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137 CHAPTER 9 Tradition and Reform in Kokugo 9-1. Linguistics and Kokugo Reform Saussure’s posthumous Cours de linguistique générale (1916) is widely regarded as providing the revolutionary basis for the science of language in the early twentieth century. Saussure began by surveying the history of linguistics, distinguishing three stages: first, the study to construct “prescriptive grammar” to teach “correct” language; then philology for deciphering documents and interpreting the literature of the past; and finally, nineteenth-century comparative linguistics, which dealt with languages as they are. He proposed, furthermore, advancing linguistics to the study of langue, the synchronic state of language, which is free from history and norms. Though it is clear to scientific linguists today that they must eliminate norms from their approaches, up until half a century ago such an idea was extremely radical. Even today, among teachers of standard languages such as kokugo or foreign languages, there is strong resistance and even hostility to the science of linguistics that detaches itself from norms. Concerned about such antipathy among teachers of the English language, Charles C. Fries (1887–1967), an eminent linguist and scholar of English-language education, wrote Linguistics and Reading (1963) to “help to dispel the ‘image of the linguist’ as one who devotes himself primarily to the destruction of all the qualities that make for precise and full expression—an irresponsible speaker of the language for whom ‘anything goes’” (Fries 1963, ix). Fries explained that such intolerance for linguists came from a lack of correct knowledge about the field of modern linguistics and that “linguists have abandoned these conventional views not because of any deliberate purpose on their part to oppose the conventional views but because their use of the newer methods of language study forced them to conclusions that made the traditional views of language untenable” (37; emphasis mine). 138 Kokugogaku and Linguistics Those who introduced the idea of “modern linguistics” had to play the role of either an agent for enlightenment or an apologist for compromise, as Fries did. For Hoshina, however, the denial of convention was not just a natural consequence of scientific pursuits. He attempted, with “deliberate purpose,” to draw a norm from linguistics itself in order to overturn conventional views. It was not because he was involved in language policy, nor was it because of his obligation as an education bureaucrat. It was because the science of linguistics itself had an ideology that even an ordinary scholar like Hoshina was able to infer. In exercising genbun itchi Hoshina was the most stubbornly serious among Ueda’s followers who shared the conviction that the language currently spoken was the real form of kokugo and who actively used genbun itchi style in Gengogaku zasshi. His tenacity, however, also exposed the shortcomings of genbun itchi, that is, the tendency to be verbose and monotonous. It is this stylistic problem, not the content itself, that made Hoshina’s writing, however pioneering it might have been, soporific and lacking in the power to attract people’s attention to his ideas. In addition to the genbun itchi style, Hoshina practiced in his writing a very radical phonetic usage of kana, which he believed represented most closely the actual pronunciation of the spoken language. The kana usage he adopted was not always consistent in his writings, not because of any arbitrary choice of kana as he wrote but because he readily adopted the most recent kana usage every time it was updated by the committee he belonged to at the time. In that sense, Hoshina’s works, in both their content and style, showed the direction kokugo reform was taking. For example, the kana usage regulated in the Elementary School Order (1900; Meiji 33) was adopted in his Kokugo kyōjuhō shishin (Guidelines for Teaching Kokugo, 1901; Meiji 34) and Gengogaku (Linguistics , 1902; Meiji 35); its revision reported to the Ministry of Education by the Kokugo Chōsa Iinkai (1905; Meiji 38), in his Kaitei kanazukai yōgi (Summary of Revised Kana Usage, 1907; Meiji 40); and another revision published by the Rinji Kokugo Chōsa Iinkai (Interim National Language Investigative Committee , 1924; Taishō 13) in his Kokugo to Nihon seishin (Kokugo and the Japanese Spirit) and Kokugo seisaku (Kokugo Policy) (both 1936; Shōwa 11). However, with each of these publications, Hoshina was attacked by conservatives who obstinately insisted that rekishiteki kanazukai (the historical kana usage) was the only legitimate usage faithful to the sacred tradition of Japan, and they made Hoshina retreat...

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