Using という before わけです

Question

Is there and difference between わけです and というわけです

「林さんは料理学校に行きたいと言っていましたよ。」
「つまり、ここでの勉強をやめるというわけですね]

Can this be modified to ……ここでの勉強をやめるわけですね as well?

If not - what are the appropriate situations to use either?

Answer 1

As in 非回答者's comment above, a general exposition on わけ and というわけ is quite hard to give, considering the highly abstract and polysemous nature of both わけ and という, as well as the labyrinth of adnominal modification of Japanese, and everything else.

So focus on your post:

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1. Can we omit 「という」 here?

According to your example, we can only have the interpretation that the わけ means "intention, meaning" and the という means "that" as in "he says that...".

Thus, the questioned sentences can be translated respectively as:

つまり、ここでの勉強をやめるというわけですね
That is, it means that he/she quit studying here, right?

and,

つまり、ここでの勉強をやめるわけですね
That is, he/she intends to quit studying here, right?

Then, we can safely say the two sentences can be used interchangeably in this case. Note however that there is a structural difference caused by existence of という, which wraps up all previous phrases as subjunctive clause, while it couldn't make virtual change of meaning most of the time.

2. Is there any situations the two may differ?

Here's a possible example:

なるほど。誰も来ないわけだ。
I see. That's why nobody comes here. (< It is the explanation for nobody coming.)

なるほど。誰も来ないというわけだ。
I see. So it turns out nobody comes, huh? (< It is the explanation: nobody comes.)

In the first passage, the sentence 「なるほど」 invokes the interpretation of わけ as "reason" or "cause", then it gives such a meaning. While in the second, という has enveloped what comes before, so that わけ have to take the previous phrase as appositive but not adjective, and its interpretation falls back to somewhat like "situation".

That said, わけ is by nature so wide open to various interpretations that things abovementioned may not apply if given enough overwhelming context.