Journal ofpragmaties 4 (1980) IBIS-12C

Q NC: ,h-Holland Publishing Company

S” IN JAPANESE

CHISATO KITAGAWA

This study examines various usages of Japanese response rorms ki and ee, which, as gener-
ally viewed, correspond to English yes - except when they are used as a response to negative
questionsI. An attempt is made to characterize precllsely the basic properties of hai and ee in
contrast ‘to each other, and in contrast to a response form such as English yes. The diverse
senses, such as ‘agreement’, ‘assent’, etc., which can br associated with them, are then explained
on the basis of universal communicative principles such as proposed by Grice (1975).

It is often assumed that two response forms in Japanese, #zaddnd ee, correspond
to English jres in their use, and that the difference between hQriand ee is explainable
in terms of *he presence or absence of formality. ‘X’hefollowing description by
Alfonso is quite representative in this respact:

For YES, EE is used. HAI is also used, but it hzs a connotatkn of deference and is very polite,
in normal situation EE is more frequent. (1966: 13)

This is, of course, a good first approximation. IButit is one that scarcely presents a
complete picture: not only can Japanese hai ;lnd ee uite cifferent from English
yes (or yeah) in their use, but them also is ,a su but significant distinction
between the use of hai and oe themselves aside from the issue of j’ormality. The dis
tinction here involved seems, certainly, important enough if only to consider the
extemely high frequency of thse forms usecl irl daily life. Moreover, it has been
widely recognized that the Japanese way of communication can be problematic in
the area involving answers and responses. To quote Kunihiro:

What, then, stands out as the most rmportane charocleristic of the Japanese language and the
cognitive behavior of the Japanese people? The ansmwermay be found, in the often heard criti-
cism that Japanese do not specify whether they mean yes or no, whether they agree or disagree.
(1976: 64)

a This is a much revised and expanded version of thllr paper presented rlt the 27th Annual Meet-
in< of the Western Brmch of the American Oriental Society, held at the University of Arizona,
April 15, 1977. under the title “kagmaties of ~zayin,g‘yes’ 99,which, in turn, was based on Kita-
gawa (1977a). 1 have profited greatly from discussing issues treated in this paper with Adrian
Mmajian, Adrienne Lehrer, Don C. Bailey, Mike F~lrnish, Tim Light, Dick. Oehrle, Jsm Wenger,
an,! Minors Yanagihashi. 1 am also deeply indebtetl to Hartmut Habc:rland and to the anony-
~lngreferees for the Journal uf Pragmatics for their comments on the paper.
I&,*

105
106 C Kitagawa / Saying 'yes' in Japanes.~

Yet, the use o f response forms ~hemselves in m o d e r n Japanese have so far com-
manded far less attention than they deserve within the field o f Japanese linguist iics
[ 1 ]. It, deed, with some notable exceptions (e.g.l.z k o f f 1973; Davison ~975; Green
1975; Goffman 1978), it ,~eems that careful analysis o f response forms in general is
yet to receive its due attention in the field o f conversational at~alysis at large. The
purpose o f this paper is to present a precise characterization o f the use ot hal and ee
in Japanese [2] - in contrast to each other, and in contrast to English yes, as well
as correspondent response forms in a few other languages.

I. Hai and ee: ate they agreement responses?

There is, actually, one generally recognized area where whatever correspond,~nce
assumed between English yes and Japanese hai/ee clear!y breaks down. It is the case
o f a response to a negative question. A negative question in Japanese generally
expects an answer that is likewise phrased in negatior, (see section 3 to follow for a
more detail.~d discussion). And, as shown an lhe examples below taken from Martin
(lOh~.-2.c.¢x
. . . . J,,.,p, ,t..
, ~ respondent ...... " e. .m. .p l o y ,~ai (or ee) if his answer is to meet that
WOt~It.l

particular expectation, as in (B-I) below, despite the fact that the hal (or ee)
response may then be fiqlowed by a negatiw.~ sentence. If the answer is to be con-
trary to ~hat expectation, as in (B-ii), then lie 'no' is the appropriate response form,
although the sentence that follows may be' a positive one. Martin, in fact, attempts

(1~ A K u m a m o t o e ~kimasen deshita ka?

to go-not (past) Q
'Didn't you go to K u m a m o t o ? '
B. (i) tlai/Ee, ikimasen deshita.
' ¥ o (lit. Yes), ! didn't go.'
(n) lie, ikimashita yo [3].
'Yes (lit. No), I did indeed.'

