Desu” in an English Online Community

Home , 2channel, Anime convention, Chibi (slang), Imageboard, Rei Ayanami

FROM CODE-SWITCHING TO LOANWORD: NEW INDEXICALITIES AND FUNCTIONS OF JAPANESE “DESU” IN AN ENGLISH ONLINE COMMUNITY

By CHRIS SPRINGFIELD

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2019

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... 3

INTRODUCTION ...... 4

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ...... 8

METHODOLOGY ...... 24

FINDINGS ...... 27

Gauging Language Ideologies of “Desu” in Two Communities:

4chan’s Worksafe Requests Board ...... 27

Gauging... Communities: SwampCon Anime Convention Community ...... 29

Analyzing Instances of “Dess” on 4chan, as Archived on archived.moe...... 31

1. Confessional/Evaluative “Dess” without Anime/Manga context ...... 37

2. ...With direct Anime/Manga context ...... 45

3. ...In response to Anime/Manga context ...... 49

4. Further Considerations ...... 53

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION ...... 56

REFERENCE LIST ...... 63

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 67

ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the use and function of “desu” within an English online community, 4chan. It establishes the usage of “desu” as a loanword in English, both on

4chan and in anime/manga fan communities, and proposes that the indexical relationships between “desu” and these communities have motivated English speakers within those communities to adopt it as a discourse marker. A brief description of 4chan, a CMC context in which anonymity is preferred, is given, and it is argued that the indexical qualities of

“desu” are leveraged by posters on the site to establish their status as experienced users, and to reference anime/manga and their fan communities, through the term’s indexical link to those contexts and communities. The results of a survey of 4chan users and members of an anime/manga fan community regarding their experience with the term and the ideologies they hold pertaining to its usage are presented, and posts on 4chan containing a variant of

“desu” are analyzed and categorized, offering an insight into how speakers think about and use the term.

INTRODUCTION

This thesis aims to understand the use and function of “desu,” which is argued to have become a loanword in English, within the online community 4chan. This research focuses on the indexical qualities tying “desu” to 4chan and how and why speakers in that community leverage these indexical features to perform desirable identities on the site.

Usage of “desu,” which I will also argue to constitute loanword usage, within anime and manga fan communities, and how the association of “desu” with those communities adds further indexical relations to the term, will also be considered.

4chan1, which describes itself at www.4chan.org/faq as a “simple image-based bulletin board” and “primarily an imageboard” (4chan, 2019), is a site hosting what

Bernstein et al. (2011) call a “large-scale, anonymous, and ephemeral community

(Bernstein et al., 2011, p. 50)” with a focus on sharing images and participating in discussion accompanied by images.

The ephemeral nature of the site is due to the way in which information is presented and preserved (Bernstein et al., 2011; Manivannan, 2012). The site is divided into “boards,” each of which houses content pertaining to a particular interest (e.g. /ck/, “Cooking,” or

/trv/, “Travel”). The boards are composed of “threads,” which contain an original post and replies to that post. When a new thread is created it appears at the top of the board, pushing older threads down. When a user posts in an existing thread it returns to the top of the board

1 The site has recently split into 4chan.org and 4channel.org, with the 4channel.org domain used for “work safe” boards—This distinction has no bearing on my analysis, and henceforth both domains will be referred to under the collective name of 4chan.org or “4chan.”

4 until the thread reaches a threshold number of posts, in which case it is no longer moved up. Each board has an allotted capacity of threads, and threads at the bottom of the board’s catalog are deleted as new content is created2; thus, anonymous users do not generally carry identities with them from post to post or from thread to thread, and the contents of any given thread are not preserved on-site forever, with the exception of long-lasting “stickied” threads3.

On October 31, 2015, several “word filters4” were implemented on the site, one of which automatically converts the term “tbh,” an acronym for “to be honest,” into “desu,” originally a copula in Japanese5 (Bibliotheca Anonoma, 2018). The word filter works without notifying the user that their post has been altered before it is displayed on the site, and as of the time of writing this thesis there is no indication of the word filter’s existence on 4chan’s FAQ page. However, there are users who are familiar with this word filter, and these posters can directly or indirectly reference its existence: “desu” thus becomes not only an automatically enforced part of the site, but a reference point in the shared culture of site users.

