual exchange of yobisute indexes intimacy and solidarity. Suzuki (1978) found that siblings “in urban areas” use the mutual FN only for address, a practice that is increasingly common. Similarly, female friends that are the same age will address each other in FN yobisute.⁸

Second, in peer interactions, mutual LN yobisute is associated with “male” speech practices. Honda (2001) found that, while elementary first-grade girls addressed each other using FN + chan, which was the typical form for their age- group, they addressed the boys using yobisute (which may be how the boys addressed each other). Honda claimed that the girls’ use of yobisute marked the girls as masculine, which indicates that, at least for Honda, yobisute address practices are “male” or associated with men.

Perhaps because LN yobisute is associated with male speech, two working women in Inoue’s (2006) study addressed each other with a mutual LN only. These women, the first women to be hired by their division with professional four-year degrees, partially differentiated themselves from the other office women hired to do secretarial work through their male speech practices. The male practice of LN yobisute appropriated by these two workers put themselves “on equal footing” with males in the office (Inoue 2006, 254). Although Inoue describes the totality of these women’s speech practices as “gender-neutral,” the women themselves say that they actively avoid “women’s language” in order to not sound like middle-aged housewives.

Finally, names in Japan, used in address or reference, without titles can be considered “extreme insults” (Takenoya 2003, 99). Dolan (1998) found that newspaper articles reporting on criminal activities distinguished between upstanding or law-abiding citizens, naming them with an honorific title, and criminals, identifying them by LN only, or yobisute. In another example, Miyazaki (2004, 269) observed that Taku, a male middle-school student in her study, addressed the more powerful boys in the class using LN + kun, the standard polite form for that context, but received LN only (yobisute) from them in a nonreciprocal exchange, which articulated his unpopular status in the class.

Ide (1990) collected the full range of addressee forms utilized by the young children (below age 6) in her study. Following Erving-Trip (1972), Ide created a flowchart that documented the contexts in which each form was used. The contextual factor that united all of the children’s situational uses of yobisute was being “in an advantageous position” over the interlocutor. Ide does not offer examples or an explanation of what this might be. However, that the children did not yobisute in other contexts suggests that they recognized a certain hierarchy indexed through yobisute. The young children who yobisute seem to be invoking a sense of elevation in contexts where they were in an advantageous position over another.

These examples show that LN yobisute and FN + chan or FN yobisute are used in parallel contexts, though gendered. Mutual LN yobisute indicates solidarity among male friends, while mutual FN yobisute illustrates solidarity among female friends or sisters. When used nonreciprocally, LN or FN yobisute can index hierarchy or an advantageous position over another, and yobisute can insult. In both reciprocal and nonreciprocal contexts, there are strategic uses, as when females appropriate a form normatively associated with males, or husband and wives mutually yobisute, presumably to assert a nonhierarchical relationship or to reassign “modern” meanings of equality to the husband-wife relationship that, historically, was hierarchical.

Braun (1988) notes that address systems are characterized by heterogeneity, meaning that individual speakers participate in more than one address variety. These speakers may interact with others who retain a different address variety and therefore may have a certain level of competence in address varieties in which they do not participate. Given the diversity of teachers’ places of origin, it is impossible to delineate what might actually be the range of address varieties the teachers bring to this discussion. Nevertheless, because all of the teachers were raised and socialized on the mainland and because all of the teachers describe the Ogasawara Middle School address practice as unusual, I believe that the teachers I interviewed arrived at the school with some version of the ideal system I delineated here.

Metapragmatic Dissonance and the Ogasawara Middle School Address Variety

At Ogasawara Middle School, as in other middle schools in Japan, the ideal teacher-student address pattern expected was the nonreciprocal address exchange Yanagisawa observed between professors and male students in the university context, where teachers receive LN + sensei and give LN + title (san/kun). This pattern indexes hierarchy but with a certain mutual respect. The mutual exchange of LN + honorific title ensures respect, while the hierarchical differential between titles indicates the status differential between teacher and student (sensei versus san/kun). However, at Ogasawara Middle, while teachers are elevated in one of the highest status markers, LN + sensei, students receive the lowest status marker, FN only, a situation that replicates the address forms used with servants in aristocratic households. According to the indexical meanings delineated by Lebra above, one might expect that the forms in use at Ogasawara Middle similarly signal hierarchy and a lack of respect. Respect is lost in the LN to FN shift as well as in the +title to −title loss. This may be why Kouno sensei responded that students have the right to receive a title. Similarly, Okita sensei’s response to my query on yobisute seems to address this concern. He responds:

