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The overall objective of Ms paper is to provide empirical evidence against a mythical, stereotyped view of Japan äs a homogeneous speech Community.
As the most revealing variable, I have focused on the speech of Japanese women whose gender roles have undergone drastic transformation in contemporary society. The study uses a variationist approach to analyze the speech of three groups of women leading distinctive social lives: full-time homemakers, full-time employed women in clerical positions, and those in positions of authority. The results refute äs overgeneralizations the Claims of past mainstream work on Japanese gender dijferentiation, which has consistently defined women s language use based exclusively on middleclass full-time homemakers under the influence of the traditional ideology of complimentary gender roles. Variable rule analysis reveals that differential performance grammars are operating among the three groups of women, and that the intergroup differentiation can be interpreted äs social stratification more meaningfully correlated with Speakers' concrete occupation-bound categories than with abstract categories such äs social class membership. Potential causesfor such dijferentiation are accountedfor in terms of Speakers' everyday contacts with people and types ofcommunicative routines and experiences in their occupation-bound communication networks.
