SPEECH-LEVEL SHIFTS IN JAPANESE MANGA (COMIC): A DISCOURSE POLITENESS THEORY APPROACH
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55197/qjssh.v7si3.1467Keywords:
Japanese politeness, discourse politeness theory, manga, speech-levelAbstract
This research concludes that speech-level shifts in Japanese manga (comic) are not arbitrary linguistic variations but are dynamic communicative strategies that function within the framework of Mayumi Usami’s Discourse Politeness Theory (DPT). Problem statement existing research on Japanese manga and anime has predominantly relied on Brown and Levinson of 1987 framework, which focuses on sentence-level strategies to avoid Face-Threatening Acts (FTAs). However, these models often overlook socially obligatory language use (wakimae) and fail to systematically account for discourse-level phenomena, such as how shifting between polite and non-polite forms creates meaning across an entire interaction. There is a significant gap in understanding how Discourse Politeness (DP) Defaults are constructed and manipulated in fictional worlds to produce specific interactional effects. Thus, this research aims to analyse linguistic factors which motivates speech-level shifts among characters in Japanese manga. This study is using qualitative method in analysing the manga series Case Closed: Zero’s Tea Time, focusing on the character Toru Amuro, whose three distinct social roles (café worker, detective, and criminal) provide a rich dataset for observing language variation. The results indicate that several linguistic factors motivate speech-level shifts, including sudden topic changes, the mitigation of difficult or sensitive content, and the creation of friendliness through stylistic incongruity. Overall, this research contributes to Japanese discourse studies by demonstrating how speech-level shifts operate as discourse-level politeness strategies within interaction. It also provides an alternative perspective to politeness research that has traditionally been dominated by Western theoretical frameworks.
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