OT:

I make a point to use [honorific titles]. San and kun indicate a light respect, a salute. If you really drop the san and kun, it’s like you are giving an order from a high position (to a lower one). If you say x-san or x-kun, you are showing respect, giving a salute. So you really can’t drop them. The islanders here, even adults to each other, drop san and kun, but on the mainland, you say x-san. Really you don’t drop the san or kun.

NM:

What do you think about yobisute?

OT:

I don’t think it’s good.

Here, Okita sensei defines what the san and kun honorific titles index for him: they indicate respect. Without the titles attached to an addressee’s name, the status differential is highlighted with the superior in a commanding position over the person in the lower position. Reminiscent of the alleged criminal stripped of respect by the press, the child had a right to receive the respect indexed through titles.

Yet, not all of the teachers mention this sense of hierarchy in their response to my queries about yobisute. Recall that Miura sensei connected my question on yobisute to a feeling of intimacy or, more specifically, an atmosphere that was “too close.” This feeling of intimacy characterizes Enomoto sensei’s response as well. I have underlined those parts of her response that suggest closeness or intimacy.

EM:

About yobisute, I feel like one doesn’t need to do it. At first, I thought it was good because it felt intimate. I thought, wow, teachers and students could be this close and establish a fun atmosphere. But now I think there is no kejime [the ability to distinguish context-appropriate behavior]. … Using the last name is common. The practice of dropping san or kun from the first name felt really strange. It creates a close atmosphere but, I wonder if that is all right. … Therefore, when [a student] becomes too close, especially here, teachers become on the same level as their parents and the community, etc. It’s one of the reasons that students react to teachers in the same way [as to parents], probably.

Enomoto sensei’s response is nearly the opposite of Okita sensei’s: where he experiences hierarchy she seems to experience intimacy. Why would this be? As noted, yobisute can signal either hierarchy or solidarity dependent upon whether the title-dropping is mutual or nonreciprocal. But if, given the nonreciprocal forms used, the pattern in place ought to index an extreme form of hierarchy—the nonreciprocal exchange characteristic of the master-servant address—why would this linguistic situation summon feelings of intimacy for some? Before exploring this unexpected reading of the nonreciprocal pattern, further cultural information is necessary.

Several authors (e.g., Lebra 1976; Bachnik and Quinn 1994; Makino 2002) discuss uchi and soto as a conceptual framework that orients self in society in Japan. Uchi means literally “inside” or “in-group”; soto refers to “outside” or “out-group.” The in-group, or more intimate pole of behavior, is characterized by relatively spontaneous behavior, informal language use, greater expression of emotion, relaxed body posture, less formal dress, and so on, while the out-group, or formal/polite pole, is characterized by greater restraint, use of politer language and/or honorifics, little expression of emotion, greater attention to body comportment, or more formal dress. The ability to contextually shift one’s self and behavior appropriately is an essential characteristic of an adult in Japan such that schools structure their curriculum with a range of formal and informal activities so that students learn the set of practices appropriate for the different kinds of contexts (Tobin 1992). Kejime, the knowledge of how to appropriately shift one’s self-presentation, linguistic register, and behavior, is a crucial skill that mature individuals need to master in order to function in Japanese society (Bachnik 1992). Closeness and “overfamiliarity” are feelings belonging to the intimate, inside uchi sphere; and like all spaces, the uchi is partly defined by the kind of interactions that are allowed in that space (Bachnik 1994). Therefore, Enomoto sensei’s description of the close, even fun atmosphere, where students, parents, and teachers are on the same level is reminiscent of an intimate uchi space, suggestive of the home. The problem for Enomoto sensei is not an extreme hierarchy, but no hierarchy and the inability to recognize the need for one—which is what she means by “there is no kejime.” All hierarchy is leveled onto an even plane, to the extent that students do not recognize that teachers and students do not retain an equal social position. Given this situation, Enomoto sensei reevaluates her opinion of yobisute, because what was initially fun cannot now be regulated.