[ 1 ] ! or example, the extent to which Martin conct.'rns himself with these form,,, in his volumi-
nous (1198 pages) and hig,hi~ impre,.,sive 1975 work, is to provide a gloss 'yes' for hal, avd
'3,eah, yes' for ec In the works of traditional Japanese grammarians too, not much attention
has bccn pa~d to the exact characterization of the use of these respom, e form, m modern ;apa-
nese, although some interesting discusslo,as have been presented concerning the nature of illo-
cutionaxy force associated with them (e.g. Mori 1970, Miura 1976). One paper of interest 1 have
seen most recently is Smiff, (1978). Bat this work, while informative in many respects, is stilt ire
exception to the existing tre~,d ha that it fails re articulate a precise c~atacterization of the
properties of hm and ee Dlct:tonaries, mcidentaUy, provide httle help on the issue, as intimated
by Aklyama (1977), Srnlth (1978), ,and others.
[2j Unless otherwise ~,pecified, hai and ee discus:~.d in this paper will be limited to those pro-
nounced with a falling intonation. Thins, in pragmatic terms, the functiou of intonation relevant
to the preser~t s~udy ~s assumed to be essentmlly the' same as h~ the ~:ase of declarative sentence
m general But. see secuo,~ 2 for a further d~scusslo a
131 For the use of ~vtence ~arti¢le re, as well as ne and na to appear in later example~, see
Lakoff (1972) and Uyeno ( 197 l).
 C. Kitagawa / Saying :yes' in Japanese 107

to adduce characterizati.ms needed to distinguish Japanese ~'ai/ee from English

yes on the basis of these examples. As he put it"

The words hal [or eel and lie are used to mean 'what you',¢e r id is eor~rect' and 'what you've
said is incorrect'. So if you state a question in a negative way, the standard Japanese answer
turns out to be the opposite of stanrlard English 'yes' and 'no', whic'h affirm or deny the
FACTS rather than the STATEMENT of the facts. (1962: 364)

It should be noted that this "what you've said is co rreet" analysis, associating the
use of hai and ee with the notion o f agreement'., is one tJaat is cc,rnmonly echoed in
recent linguistics literature, with or without reference to negative questions [4].
Thus, Akiyama states that "t'-e Japanese answering ~;ystem is in principle based or,
the agreement with the stateme,'t form of qucstions" (1977: 25). And Pope (1973),
noting that Japanese h ~ ~s use( for a positive, answer to a positive question and,
also, for a negative answel to a negative question, ,;la~sifies Japanese, along with
Chinese, Korean, Navajo, etc., as bel.mginl[ to the ~'agreement-disagreemertt
answering system" - in cot trast to such languages as English, Spanish, and Hebrew,
which are said to belong to the "positive-negative answering 1~ystem" (in which
the negative response form :~s used if it is to be followed by a s entential negation,
and the positive response t orm is used if it is to be followed by a positive sen-
tence). These analyses are of d J u b t f u l value, however, from the point of view of
articulating the general cha3acteristics of responze fo ,ms like ha~~. Omitted entirely
in Pope's cross-language analysis, 1or example, is the fact that, once we go beyond
the scope of ihe yes-no question-answering system and examine the system of
responses in br6ader terms, the languages identified its belonging to the agreement-
disagreement am~wering system do not, by any meat1:;, present .a uniform picture.
Thus, while Japanese hal arid Korean nee can be e~ployed to respend to both a
yes-no question and a command, Chinese shide and ',.Javajo aoo' may be t sed, as a
norm, only as a positive response to a yes-no questio'~. For a positive resoonse to a
command, Chinese and Navajo typically emplo) hazede and hagoshii resI,ectively.
In this respect, these two languages are more like En~ish (in contrast to Japanese
and Korean), since, as is well k n o w n , while yes is an appropriate answer to a yes.no
question, it tends to be awkward as a response to a command, unless, of course, the
person who responds assumes the stance of one who waits upon the person who
does the requesting - but, in. such a case, Chinese sh~de, to take one example, also
becomes appropriate [5]. There is one other point that should be raised. That is,

[4] See, for example, Pope (1973), Kuno (1973), Akiyama C1977), and :~oga and Matsumoto
(1978).
15 ] In English, the form yes sir, as well as OK, sure, :ertain,ry etc., would be mote natural than
a plain yes as a response to a command, rhe distinction between yes and yes sir ,s particularly
striking when viewed as a response to a negative command, e.g., 'Don't dose the door!';yes sir
would be appropriate, but a plain yes would not be. It is intet~sting to note; that the plainyes is
perfectly acceptable as a response to an indizect request such as 'Can you pass the salt?'. This
fact, incidentally, would by problematic to an analysis which attempts to account for the illo-
108 C Kitagawa / Saying ~es' in Japanese

the fact that Japanese hai can be used to respond to both a yes-no question and a
ct~mmand does not mean that the language itself provides no distioct response
forms to each of them. In fact, Japanese ee, as will be discussed below, tends to be
awkward when used as a response to indicate an assent to a command. Also, a,q
Kageyama and Tamori ( 1 9 7 5 - 7 6 ) point out, Japanese tends to distinguish the neg-
ative response to a command from a negative response to a yes-no question: the
former, typically, is a form like iya da, while iie is used for the latter [6]. What all
this indicates is the following: the general property of Japanese hai is distinct not
only from that of English yes but also from that of Chinese shfde (or h~ude).
Navajo aoo' (or hagoshii), and Japanese ee as well.
Concerning the claim that Japanese hal can be characterized in terms of the no.
tion 'agreement', it contributes little to pinning down the general characteristic el"
hal To see this, we only need to look at examl:!es like the following [7]