2 Further explanation of 4chan’s organization and culture can be found in Bernstein et al. (2011), Manivannan (2012) and Pajunen (2017). 3 Described on www.4chan.org/faq as “posts that are stuck (hence ‘sticky/stickied’) to the top of a board's index page... [and] can only be stuck by moderators (4chan, 2019).” 4 This was not the first implementation of word filters on the site (Bibliotheca Anonoma, 2018). 5 4chan’s relationship to the Japanese language is not arbitrary: 4chan originally started as an anime fan community of sorts and was inspired by the Japanese forum Futaba Channel, and on September 21, 2015, shortly before several word filters with Japanese terms were implemented, it was announced that the Japanese creator of 2channel, Hiroyuki Nishimura, had taken up the role of site administrator (Bibliotheca Anonoma, 2018; 4chan, 2019).

In this thesis, I argue that users of the website 4chan.org have adopted “desu” to leverage its indexical qualities pertaining to the site, and that in doing so they align themselves with language ideologies which present proper (according to community standards) usage of the community-specific linguistic repertoire as a trait of experienced users, establishing and re-establishing their credentials as such a user (Bernstein et al.,

2011; Manivannan, 2012). To avoid confounding data resulting from 4chan’s word filter, I analyze usage of “dess,” which I assume indicates both a deliberate reference to “desu” and a decision to make the deliberate (i.e., not enforced by a word filter) nature of the reference visible.

In the course of this argument, I claim that “desu” has become a loanword within certain English-speaking communities, particularly the anime and manga fandom and the userbase of 4chan. I examine research on enregisterment, indexicality, identity, CMC, site culture, loanword formation, memes and usage of “desu” within the anime and manga fandom, and present new research gauging ideologies relating to “desu” within the 4chan user community and an anime/manga fan community, as well as an analysis of the presented posts in relation to those ideologies and theories of identity and indexicality.

In addition to presenting what I believe to be the first analysis of “desu” as a loanword in English, this research examines an unusual process of loanword formation and emphasizes the value of indexicality and identity performance to the linguistic choices by speakers through the study of a term with little lexical meaning. It is my belief that as the internet continues to grow as a site for interpersonal communication, there is an

6 accompanying growing need for research into the language used on the internet—and it is my hope that this thesis will contribute to addressing that need.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Focusing on the spread and enregisterment6 of Received Pronunciation, Agha

(2003) discusses how the spread of a register is affected by metadiscourse and “role alignment” by receivers of the metadiscursive messages—These receivers can adjust their own speech to align with ideologies of language which attach certain values to those registers, thus moving the receivers’ self-image toward the set of “social personae” linked to that speech (Agha, 2004, p. 243). Agha argues that the transmission of these messages is a “speech chain” between senders and receivers. The position of receiver in one link of this chain can include many people collectively, as in “public sphere discourses,” and the parties do not necessarily need to be present in the same location or at the same time, and may even not know one another (Agha, 2004, pp. 247, 248).

In discussing popular handbooks and the associated metadiscourses on speech and accent, Agha notes that a particular feature, a certain accent, is claimed to not only index

“attributes of speaker,” but also to “’give importance’ to message content and ‘[engage] the respectful attention’ of the hearer, thus transforming social relations between interlocutors

(Agha, 2004, p. 253).” This argument portrays linguistic change not as a hegemonic “top- down” process, but rather as a process influenced by a large number of actors with various degrees of freedom and influence, a process through which even hegemonic figures are

“reconfigured periodically by external discourses” (Agha, 2004, pp. 269, 270).

6 Agha defines enregisterment as the “processes through which a linguistic repertoire becomes differentiable within a language as a socially recognized register of forms (Agha, 2002, p. 231),” i.e., the processes by which “the set of language varieties... used [by] a speech community (Finegan, 2008, p. 540)” become recognizable as a distinct set of forms “associated with a particular situation of use (Finegan, 2008, p. 545).”