Although Sekine sensei did not couch her explanation in terms of closeness, her response likewise suggested that the local address practices negate a sense of hierarchy. When I asked her about yobisute, she responded:

SN:

Now I’m already used to it I guess, but I don’t think it’s good. How should I say this? I think that the linguistic environment is important. Especially since I am only 10 years older than them. We have to work out whether students think I’m 10 years older, or they think “she’s only 10 years older than us.” So I think, then, that language makes a difference. Personally, I think at those times clearly making a distinction [kubetsu] is best. Therefore, in everyday conversation I yobisute unfortunately, but when I speak before the whole school [in assemblies] or in class, I strive to add kun and san.

Like Enomoto sensei, Sekine sensei feels that yobisute contributes to a lack of separation between student and teacher. Although the language of her explanation does not explicitly draw on a vocabulary of intimacy and closeness, she experiences the LN + title ⇄ FN only (yobisute) exchange not in terms of an extreme hierarchy, but a lack of hierarchy. She does not stand above her students in using yobisute; she witnesses a lack of status differential that should be given by virtue of age alone—on the mainland, for example, students separated in age by a single year enter into the nonreciprocal kohai-sempai address exchange. Because she is young, she feels that she needs language—linguistic practices she perceives as the norm—to help her maintain a distance. Without the linguistic environment in place, she loses the distance—and perhaps the respect—that a ten-year age difference should afford. And like Enomoto sensei, who critiqued students’ lack of kejime, she wants students to be able to distinguish (kubetsu) between reciprocal and nonreciprocal contexts and be able to adjust their speech register accordingly.

The metapragmatic dissonance of teachers’ responses oscillates between explanations of hierarchy and explanations describing intimacy. There are two types of shifts that occur when switching from the mainland to the Ogasawara Middle teacher-student address practice—yobisute, the dropping of the honorific title, and the LN to FN shift. Individually, both of these address forms could index hierarchy or intimacy depending on context. But in the context of a nonreciprocal exchange, these shifts should both signal hierarchy.⁹

Presupposition/Entailment or Not: Disruption, Disjuncture, and Misread Exchanges

Silverstein (2003) offers a model, based on theoretical concepts developed elsewhere (e.g., Silverstein 1976, 1993), for reflecting on how indexical meanings are transformed in use in interaction. This model begins with the properties of signs signaling indexicality and the pragmatic-metapragmatic dialectic through which they function. In presupposing something about its context, the signal form speaks to “appropriateness-in-context-of-occurrence”; in “entailing” something about its context, it brings certain things into being and thus indexes “effectiveness-in-context-of-occurrence” (Silverstein 1993, 36).

Indexical signs may signal multiple meanings simultaneously along different orders. For example, first-order meanings may index information about the interlocutors’ relationship while second-order meanings may index information about the speaker (e.g., refinement). In languages that require speakers to select second-person-singular addressee forms (e.g., tu versus vous in French; du versus Sie in German), speakers simultaneously communicate information about relationships to addressees and information about themselves through their choices. In this example, first-order meanings can be described as addressee-focused and second-order meanings as speaker-focused (see Silverstein 2003, 216; see also Koven 2009, 346–47), although the information the orders relay varies according to the indexical sign in question.

Given this structure, the potential for new meanings is latent in each token of use. “An n-th order indexical form” has upon use, at the same time, “an n + 1st order relationship to context,” which, if different, may compete dialectically (Silverstein 2003, 194). “It is as though a coterminous (or at least formally overlapping) indexical form presupposes as well a transcendent and competing overlay of contextualization possibly distinct from the n-th order one with which we began” (194). The latent potential for secondary meanings to take on new significance creates a competition that can induce formal linguistic change. Which metapragmatic functions or discourses retain or achieve authority shifts over time, such as when n-th and n + 1st order presuppositions clash, or lead to different entailments than the ones normally suggested by the system in place.