(2) A: Oi, shinbun wa doko d a n e ? [8]

ah newspaper where is
'Ah, where is the newspaper?'
B: Hal, tana no ue desu yo.
shelf's on is
'Nell, it's on the shelf.'
(3) A: Naze minna waratte iru-n desu ka?
why all laughing is-that is Q
'Why is everyone laughing?'
B: Hai, Tanaka-san ga isu l:ara ochita kara desu.
(subj.) chair from fall (past) because is
'Well, it's because Mr. Tanaka fell off from his chair.'
(4) A: Sensee ga omochi-desu ka, oku-sama ga omochi-desu ka?
teache~r (s.ubl.) have Q wife (subj.) have Q
'Do you have it, Professor; or does your wife have it?'
B: Hai, watashJ~ ga motte orimasu.
I (subj.) having am
'Well, i hav,~ it.'

The use of hal in each of these examples is the kind that cannot well be duplicated
by Engnsh yes nor by Japanese ee. It cannot be considered as an agreement indica-
tor, either, for the simple reason that in the context provided by any one of ( 2 ) -

cutionary force of request associated with such a sentence by postulating an underlying abstract
verb of requesting (cf. S,dock 1974).
[6] The distraction in the use of lie and iya da. however, is net as c'lear-cut as Kageyama and
Taraofi claim, See Miyagawa (1978) for a relevant discussion on this issue.
[7] I am indebted to Nobue Maxon for calling my attention to cas,~s like 12) and (3).
[81 The particle ~,,u in this example, and in many others to follow, is a theme marker" cf Kuno
([ 973}.
 C. Kitagawa / Saying 'yes' in Japanese 109

(4) there is nothing that speaker B can be agreeing to. It is far bette~, it- these cases,
to say simply that by saying hal the speaker is signaling his readiness to take the
turn, to fulfill his conversational obligations. If we are to capture the general char-
acteristics of hai, therefore, we need to depart from the notion of agreement.
Japanese ee, on the other hand, appears to be much more amenable to character-
ization in terms of the notion agreement. While substitution of ee for hai in ( 2 ) - ( 4 )
would make B's statements rather bizarre, ee (as well as ,~ai) in the fbllowing seems
acceptable.

(5) A: Doo shita no?

what do (past) that
'What's the matter?'
B: Ee/Hai, chotto memai ga suru-n desu.
a bit dizziness (subj.) do-that is
'Well, I feel a little dizzy.'
(6) A: Naze otooto.san kite irassharanai no desu ka?
why brother ce:xe !'.as-not that is Q
'Why didn't your broflier come with you?'
B: E,:/Hai, doomo netsu ga aru yoo na-n de;uyo.
somehow fevei (subj.) exist seem is-that is
'l~A.'ll, he seems to be running a fever.'

The contexts provided by (5) and (6) are still those which are not appropriate for
the use of English yes, but they allow Japanese ee in contradistinction to the cases
of (2)-(4). It seems that this difference can be accounted for in the f Dllowing way"
unlike the cases of ( 2 ) - ( 4 ) , speaker A's inquit3 in (5) and (6) may be perceived by
B as an expression of concern to which B can ,-~),cu~. By the use of ee, then, B is
indicating to A that .-."s concern is warranted, ~l~at B m fact shares tile same con-
cern. Viewed thus, ee used in (5) and (6) can be considerecl to be an instance of
agreement re:~ponse. Note, furthermore, the following fact: as the discussion below
will indicate, the use o f e e in Japanese, at least m terms of its range, is considerably
more Jestricted than that of hal - yet, there is one type of context where ee is
typic~dly more appropriate than hal, and that is exactly when the. se,l~se of agree-
ment, w;th respect to the response e~pectation involved, is what is specifically
called for. For example, suppose that there are two middle-aged gentlemen of com-
parable social status whose relation., hip to each other is cordial enougJa for a buddy-
talk but polite enough for either 1~ai or ee to be a natural response form in t~eir
daily conversation. And one says to the other:

(7) Ano Tanaka-san to iu sensee w Lzuibun kiree na kata desu ne.

that called teacher very pretty is person is
'That teacher, Miss Tanaka, is a real beauty, isn't she?'
110 C. Kitagawa / Saying 'yes' in Japanese

What the speaker wants to know is exactly what his friend thinks about the woman.
In this sort of context, given the inter-personal relationship of the participants as
defined, a hal response unaccompanied by a confirming statement of any sort, or
by an acutely emphatic intonation, would be odd - it could be judged as an irre.
sponsible response in avoiding to meet the inquirer's response expectation; the situ.
ation calls for an ee respon :~ if the request for concurrence is to be met sincerely.