This study will examine a particular feature, which I will argue to be enregistered as part of a linguistic repertoire used by an ideal user of the site 4chan.org: “desu.” Originally occurring in Japanese, the copula “desu” has been enforced hegemonically on 4chan through a word filter which automatically converts the term “tbh,” an acronym for “to be honest,” into “desu” (Bibliotheca Anonoma, 2018). However, as I will show, users have also adopted “desu” as part of their linguistic repertoire with similar goals of giving

“‘importance’ to message content and ‘[engaging] the respectful attention’ of the hearer,” or in this case, the reader.

Specifically, I will demonstrate that users have adopted the form “dess,” a phonetic misspelling which is almost certainly purposeful as there is no widespread convention of

Romanizing です, desu, as “dess,” in order to demonstrate their deliberate use (i.e., not accidentally converted from “tbh” via the word filter) of the form. I do not intend to argue that the spelling “dess” is uniquely meaningful, but rather that it is a way the “sender” indicates that their incorporation of the feature encountered as “desu” from the position of

“receiver” is intentional.

In “Attaining the Ninth Square: Cybertextuality, Gamification, and Institutional

Memory on 4chan,” Manivannan, (2012) discusses the ideal “valuable user” on 4chan, a site where institutional memory is preserved by users: “To become a valuable user, Anons7 must maintain a consistent presence, peruse vast amounts of content, and develop a

7 “Anon” is short for Anonymous, which is the default name displayed for posters on 4chan who have not entered a name for themselves (as the majority of users do not). This name is used on 4chan both as a general term for site users and to directly address or refer to specific anonymous users.

9 discerning eye for valuable cultural capital representative of 4chan’s history, politics of duplicity, and implicit social rules” (Manivannan, 2012, p.2).

This usage of “dess” indicates a mastery of two aspects of 4chan’s history: Users must have been on the site for long enough, and thus have either posted enough or viewed enough content, to know about the quietly-implemented word filter (the existence of the word filter is not advertised anywhere on-site, and posts continue to be made asking why the user’s input has been converted into “desu”), and they must also be familiar with “dess” as a possible rendering of the term recognizable by other users on the site.

Image 1: A poster expresses confusion regarding the word filter, and is insulted with a pejorative term for new, unacculturated users as a result; “newf*g” is a common term of abuse for such users (Manivannan, 2012, p. 4), and is thus a metadiscursive force in this case, incentivizing users to familiarize themselves with

10 the linguistic norms of the site. A post number in the body of a post preceded by two angle brackets indicates that the contents below are in reply to the post corresponding to that post number.

Manivannan argues that 4chan is best viewed as a “cybertext, where active engagement is pivotal to literary exchange and the manufacture of meaning;” this

“manufacture of meaning,” specifically through the sort of "memetic activity" Manivannan describes, is a CMC speech chain through which “desu,” and thus “dess,” become not just a

Japanese copula or, as I will later examine, a term used in the anime fandom, but rather a feature with ties to 4chan, and thus a feature which is useful for 4chan users to know and reproduce in order to validate their status as a valued user (Manivannan, 2012, p. 2). This validation is, as Manivannan argues, especially important given that anyone can easily post on 4chan and the non-identity of Anonymous “is used by over 90% of users8, and users who assume distinct identities are derided for eliding the fundamental experience of anonymity,” so users must repeatedly prove themselves valuable in each new post or thread if they wish to command respect or attention (Manivannan, 2012, pp. 4, 3).

This study is not the first to apply sociolinguistic frameworks to CMC (computer- mediated communication) contexts. In reference to Silverstein (2003)’s framework of orders of indexicality, Squires (2010) notes that each order of indexicality for a linguistic feature, which “may index social properties such as a speaker’s region, gender, style, or stance,” presupposes the order before it; the first order of indexicality, a localized

8 Within a study of /b/, Bernstein et al. (2011) note that 90.07% of posts were created under the title of Anonymous, and only .05% of posts in their sample, or .04% ignoring an in-joke name, used tripcodes, password-based identity verification intended to “guarantee” that the poster was a certain individual (Bernstein et al., 2011, p. 55). See footnote number 27 for further explanation of tripcodes.

