Japanese Interjections (Danseigo-Joseigo)


  1. Do Japanese people still use danseigo and joseigo (especially interjection)?
  2. Can joseigo be used by men? Such as まあ and あら.




I wrote a (term) paper on this!

Anyway, based on the secondary literature I read, danseigo/joseigo is way more
prevalent in media than in 'real life', but it does also exist in real life.

Quoting myself (which I hope is okay):

> [...] More substantially, Okamoto (1995) carried out an analysis of the
> conversations of ten female Japanese-native college students, in which she
> analyzed recordings of conversations and the use of forms, which she
> classified as masculine, feminine, or neutral. The vast majority of forms
> used were neutral, and all but two used more masculine-classified than
> feminine-classified forms. Further research done by Okamoto suggests this
> might be a generational change.

(See Okamoto 1995, p. 303f. available
[here](https://web.stanford.edu/%7Eeckert/PDF/okamoto1995.pdf) for more
details)

Joseigo is also still important for sounding stereotypically feminine, where
that's still desirable, e.g. to attract partners. There's a bunch of self-help
books teaching that women's language makes you more attractive. (Nakamura
2014) I personally have also seen quite a few of these googirl cartoons
seemingly making fun of women speaking in male language - but I might have
been misinterpreting these.