2. Characterization of hai and ee

On the strength of the observations made so far, a tentative characterization of

Japanese ee may be formulated as follows:

(8) By uttering ee with a falling intonation, the speaker signals that he is of the
s~sne mind with. . . . .the
. . . . .addre.~o.o~
. . . . . . . . . in regard to th ,~ comment j,,o,
~"~' made to him by"-
the addressee.

This characterization is not too different from what has been proposed by Martin,
Akiyama, and others, and to that extent, is not very controversial. Still, It is worth
pointing out one generally unnoticed fact: when ee is uttered with a rising intona-
tion, it is apt to convey a sense of puzzlement or dismay (the exact sense depend-
mg on the tone of intonation and/or circumstances involved) often with an implied
request for clarification, l';e with a rising intonation, in other words, is no1 unlike
English "What!?" with comparable intonation contours. It seems that one ,:an rea-
sonably infer from this the following: an important function of ee in a speech act is
that of a carrier of intonation. In some crucial respect, then, the function o f e e in
Japanese is similar to that of really in English when the !otter is used as a response
form.
But, now, what. about the general characteristics of hat: The main thrust of the
rest of this paper will be given to this issue. But, first ofaU, let me state my propo-
sal on this, as follows:

(9) Hai is a polite signal to the addressee to indicate that th~ speaker has heard (and
understood) what the addressee said to him.

Notice that this characterization very naturally explains why hal may he used in
cases like (2)-(.~) above, it equally accounts for the use of hal in (5) and (6). And,
interestingly, it provides a basis to ~×plain the following fact. Unlike ee, ~ai with a
rising intonation, if and when it is accepta:~ie at all (e.g. as a response to summons),
does not by itself convey a sense of interrogation - in terms of its infomaational
content, hai wi.th a rising, intonation may still be characterized as in (9), the intona.
tion factor contributing, apparently, only in the realm of interpersonal dynamics
 C. Kitagawa / Saying 'yes' in Japanese 111

such as politeness. [9]. This state of affairs, therefore, suggests: (i) the main func-
tion of hal, unlike that of ee, is not that of an intonation carrier - it has some dis-
tinct property of its own that clearly remains constar't regardless of the accompany-
ing intonation contour; and (ii) this particular proFerty tends to be incompatible
with the sense of interrogation. This latter point should come as no surprise, how-
ever, if the basic property of hai is to be d,~fined as in (9), since, so defined, the
illocutionary force associated ,vith it should r,~ost naturally be a positive assertion.
Returning now to the use of hal as in (1), however, it must be admitted that
c llaracterization (9) leaves the situation somewhat unclear, and we will have to
return to this issue later on. But let us first examine how (9) fares with various
other types of hai's. And we will see that ;'.his seemingly mJobtrusive characteriza-
tion has in fact a remarkable explanatory power, contributing to the elucidation of
the use of t~ai in contrast to that of ee, as well as to that of Eo.glish yes.

2.1. Rollcall response

First of all, given the characterizations (8) and (9), it become:~ clear why hal can
be used as a proper response to 'roUcall' (in classrooms, etc.), while ee cannot.
Indeed, no more needs to be said about this directly. It may be worth mentioning,
however, that the roUcall response is somewhat unique as a response in that, while
it, by definition, is never used to claim for the speaking turn (similar to a back-
channel signal in this respect), it is nonetheless interpretable as cvnsi!dting new
infomaation (unlike most back-channel signals). It is, then, perhaps not surprising
that in some languages a totally unique word is assigned for this particular response
form; e.g. a proper response to rollcall in Chinese is neither shfde nor haude, but y b u
or d~u. in English, yes is generally considered t~ ~-~ean acceptable response to roll-
call. The best analysis to account for this still seems to be what has beelt proposed
by Pope, which, as mentioned already, characterizes its use in terms of the positive-
negative answering system; yes used in response to rollcall, then, involves what she
terms "Ar',swer-Deletion" (of. Pope 1971: 75), being derived front something like
Yes, I am here.

2.2. Cooperation response

Next, consider a case like the followir ~,. The husband comes home from a day's
work, tired and hot, and he says to his wil 9:

(10) Aa moo tsumetai biiru no koto I akari shika kangae-rare nai-n da.
oh already cold b e e r ' s matter ~nly except think-able not that is
'Oh, gosh, I can think of nothing but cold beer!'