11 distribution of features, is thus required to exist under this framework in order for those features to “become noticed and metapragmatically linked to regional speech,” establishing a second-order index (Squires, 2010, pp. 459, 460).

Squires applies this framework to CMC on the internet, but argues that “the internet is not a geographically bounded place with local, place-distributed linguistic features” and that it does not have a “clearly definable population of ‘speakers,’” going on to claim that there is no one internet language with homogenous, exclusive features and that the enregisterment of internet language thus occurs due to metadiscursive association without first-order indexicality (Squires, 2010, p. 461).

This study follows Squires (2010) in applying Agha (2003)’s process of enregisterment to the CMC of internet language, but departs from Squires’ claims that the internet does not have “local, place-distributed linguistic features.” Rather, I will argue that a specific usage of a feature, “desu,” is localized to a virtual locale—the site 4chan.org— and that it is this usage, the localized first-order indexicality, which gives rise to a second- order indexicality (i.e., its linkage to “regional,” that is, site-ingroup, speech) legible to others with adequate exposure to the site.

This indexicality is then leveraged, as I have described, to perform an identity with local value. Bucholtz & Hall (2005) further explain this process in “Identity and

Interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach,” which describes several principles governing the processes through which identities are contextually, multiply and intersubjectively created through the interplay of agency and environment. Of particular

12 relevance to this paper is Bucholtz & Hall (2005)’s indexicality principle, which states that,

“Identity relations emerge in interaction through several related indexical processes, including... the use of linguistic structures and systems that are ideologically associated with specific personas and groups (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 594).” This principle follows

Agha (2004), which demonstrates how speakers modify and align with images of users of linguistic repertoires, and Manivannnan (2012)’s discussion of the importance of valuable users on 4chan, explaining how the specific indexicality of “desu” and “dess,” the usage of which terms in accordance with the site’s norms is, as I have argued and will further demonstrate to be, associated with experienced, and thus valuable, users.

In “Identity, Social Networks and Online Communication,” Merchant (2006) refers to identities of this kind as “transient identities,” which he states “are defined in relation to media narratives, ideologies, popular culture, iconic objects, social activities and networks

(Merchant, 2006, p. 239)”. This means that the usage of “desu” and its variants on 4chan does not necessarily imply that the people using it in that manner will then go on to use the term outside of relevant contexts, as the value of using “desu” lies in the definition and performance of a specific, localized identity. Lisecki (2011) notes that, “4chan's discourse also consists of linguistic forms that are characteristic only for 4chan community (Lisecki,

2011, p. 40.)” Outside of that space, the set of ideologies attached to usage of “desu” and thus the user stereotypes to which speakers might align themselves through use may be different. A survey has been conducted in the course of this study, in part to gauge ideologies surrounding usage of “desu” within and outside of the context of 4chan.

Though their focus is on language-learning through the internet, Thorne et al.

(2015)’s “Technologies, Identities, and Expressive Activity” and Thorne and Black

(2011)’s “Identity and Interaction in Internet-Mediated Contexts” explore the performance of identity in online contexts, and have thus been influential in the conception of this research.

Thorne et al. (2015)’s research on construction of “an ensemble of virtual identities” through text composed by the user is of particular relevance, tying adoption of in-group terminology in a purely textual CMC context to negotiation of situational identity (Thorne et al., 2015, p. 229).

Thorne and Black (2011), which includes a study of “token use of Japanese” on the site fanfiction.net as a “way for fans to index their enthusiasm for and insider status within the realm of anime fandom9 (Thorne and Black, 2011, p. 273),” is also more broadly relevant to the topics of this thesis in that its authors conceive of “learning” and “identity” as “aspects of dialectical transformation rooted in interactions with experienced or more established members of a community,” giving rise to “cultures-of-use” through socialization into various tools (Thorne and Black, 2011, pp. 258, 262).

