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Young ladies' New Language
新女性，新语言
The use of deferential（敬重的）language is symbolic of the Confucian ideal of the woman, which domiantes conservative gender norms in Japan. This ideal presents a woman who withdraws quietly to the background, subordinating her life and needs to those of her family and its male head. She is a dutiful daughter, wife, and mother, master of the domestic arts.
敬语的使用是儒家理想妇女的标志，它统治着日本保守的性别准则。这种理想表现为妇女安静地退居幕后，将自己的生活和需要屈从于家庭和男性主人的需要。她是有义务的女儿，是妻子和母亲、家务艺术的大师。
The typical refined Japanese woman excels in modesty and delicacy; she "treads softly（谨言慎行） in the world," elevating feminine beauty and grace to an art form.
典型的优雅日本妇女在谦逊和精巧上非常优秀，她们“谨言慎行”，把妇女的美丽与优雅提升到了艺术的层面。
Nowadays, it is commonly observed that young women are not conforming to the feminine linguistic（语言的） ideal. They are using fewer of the very deferential "women's" forms, and even using the few strong forms that are known as "men's." This, of course, attracts considerable attention and has led to an outcry in the Japanese media against the defeminization of women's language.
现在，年轻妇女不再遵从妇女语言的理想已经是普遍现象了。她们更少使用非常恭顺的女性用语，甚至使用少量强硬的男性用语。当然，这吸引了广泛的注意，并引起了日本媒体对妇女语言的非女性化倾向的疾呼。
The fact that young Japanese women are using less deferential language is a sure sign of change — of social change and of linguistic change. But it is most certainly not a sign of the "masculization" of girls. In some instances, it may be a sign that girls are making the same claim to authority as boys and men, but that is very different from saying that they are trying to be "masculine."
年轻日本女性使用越来越少的敬语毫无疑问是社会变化和语言变化的标志。但是几乎可以肯定的是，它不是女孩子男性化的标志。在某些例子中，这是女性要求得到和男性一样的权威的标志，但是这和说她们尝试男性化大不相同。
Katsue Reynolds has argued that girls nowadays are using more assertive language in order to be able to compete with boys in schools and out. Social change also brings not simply different positions for women and girls, but different relations to life stages, and adolescent girls are participating in new subcultural forms. Thus what may, to an older speaker, seem like "masculine" speech may seem to an adolescent like "liberated" or "hip" speech.
胜家·雷诺兹认为女性现在使用更为肯定的语言是为了在学校和社会中和男性进行竞争。同样，社会变化带给妇女的不单是不同的社会位置，还包括生命阶段的不同关系，少女还参与到崭新的亚文化形式中去。所以这些对于年长者来说看似“男性化”用语，对青少年来说就像是解放宣言。