[9] For a discussion on the relationship between politeness and rising i~atonation in Japanese,
see Alfonso ( 1 9 6 6 : 1 1 4 3 - 4 4 ) and Kitagawa (1977b), ~mong others.
i 12 C. Kit~.gawa/ Saying 'yes" in Japanese

It is perfectly natu]ral for a Japanese wife to respond to this with hai and, then,
head toward the refri/gerator. ~n American wife may also fi~,teh her husband beer,
but the difference is that she would not have responded wkh a yes. A yes ot yeah
response would be appropriate, under normal circumstances, only if she merely
wished to indicate that she *oo could think of nothing but cold beer (it is, of
course, conceivable that, having said 'Yeah!', she may then rush to the refrigerator
to get beer for herself and for her husband). Yes or yeah occurring alone can thus
be considered to be the result of Answer-Deletion, derived from something like
'Yes, I do too'. An ee response in Japanese would also have a similar effect, if for a
:~fferent r e a s o n - here too, the wife would be m~,'rely expressing her empathy
toward him concern~.'~g the topic of cold beer. And |his, of course, is whal (8) pre-
dicts. Accordingly, gi,,'zn me cultural contexl; whe~,, the intent of the husband in
utter:ing (10) can be quite obvious (Le. as a request), either the yes/yeah or the ee
respcnse on the wife's part could constitute an 'insincere' (in the sense of Gordon
and l~akoff 1975) response. But a hal response would produce no such effect. What
it do,~s is exactly the same as in the case of a response to roll[call; the hai response
~tse!f merely acknowledges that she heard (and understood) what he said to her.
What needs to be added here for a satisfactory explicat,on is only the following:
given the tradPional make-up of the husband-wife re]Iationship in Japan, the wife's
hai resl:~Oas~ tsi.malrng that she heard him) in a context like (10) would conversa-
tionaUy entail th~ :he would ,'also respond cooperatively in her act toward her hus-
band's implied wish. This, then, is precisely lhe kind of situation which is explain-
able in terms of the :miversal cor~municative principles such as proposed by Grice
(1975), whose Maxim o| Quantit J states in part: "Do not make your contributi ~n
more informative than is required' (~975: 45).

2.3. Response to requestfl'omman t

The hal response to a request/, ornmand may be an~ysed similarly. The example
below provides a typical o¢~mman'i and response context.

(ll) Upper-class man:

Oi, soba o goninmae chuumon shite koi.
hey noodle (obj.) for5people order doing come
'Hey, go and order soba-noodle for five people.'
Lower-class man:
Hai/?*Ee.
'Yes, sir'

GIven the traditional p~.,wcr-re!ationsbip between the uppe~-class man and the
lower-class man, and ~ssuming the efficacy of C-rice's Cooperative Principles such as
t_he Maxim of Quantity mentioned above, it is not difficult to see why the sense of
asserrt can be read ~nro ul~
" " lew,'r-class man's use of hal Indeed, it practically rep-
 C. Kita$awa / Saying )pes' in JapaJ~ese 113

resenta in this case an instance of "To hear is to obey". The hal response th as takes
on the coloring of a~sent contextually: human dynamics of the pamcipants
involved sets up the stage, and coo ?erative principles of conversation provide the
necessary frame o f reference for an appropriate interpretation. The fact that ee is
inappropriate in (11), on the other laand, can be explained simply o~, the strength
of (8) -- a request/command anticipatcs an action, not empathy. It may be noted
here, incidentally, that the difference be',ween hal and ee ',s not primarily that of
formality. For instance, maintaining the same power relationship assumed in (l 1),
ee is acceptable in the following:

(12) Uppe~.class man:

Oi soba o goninmae cht~umon shite koi. Omae me soba wa suki datta na.
you too fond is (past)
'Hey, go and order sob~-noodle for five. You wanted soba too, right?'
Lower.class man:
Hai/Ee.
lt;S.

2.4. Handing something to someone

One remarkable fact about 2apanese hai is its extraordinary c;iversity in use.
Thus, as Jorden (1962: 29) no~es, hal can be used when handwg something to
someone. The following would be one such case.

(13) Female office worker:

Hai/ *Ee , kore.
this
'Here, (take) this.
Male office worker:
Nan dai? Kirei na nekittai ja nai ka!?
what is pretty is nec} -t..e is not Q
'What is it? A beautiful t'.e~ What for?'
Female office worker:
O-tanjoobi desho?
birthday I-presume
'It's your birthday, isn't it?'

~,l,qmt is peculiar to this use of hat: (i.e. hai in file initial u~:te,:ance by the female
office worker) is that there is no overt expression to which it can be takel~ to be st
response. It may thus be argued l hat it is not really a 'respo ase'. An interesting facl
emerges, however, when it is further examined. It is not the case, as it turns out,
that one can say hai indiscriminately when handing some ffhng to someone. To see
this dearly, we may have to streeeh our imagination somewhat. But, suppose that
114 C Kitagawa / Saying 'yes' in Japanese

a pickpoc~,et on a crowded street is running to get away with his loot, with a police-
man runni,lg after him a! some distance. This pickpocket cannot say hal (if his
language u~e is 'sincere' in the sense of Gordon and Lakoff 1975), as he tries .to get
rid of his loot by pushing it fate the hands of an innocent and bewildered passerby.
That is, the, use ofhaias in (I 3) is appropriate if, and only if, the speaker can claim
some tacit ~mderstanding thaI the addressee in fact expects the speaker to give hhn
the item in question. The female office worker in (13) is here taking a stand, wistful
or otherwine, that from her point of view the relation between her and the male
co-worker i:, such that he should be e.tpecting a birthday present from her and that
she is accor.lin-,ly responding to it. Hal in (13), then, is indeed a response, a response
to an unspoken message that she, in her mind, has heard dearly.
Similar to, this is the use of hal as in (14) below, likely to be uttered by a school
teacher as he starts his lesson for the day. or the on,: in (15) by a story-teller in an
informal gathering when feeling apologetic at the end of a loogish tale; these are
cases where OK m American English and right in British English would also be
apprupriate.

