A comparative study of criticism in English and Japanese sociolinguistic book reviews

Scholarly articles for academic journals are generally evaluated by peer reviewers before being accepted for publication. However, academic books can be published without having been assessed by third parties. Instead,after the book has been published, academic book reviews are written to evaluate the published books. In writing book reviews, reviewers need to show solidarity with authors and readers in terms of linguistic politeness.Particularly when writing criticism, reviewers need to choose their language carefully and mitigate criticism to avoid face-threatening acts, and by doing so they tend to use a negative politeness strategy.As such, this study analyses the ways in which writers in English and Japanese write criticism in Japanese sociolinguistic book reviews. The results show that the number of criticism appearing in English and Japanese sociolinguistic book reviews differs, and that in writing criticism there are socio-cultural differences between English and Japanese sociolinguistic book reviews. The ways in which English and Japanese reviewers reduce the imposition and degree of forcefulness of their criticism in academic book reviews sometimes differ. Reviewers in English use hedges more frequently than Japanese reviewers. Reviewers in English tend to use hedges of adverbial and adjectival phrases, lexical verbs, modal auxiliary verbs, and contrast strategies, whereas reviewers in Japanese tend to use hedges of adverbial phrases, lexical verbs, conditional constructions, question forms,and personal attributions. Multiple hedges appear in most English criticisms,while approximately half of Japanese criticisms use multiple hedges in a single sentence. Instead, Japanese reviewers use more indirect forms of expression in their criticism. The writing conventions of criticism seem to differ between English and Japanese languages. To accurately understand the author’s real intentions,non-native speakers need to be more aware of cultural conventions and linguistic strategies in writing criticism in their target languages.

criticism

politeness strategy

academic writing

English and Japanese languages