Agha (2007) stresses that reflexive processes are crucial to understanding indexical registers as a whole, including the strategies and meanings that arise from preexisting register conventions or stereotypes. For example, the female office workers in Inoue’s study above manipulate preexisting register conventions intentionally to assert particular (masculine) identities. Other identities or meanings may be inadvertently communicated, however, by virtue of preexisting conventions. Agha (2007) offers an example from Paulston (1976) that illustrates the power of linguistic forms to assert identities. Women in Paulston’s study offer an example, which “concerns the way in which a person addressed comes to find herself readable in light of a usage” (2007, 179, emphasis added). During Paulston’s study, the polite Swedish pronoun ni was in the process of being replaced in many social contexts by the informal pronoun du, although the use of du was still primarily associated with young people when used with strangers. Interestingly, older women report feeling younger when addressed with du in this context. Agha (2007, 173) concludes that “the capacity of the usage to make someone ‘feel younger’ is a direct consequence of the existence of a culture-internal stereotype associating a pattern of usage (du-for-strangers) with young people.” The culture-internal stereotype can be a force that invests indexical forms with the power to make interactants feel certain ways.

The metapragmatic dissonance characterizing the Ogasawara teachers’ interpretation of an indexical exchange illustrates that different speakers give different indexical explanations and, more importantly, experience different kinds of relationships or feel different kinds of emotional responses. However, if the mainland variety indeed provides a culture-internal stereotype, one would expect teachers’ metapragmatic discourse to describe these first-name usages as tokens of master-servant hierarchies or identities. The teachers who do interpret the Ogasawara Middle School pattern as extreme hierarchy experience a nonreciprocal disjuncture of the culture-internal stereotype, because the exchange, a nonreciprocal exchange pattern, is “schematized” as shifting to a more extreme nonreciprocal pattern (from LN + sensei ⇄ LN +san/kun to LN + sensei ⇄ FN only). Yet, in many cases, teachers’ metapragmatic discourses do not reproduce a nonreciprocal disjuncture but rather a reciprocal disjuncture, where teachers interpret (or experience) by means of a schematization of the nonreciprocal address pattern as solidarity or intimacy, usually indexed through a reciprocal exchange. In these cases, the meanings indexed do not align with the expected reading of the culture-internal stereotype.

Bridging “micro-social” and perduring “macro-social” contextualities, Silverstein’s model highlights the mediated process that allows for potential shifts in meaning. When metapragmatic dissonance characterizes speakers’ exegesis, bringing the analytic lens to this process potentially offers insight into the reasons behind this dissonance. If, as in Paulston’s study where women report feeling younger due to particular indexical meanings of a form in relation to the culture-internal stereotype, what is to account for the unexpected feeling of intimacy described when hierarchy would be the expected or normative indexical meaning associated with the Ogasawara Middle School variety? How do we understand why some teachers interpret the indexical meanings of the nonreciprocal form in ways that seem to be outside the set of meanings characterizing the normative structure of the system in place?

Similar Patterns, Dissonant Patterns

To begin to imagine the processes involved in reworking linguistic meanings, I compare this scenario to another relationship formally characterized by hierarchy and now, increasingly, characterized by solidarity—the parent-child relationship. The expressed solidarity of this relationship is part of the larger shift of the system as a whole that has been gaining ground since World War II (Yanagisawa 1995) or earlier (see Sanada 1993). Yanagisawa (1995) concluded that while hierarchy in Japan remains important, some of the vertical class distinctions that had been in place until the twentieth century are being erased by an expanding solidarity dimension. Historically, Japanese had an absolute system of honorifics where “attention to hierarchical stratified relationships under a strict class system with clear-cut classifications was correlated with fixed honorific behavior” (Sanada 1993, 81). The use of yobisute to one’s biological (i.e., womb) mother in aristocratic households, noted earlier, is an example of this behavior. Sanada (1993) argues that this shift from “absolute honorifics” to “relative honorifics,” where addressee and reference forms shift contextually, is a relatively new development that has been increasing since the nineteenth century (Sanada 1993).

