Me to Ruriko, in Japanese via text: “I’m leaving for work.” Ruriko: “Oh not anymore you’re not.” Me: “???” Ruriko: “That’s ‘the company president is leaving for work leaving for work.’ You wanted ‘a salaryman leaves for work leaving for work.’” (出社 vs. 出勤, respectively)
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Fascinating. Are senior managers put before/higher than employees poor after/below, sociolinguistically?
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Deep topic. There is a material part of the language devoted to fine status distinctions, but it functions differently within an ingroup (e.g. the company talking to itself) versus between ingroup/outgroup (company talking to e.g. a customer or vendor).
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A similar thing in English is the term “worker”, which is exclusive of management. Saying “workers at FooCorp want X” makes it clear that the management probably disagrees.
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Interesting how they bake class into the language in some part
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