{ 14) Hai/*Ee, sore de wa kyoo wa san-peeji kara hazimemasu.

well.then today page.3-from begin
'OK, we start from page 3 today.'
(15) Hai/~Ee, kore de oshimai.
this-with finish
'O/t, I have finished.'

Expression~ hke (13) and (14) are wha~ Goffman (of. 1978: 291) calltd "bracket
markers", which voicing the fact that a task episode has terminated or is about to
begin, may be employed, not to elicit a response, b'.~t to help with the cadence and
pulsing of an activity. Coffman, discussing bracket markers in English ie.g. "Well,
,,kay, now then"; cf. 1978: 292), argues that, altilough not immediately obvious,
they may be considered as responses, respondi~*g to conversational demands of vari-
ous kmd~ It is interesting to observe that bracket markers like (13)and ( 1 4 ) i n
Japanese do in fact contain a clea~ response form, hal. Note, furthermore, that the
use of hai in these expressions can be explained along the same line offered for
(12). Thus, in (14), it can be seen as the teacher's acknowledgement response to the
students' (prezur.~ed) expectation that tLe class is now to, begin. In (15). hai func-
tion,; as a sigaal by means of which the story-teller ackncwlcdges the present com-
pany's wish (again, p~sumed) that he readily terminate his talk. Viewed thus, the
u~ c.f these ha,"s is a rather straightforward extension of the more ordinary use of
hal's characterized in (9); their only uniqueness is that they respond to an unspoken
~bt:.
" t clearly perceived)message [10]

[ i0] It is interesting to note, at the same time, that these hai's cannot, apparently, stand ~lone:
h~ a case like (13), the act of handing something needs to accompany them; and in cases like.•
(14) and (15), hal must be followed by some appropriate statements.
 c. Kitagawa / Saying "yes' in Japanese 115

Now, neither Japanese ee nor English yes can appear in contexts such as ( 1 2 ) -
(14). But yes, unlike ee, can respond to an unspcken message. An at~pealing co-ed
drawing a chorus of 'Oh Yes!' from a group of male students sitting on the side-
walk is a part of the regular American college scene. A person, awe,stricken by a
breath.taking sunrise at a mountain top, :nay also let out his feeling (particularly
if he is of the younger generation) with the same, heartfelt cry. These, however,
all represent cases wherein the yes response carries a strong sense of positive feeling
of the speaker toward the scene that confronts him (these, incidentally, are uot the
kinds of contexts where hal is appropriate). The use of yes, then, can be identified
here again in terms of the general framework of Pope's "positive-negative answering
system". R becomes, to use Goffman's words, "an immediately available means of
showing that an encounter has been ratified" (1978: 281). the point I wish to em-
phasize he~, is not so much that one can respond to an unspoken message. Surely, a
respondent "can coerce a variety of objects and events in the current scene into a
statement to which he can now respond" (1978: 290). What I wish to emphzsize,
.r~th~,
. . . . . . . . .is. th,~ differing v,,,v
,~. . . . . . .';"o
. . o of respo~Ise ~" ~ themselves, "'-o"
~,.,.-n,, tltilt the use of
response froras such as hal, ee, and yes, are indeed varied, each distinct from others,
in unique and definable manner.
2.5. Back-channel signal
Japanese hal and ee, as well as English yes (or yeah), can all be used as back-
channel signals (cf. Yngve 1970; Duncar~ 1975),the accoml:anying intonation con-
tours often serving as an indicator of the degrees of enthusiasm involved. It is easy
to see why these forms can be used in this capacity: hai projects the sense of 'I hear
you', and ee the sense of 'I am with you (so go on)'; the use of English yes can be
construed as a signal to indicate that the respondent, saying yes, is ready to back it
up w~th an appropriate~ syntactically po:,itive e~p~ession such as 'I ~m listening (so
go on)', '1 think you are right', or even 'I see your point (but . . . ) ' . Now, with
respect to English, if Pope (1972: 195--96) is correct in her claim that modern yes
and yeah in some respects retain the distinctioa existent in the sixteenth centuw
English between yes (as the response form for positive disagreement) and yea (fcr
positive agreement), we might expect that the yeah response could have a slightly
more empathy oriented tone them the yes response. But most of my informants
have not supported such a prediction. It is interesting to observe, nonetheless, that
in many languages the response form that can serve as a back-channel signal is also
the one that is used to answer positively to a question with positive implicatures
(e.g. 'It is hot today, isn't it[?'). This is true of modern English yes/yeah, Finnish
niin, Japanese hai/ee, Korean nee, Spanish si, and many others. It seems that this
fact is not without some significance: as Yngve's characterization has it, the back-
daar~nel is one "over which the person who has the turn receives short raes~ages
such as 'yes' and 't~h-huh' without relinquishing the turn" (!970: 568), whereas
the purpose of questions, of course, "is generally to allow the addressee to become
the speaker" (Hinds 1976: 59).
116 C. Kitagawa / Saying ~es' in Japanese