Both Yanagisawa and Sanada locate this shift in the changing relations of the household (ie, also uchi), where parent-child relationship norms have shifted from a hierarchical relationship to one of solidarity. Nevertheless, the nonreciprocal address patterns within the family outlined by Suzuki (1978) still hold: parents receive a kinship term (“mother,” “father,” etc.), which follows the pattern o (honorific prefix) + kaa (semantic term of relation) + san (honorific title) [o-kaa-san], and give FN only (first name yobisute) to their children. In this way, the Ogasawara Middle School address pattern parallels the current parent-child one in which the linguistic pattern denotes hierarchy while the relationship is one of solidarity. Teachers who interpret the teacher-student pattern as indexing solidarity may be reading it in terms of the parent-child exchange pattern, which is residually hierarchical today in many families in pattern only.¹⁰ The uchi (“inside” or “in-group”) context described by Bachnik (1992, 1994), which includes contemporary parent-child relations, is characterized by relationships that are perhaps “too close.” Uchi contexts index a lack of formality, a lack of distance, the right to impose on others, and so on. Feelings of this close atmosphere may be further created through the close connection yobisute has with intimate contexts. Recall that in the “mainland” paradigm outlined above, intimate friendships, and the home, the ultimate uchi (in-group) constitutes one of the main contexts with which FN only is associated. The modern informal parent-child relationship is not what the teachers wish to replicate in the classroom, however.

While Okita sensei complained that parents and community members yobisute in daily interactions with one another, islanders do use the LN + title address form in some contexts; it merely occupies a smaller range of contexts on Chichijima than it does on the mainland. Using Yanagisawa’s data, I map the Chichijima pattern onto her findings to delineate a mainland/island paradigm. For this comparison, it is important to emphasize the continuum between formal and intimate spaces or relationships (see fig. 1).¹¹ For simplicity’s sake, I have compared only two forms, LN + san and FN only.¹²

Figure 1. Mainland and Chichijima address practices in reciprocal contexts

The main difference the figure highlights is the range of contexts these two forms embody. In the mainland variety, LN + san occupies a greater range of contexts and constitutes the unmarked form. On Chichijima, FN only occupies a greater range of contexts and is unmarked, while LN + san is marked. As noted above, in mainland contexts the mutual FN only is reserved for highly intimate contexts, between spouses or very close female friends. Although simplified, this mapping nevertheless illustrates a difference in the registers. Had the registers been completely different, they would have been cause for real miscommunication. Instead, figure 1 demonstrates that the register differences represent variations of a general pattern.

The disjuncture that bothers Okita sensei occurs in the middle column, the everyday context. It is here that island parents yobisute in meeting each other on the street when they should, he believes, use honorific titles in address (the LN + san pattern). The problem, it seems, is that the islanders have a wider uchi sphere than the mainlanders. “Inside” behavior extends beyond the home to the street and the school, areas where communicative interactions should be structured by more formal language. The mainland/Chichijima patterns for address that I have mapped out on figure 1 illustrate a reciprocal disjuncture in the everyday interaction spaces, which is the disjuncture that metapragmatic discourses regarding the too-close atmosphere target. I suspect, however, that students create a too-close atmosphere in the school in multiple ways.

The everyday issue that some teachers face is not merely the decision to be local or mainland in various presentations of self, but how to maintain authority in light of the absence of linguistic indexicals that they perceive as confirming and reiterating this authority. Examining further which teachers did and did not approve of yobisute reveals a divide regarding how much respect the teachers felt they received. The two teachers who approved of the yobisute practice were respected teachers who had little trouble maintaining authority in the classroom. Several of the teachers who examined the practice more critically were less respected or had greater trouble maintaining authority. Sekine sensei explained this in terms of being young and needing the address form to help her assert an older (hence, more authoritative) position vis-à-vis the students. Two of the other teachers who critiqued the local practice were also young teachers who had a problem with students acting out in their classes. These teachers sought to reorder their disordered world through language: they wanted to revert to the, in their view, standard address practices to help them assert an authority that the students denied them. A return to the standard appeared to signify a return to the way things should be.

While figure 1 highlights the differing aspects of the two registers, it also illustrates that they share patterns as well. The area of difference constitutes variation on a generalized pattern, rather than radical differences. As such, it is interesting that the mainlanders see not the generalized pattern but become highly invested, in a very moral sense, in the difference. It is not unlikely that this acute attention to the contrast occurs precisely because what is ultimately at stake, for the teachers, is status.¹³ For the teachers, their status should summon respect for their position, which plays out in various ways, including cooperative behavior and the authority to dictate correct ways of being or speaking.

Conclusion

At Ogasawara Middle School, mainland teachers confront an address practice that they describe as differing from the pattern used in mainland schools, where they previously taught. The atmosphere at the school is undeniably “too close” for many teachers, at least initially. Even Miura sensei, who condones the local address practice, connects it to the “close” atmosphere of the school. The metapragmatic explanations regarding the different address practices stem from and, in turn, highlight differences, which were experienced by some as problems.

