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Yoshiko Matsumoto
Yamato Ichihashi Chair of Japanese History and Civilization and Professor, by courtesy, of Linguistics
Department:
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, Linguistics (1989)
M.A., University of California, Berkeley, Linguistics
M.A., School of Literatures and Languages, The University of Tsukuba, General and Applied Linguistics
M.I.A., School of Area Studies, The University of Tsukuba, American Studies
B.A., Japan Women's University, English Language & Literature
Yoshiko Matsumoto is Yamato Ichihashi Professor in Japanese History and Civilization, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and, by courtesy, of Linguistics. She also serves as the interim director of the Stanford Language Center (2024-2026), and the coordinator of the Japanese Language Program. Matsumoto investigates the structure, meaning and use of the Japanese language as part of human experience with cross-linguistic perspectives. Her research interests include multiple aspects of linguistic pragmatics, underscoring the integration of structural, sociocultural, and cognitive factors. Her work has spanned from the pragmatics of linguistic constructions (e.g. noun-modifying clause constructions, frame semantics, silent reference, honorifics, discourse markers) to sociocultural aspects of interaction (e.g. politeness theories, speech acts, ideology, identity, gender and age, intergenerational communication, language and cognitive conditions). She has argued for a theoretical perspective that incorporates cognitive and pragmatic information in grammar, emphasized the importance of structures and nonlinguistic conditions that are often considered to be atypical and peripheral, and illustrated implications of aging at the intersection of language, age and gender. Focusing on narratives of difficult experiences by older women, her analysis reveals the agency and the resilience of the narrators through their stories reframed from the quotidian perspective. Another recent project examines intergenerational interaction between older adults living with compromised cognitive conditions and younger adults and reflects on the motivations and purposes of human communication, exploring the essence of understanding and being understood in verbal interaction. Publications include _Identity Perspectives from Peripheries_ (2025, with Jan-Ola Östman), Frame semantics (2025, in The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar), Pragmatics of understanding: Centrality of the local — Cases from Japanese Discourse and Alzheimer’s Interaction. (2020, Journal of Contrastive Pragmatics), _Noun-Modifying Clause Constructions in Languages of Eurasia: Rethinking Theoretical and Geographical Boundaries_ (2017, with B. Comrie and P. Sells) and _Faces of Aging: The Lived Experiences of the Elderly in Japan_(2011).