3. An.~ver '~o yes-no quesrLms

We will now turn, finally, to the case of response to yes-no questions, and
attempt to explain why hal and ee, ,with their characterizations specified as in (8)
and (9), can still serve as 'agreement' respoases. It may be noted, first of all, that
yes-no questions in Japanese have generally been divjded into the following four
groups (a rising intona(~on is assumed for each interrogative senleltce).

(16) (a) Simple questions - positive:

A: Ikimasltita ka?
go(past) Q
'Did vnu go?'
B: Hai/Ee, ikimashita.
'Yes, I did.'
(b) Si/'nple questions - negative [copying of the same phraseology expected;
cf. (l)] :
A: lkimasen deshita ka?
go-not (past) Q
'You didn't go?"
t3: l:iai/Ee, ikimasen deshita.
'No (!it. Yes), I didn't go.'
(17) Questions with strongly positive implicatures:
A" Itta nc, de wa nai desu ka?
go (past) that is not is Q
Isn't it lhe case that you went?'
B Hai/Ee, ikimashita.
'Yes, i did go.'
(! 8) Questions with strongly negative implicatures:
A:lkanakatta no de wa nai dest~ ka?
go-not (past) that is not is Q
'Isn't it the (;ase that you didn't go?"
B: Hai/Ee , ikimasen deshita.
'No (1, :. Yes), I didn't go.'
(19) With co1,¢eyed meaning of request [re. the case of (ii) below]:
A: Haizara ni te ga todokimasen ka?
ashtray-to hand (subj.) reach-not Q
'Can't you reach the ashtray?
B: (i) Hai/Ee, todokimasen.
'No (lit. Yes), i cannot reach it.'
( h ) Hail? ~£e , doozo.
'Yes, here.'

The la~) example, (19), is one which, as discussed by Shibatani (1972), can be inter-
 C Kitagawa / Saying 'yes" in Japanese 117

preted in two ways: as a simple yes-no question, in which case, it is the same as (16)
above and what is given in (i) is an appropriate answer; or as an indirect request, in
which case (ii) is an appropriate response. In this latter ease, the behavior of hal and
ee is essentially the same as in the case of response to a request/command; as Ma,rtin
puts it, "if the negative question is really just an obliqtue request, then you indicate
~.ssent with hal" (1962" 365) - the anaIysis presented in section 2.3 above, there-
lore, generally applies here. The only point to be noted is that the use of hal and ee
.are both sensitJve to the intent of the utverance to which they respond.
But now, what about real yes-no queslions (YNQs) !ike (16)-(18) 9 Note, in this
respect, that there have been two dist':nct and generally recognized theories of
YNQs. One theory, held by Coleman (1014; a.,, referred to by Bolinger 1978), Katz
and Postal (1964), Kuroda (11965), Chafe (1970), and many others, essentially
views a YNQ as a special type of alternative question in which the second alterna-
tive has been suppressed. That is, associated with a YNQ, whether as the underlying
structure or in terms of the ~peaker's mentad reference, is the sem~tic construct of
the form 'Is it X, or is it not-X', ~ihe surfacing portion being the first alternative with
~ts characteristic intonation contonr (cfi Langacker 1970; Pope 1972), and, in the
ca:;e of Japanese, accompanied 3y particle ka with its sense of 'or' (cfi Kuroda
1955) [11]. The competing theory, put forward by Diver (1964) and Bohnger
(1'}78), claims in es~;ence that what a question advances is "a hypothesis for con~qr-
m.tion" (Bolirtger 1978: 104). It is not our place to evaluate these theories. It is
worth noting however, that both theories suggest tl,at the speaker, by uttering a
YNQ, ipso fac~o corffronts the respondent with a task of" confi~matien. In Diver's
and 8olinger's rheory, a YNQ involves a hypothesis conti ,.qation. According to the
alternative question theory, the respondent is faced with the first half of a two
piece disjunction which the questioner has chosen ~ vocali::e for the respondent's
confirmauon or dis-onfirmation. In the framewo~ of ,~itl~er theory, then, an ee
response to z YNQ ~.an be understood to be an expression of concurrence to that
vocalization choice --it confirms, as it were, what the YNQ puts up for confir'na-
tion. Viewed lhus, i'L comes as no surprise why the ee response is typically accom-
panied by the copy'ng of the same 7"hraseology as in (16) abeve. It is somewhat
harder to e:~plain why a hal response to a YNQ tends to project a sense of agree-
ment as well. But here again, the principal factors responsibl ~, may be considered to
be Gricean Cooperative Principles of conversation. Thus it may be argued" the
respoadent's acknowledgment (by means of hal) that he heard and understood
what was sai.d to him, and his failure to make any contradictory state~nent against
it, ccnspire ~o generate a sense that the responder~t concurs with that vocalized
'choice' (or 'hypothesis' it we are l o follow Div,~'r and Bolinger) presented to him.
Indeed~ if we assume the efficacy of Grice's albrementioned Maxim of Quantity