In the case presented here, the meanings indexed did not always correspond to the linguistic meanings expected, which in some cases signaled that teachers experienced relationships that were not expected. Because teachers varied in their experiences, their interpretations of the indexical meanings were different. Teachers’ metapragmatic dissonance—that some teachers interpret the local address pattern as a nonreciprocal disjuncture and others as a reciprocal disjuncture—suggests that some of the teachers at Ogasawara Middle School were not basing their interpretations on the expected culture-internal stereotype. While many of the teachers who experienced difficulty maintaining order or garnering respect were young and might have equally encountered disciplinary or similar problems in a mainland school, the “foreign” address register was a means through which they understood the different atmosphere of the school and by which they understood the difficulties they experienced. Teachers who point out problems with the local address patterns were often, though not always, those who experienced a lack of respect at school. Perhaps not surprisingly, teachers “misread” the indexical meanings in accordance with their perception and analysis of what was wrong with their individual situations, situations they (mis)construed or schematized as inherently linguistic. Their solution to this “problem” of lack of respect manifested itself in a particular discursive framing of local address indexicals that followed their own solution to the problem. That is, their experience of the local pattern, as relayed in metapragmatic discourses, paralleled their perspective regarding what change or action would solve what was perceived to be problematic—for example, that respect would be reinstated through “standard” (i.e., mainland) address practices. The “matter out of place” in this situation was the cultural matter of relationships.

Not all of the teachers who critiqued the local address practices encountered actual problems in the classroom. Some teachers critiqued the practice on moral grounds only—an example of which was alluded to by Kouno sensei when he noted that yobisute perhaps violated a child’s rights. Other teachers held the ideological position that the standard should be used in school because it was the correct form. In the situation of new and different social conventions, individual speakers offered individual explanations of an unknown exchange pattern, which seem to be related to their perspective on what course would best “fix” the problem.

On another level, this article has followed the misreading of an indexical relationship. As discussed, indexicals are only interpretable in the context of culturally informed, and often ideologically saturated, meanings that make them readable in particular ways. In the case of teacher-student relationships at Ogasawara Middle, culturally informed meanings are in disarray for teachers used to the mainland register. For some teachers, the disorder stopped at the level of address exchange patterns. When the cultural difference is limited to just that, the indexical relationship was often viewed as a nonreciprocal disjuncture, which would be the expected interpretation of it given the indexical meanings outlined by the mainland register.

For other teachers, the disorder included trying classroom situations or difficult interpersonal relationships with students. Unruly interactions disrupt a “natural” hierarchy where the teacher has authority over the student. As noted, in some cases, teachers’ misreading of the indexicals is linked to the discomfort they experience from nonstandard (human) relationships. While some perhaps initially adopted the local address register to appropriate the “island” identity of their new home, they later wanted to distance themselves from forms that they saw as creating behavior they could not regulate. The unpleasant relationship is blamed on the nonstandard address pattern, and the indexical meanings are misread as a reciprocal disjuncture. Cultural matter out of place is linked to linguistic matter out of place as individuals try to reorder their disordered world through language. In these cases, nonstandard address patterns were linked to the school atmosphere not because one explained the other, but because one was like the other—they were both foreign.

At the same time, the structure of the misreading may not be completely random—another indexical structure, the parent-child relationship and associated address pattern perhaps serves as a precedent. It provides an established pattern that explains how an indexical exchange that ought to signal hierarchy can, in certain macro-social contexts, index the reverse. Therefore, while the context of the exchange was foreign, that such an exchange entails “closeness” need not have been.

Misunderstandings are often conceptualized to occur between individuals or groups of individuals, yet the level at which misunderstanding occurs can also be between an individual and abstract social conventions that have been internalized. T. Nevins (2010) describes these meaning shifts as micro-textual “annotations.” When one of his interlocutors in the field, in inquiring of the anthropologist’s concern with “culture,” asks if it is a kind of love, T. Nevins (2010, 66, emphasis added) reflects: “Everett was not saying that the real meaning of culture is love. … He was only asking me to consider them together in an interpretive turn that he himself was taking in the face of a problem posed by our dialog with one another. … The entanglements he was thereby composing did not resolve into one another in the same way for both of us. Instead, what he was creating was the framing hermeneutic conditions of our ethnographic conversations.” For Nevins, this reframing constitutes a moment of recognition—insight into another way of conceptualizing the perspective he had brought to the encounter. Here, the micro-textual annotation is a semiotic process “instantiated in the displacement of dissonant qualities onto a sense of new meanings” (T. Nevins 2010, 66). New meanings emerge from those dissonant moments. On another level, it is a repair meant to align “framing hermeneutic conditions.” In reaction to the culture shock of a new environment, Ogasawara teachers participate in similar micro-textual annotations. In the absence of familiar address proceedings, the alignment of n-th and n + 1st order indexical values is in disarray. Some teachers rely on the culture-internal stereotype; others appear to draw from meanings associated with a different context.

In this example, we see the lack of meaning overlap with which Humboldt was concerned. As noted at the beginning of this essay, for Humboldt, “not-understanding” is a feature of understanding (see Fabian 1995). Moreover, the interplay between understanding and not-understanding is productive, creative, or entailing. The area of not-understanding—where meaning overlap does not occur—provides new ways of seeing a situation or interpreting meaning. In communication studies, strategies to invoke “fixes” for understanding in the interactional moment are known as repairs (Bailey 2004; T. Nevins 2010, 64). Like repairs, micro-textual annotations illustrate the participant’s consciousness that misunderstanding has occurred.

But misunderstanding can also occur without participants’ consciousness of the fact. Urciuoli (2010) offers an example of this. Like a shifter, the referents of the term diversity, as deployed in various university environments, vary across speakers and contexts. The difficulty of pinning down a single semantic meaning for a term like diversity stems from the situation that the complex project of diversity-making (what many universities strive to accomplish these days) involves “the social classification of marked identities” (48). Moreover, the term, with multiple referents to begin with, moves across university settings, gaining indexical properties that can be “strategically deployed” to establish individual stances vis-à-vis the university bureaucracy or project at hand. However, those deploying different senses of diversity do not necessarily recognize the shifter-like quality of the term and, indeed, believe that meanings are shared. “Pragmatic incoherence—‘misunderstanding’—is as unavoidable as it is unnoticed” (Urciuoli 2010, 56).

Ogasawara teachers likewise appear unaware that new meanings have been produced. Yet, despite this unconscious remapping of indexical meaning, the unfamiliar or unexpected situation at Ogasawara Middle motivates a repair of sorts—theory of a fix. What is not repaired here is an (imagined) different outcome—one where respect is received (entailed through “proper” address exchanges). Because the fix (“proper” forms of address) is not enacted, the problem remains unresolved; hence, it remains theoretical. Furthermore, because the fix is only theorized, repair is not a midway point toward mutual or greater understanding; rather, the theory offers a step toward identity repair or a transition away from culture shock.

In this sense, the misreading of a linguistic indexical relationship constitutes an inverse of misunderstanding. Cultural and social disorder based in the misunderstanding of local cultural practices invokes the trope of misunderstanding, yielding a misreading of linguistic forms. Fabian (1995, 48) delineates a key characteristic of that trope: “Misunderstanding, with its conceptual aura of mistake, error, failure and falsity, serves conceptions of knowledge that measure validity with a standard, if not absolute truth, then of the degree of match between representations … and realities.” Such an articulation of misunderstanding leads to either/or binaries where something false is measured against something true (Fabian 1995). In this case, misunderstanding constitutes a cultural pattern whereby disruption is fixed through repair. The slippage that occurs between expectations and reality parallels the perceived disjuncture experienced by some teachers at Ogasawara Middle School. At the same time that teachers misread indexicals in accordance with the social or cultural difficulties they face, they appropriate the trope of misunderstanding to offer a theory of a fix. It is a theory based on the belief that cultural difficulties can be resolved by a simple repair: instating “standard” address forms in the classroom. Doing so will reinstate the distance needed to repair the “too close” atmosphere. Thus, in both communicational and cultural misunderstanding, repairs offer a way to potentially fix the “mistake, error, failure” that makes interactional moments uncomfortable.

In reality, reordering language may not necessarily fix the cultural environment, strongly reinforced outside of the school. Nevertheless, teachers may instinctively have a very clear understanding of the power of language to shape and create contexts, as it does and has done at other times.