[11] In the examples hitherto given, the. particle ka is given the gloss of "Q(uestion)". This
practice however, is to be understood merely as a sho-t-hand device for e~:pedieney, since, in
Kuroda's analysis, which I follow here, "Q" is distinct from the particle ka.
118 C. Kitagawa / Saybzg ~es' in Japanese

("Do not make your contribution more informative than is required"), as well as
the Maxim of Manner (e.g. "Avoid ambiguity"; cf 1975: 46), such an interpreta-
tion of hai, particularly if it occurs as the sole response to a YNQ, is the only one
that makes any sense at all.
It should be noted he,re that the above explanation applies equ-,dly to (16)-(18).
The di.~sion has often been drawn between eases like (16) on one hand and cases
like (rT) and (18) on the ot:'.er. Kuno (1973: 280), for one, suggests that the hai
respor~se as in (16)expmesses a sense of 'what you just said is correct', and those in
(l 7) a.-ad (18) express a sense of 'what you presuppose is correct'. Akiyama (1977:
2';) glosses over the distinction with respect to the use of haL contending that ques.
tions l~ke (17) and (18) are actually tag questions, (17) being a positive tag, and
(18) a negative one, ~tnd that, accordmgly, the use of hal in (16)-(18) can be char-
acterized uniformally as expressing agreement with the statement part of questions.
In our system, however, ~;ince we have dissociated the notion of 'agreement' from
the property of hai itself, the difference in the nature of questions involved in these
sentences does not in any case affect the characterization of the use of hal as given
in (9); we only need ~to note that hai, as well as ee, as we have seen earlier, are sen-
sitive to the intent of the utterance to which they respond.

4. Concluding remarks

1 have atternpted ~:1 this paper to elucidate the general characteristics of the use
of hai and ee in contrast to each other and in contrast to English yes. And I submit
that the foregoing discussions sufficiently "iemonstrate the correctness of their char-
acterizatlons specified in (8) and (9). What 1 consider to be a unique contribution
of this paper aas tc do, m particular, with the following two points: (i) the basic
property of hai, as characterized in (o), is free of such notions as 'agreement' and
'assent'; and (ii) v~rJ,ous senses (including 'agreement ' and 'assent')which hai
appears to project ('in addition to what is given in (9)) are explainable in terms of
universal communicative principles such as proposed by Grice (1975). It may be
noted, finally, that the characterization of hal given in (9) makes sense histori-
cally - as pointed oal by Morita (1973" 203), the evo]lution of modern hai involved
th; shift from the signaling of '1 did not get what you said' (ha being a typical form
for this) to the signaling of "! understand what you said' (as specifically understood
for eariy modem hai'/haa), through an intermediate stage with forms like haan [12].
Why, t!~en, ,~houl6 such notions as 'agreement' and '~tsseW.' be so often .associated
with the 'meaning' of modern hal? The claim of this paper has been that this perva-
sive tendency is due lo the failure to clearly dlsrtinguish the basic property of hal
front the discoursal effect brought about by conversational principles such as
defined by Gordon and Lakoff (1975)and, particularl,.¢, b:, Grice (1975).

[ 12] Intonation, 1 assume, has played an important role in the h~,~to~icaldevelopment of hai
and ee, relev~u'tdocumentation on this, however, is not readily av~able.
 C Kitagawa / Saying 'yes' in Japanese I 19

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Ch,,sato Kztagawa. Born 1932 in Tokyo, Japan. B.A. in English literature, Rikky~ Da.gal,'u,
1958; M.A. in linguistic s, Univesity of Michigan, 1961; Th.M., Episcopal Thtological S~:ho.~l,
1964; PhJ:. in lmguistif:s, University of Michigan, 1972. Assistant professor of Asian Studio.s,
Unrversity of Massachuse'ts at Amherst, 1972-76; Associalc professor of O'ient,'d Studies,
UmversJty of Arizona, 1976-pr~,sent. Publications include: 'Purpose expressions in English',
Lingua 34. 31-46 (1974); 'The deep structure binding of pronouns and anaphoric bleeding'
(co-authored with Adriar, Akmajian), L~nguage 5 2 : 6 1 - 7 7 (1976); '~mantics of Japanese put
pose expressions', Linguistics 199:5"7-74 (1977). Present research. AUX in Japanese; theor)
of grdmmatncal structure.