This proposed mechanism for the transmission of the lexical item, “desu” and its variants, and the linkage of this usage to the creation (or in this case, the growth) of a broader culture which is felt to be shared by participants, echoes Manivannan (2012)’s observation that, “When confronted with cryptic information, users [of 4chan] must

9 Usage of “desu” within the anime fandom will be further examined later in this thesis.

14 continually refresh that thread and rapidly search the whole board for relevant content before it disappears. They ask others within the thread for reference points and seek explanations on paratexts and meta-archives... They screencap the post in question and repost it on other boards, hoping that users will recognize it and supply context

(Manivannnan, 2012, p. 2).” While the paratexts and meta-archives mentioned by

Manivannan (2012) are not directly on-site, they are created by users familiar with the culture of the site, and so learning from one of these resources is another form of contact with an ostensibly-experienced community member. This contact is indirect, displaced temporally and geographically due to its textual nature, but the same could be said of a user reading a post which was made a few days previously on a thread on the site itself.

This spread of “desu” has resulted in its attainment of meme status, and earlier, narrower usages of the meme are documented: Manivannan (2012) explains that “DESU spam10 was part of a 2006 retaliatory raid on /b/ [4chan’s Random board] perpetrated by

Anime - /a/, and the word and image macros of Suiseiseki [a character from the anime,

Rozen Maiden] often disparage obsessive anime fans,” noting also that “institutional knowledge is required to ensure that 4channers utilize these image and linguistic forms correctly, as even incorrect grammar—by normative standards—may be used incorrectly

(Manivannan, 2012, p. 11).”

10 Spamming, or creating large quantities of off-topic, unpleasant or otherwise unwanted posts in a thread, is an effective harassment technique on 4chan because, as previously described, only a certain number of posts can be made in a thread before new posts stop bumping it to the top of the board. So, spamming unwanted posts not only hampers the ability of participants in a thread to have relevant discussions, it can also lead to the thread itself being quickly deleted.

Image 2: A string of “DESU,” a replication of the DESU spam meme described by Manivannan (2012).

The point that “incorrect grammar—by normative standards—may be used incorrectly” is especially illuminating as to the nature of “desu” on 4chan. The “normative standards” Manivannan describes are presumably those of Japanese, in which the usage of

です or desu is described by Tsujimura (2014) as follows: “In the stylized form – used in a formal situation11 – nouns and adjectival nouns are followed by -desu, the stylized version of -da (Tsujimura, 2014, p. 217);” Tsujimura describes -da as “a copula... which has a function similar to a verb in a sentence,” and which is used “in the conjugation paradigm of nominal sentences” and after a “noun-postposition sequence” in place of a predicate when a

“specific prior context” has been provided (Tsujimura, 2014, pp. 127, 133, 134).

11 There is a good deal of research offering alternative analyses of desu, such as Maynard (1990), which analyzes desu/-masu form in terms of discourse modality (Maynard, 1990, p. 551), but this is beyond the scope of this thesis, which is primarily concerned with the usage of desu in an English-language context.

However, the departure from these standards, that is, from the grammatical constraints of Japanese, and the accompanying process of formation of new standards of correct usage, is indicative of the progress from code-switching into Japanese, into the creation of a loanword originating in Japanese—I will argue this particularly in reference to

“desu” and its forms as used in the data, though this should not be taken to apply to all instances of its usage.

In “Japanese fanspeak in the Anglophone manga and anime fan culture,” Bloem

(2014) classifies “desu” as “the only instance of [code-switching] found in fanspeak

(Bloem, 2014, p. 28).” Though Bloem does note that “[m]any fanspeak users who post this kind of language on the internet seem to be fluent in neither English nor Japanese, so they might simply not be able respect the grammar of both languages (Bloem, 2014, p. 29),” and therefore may make mistakes12, this is particularly problematic to analysis of “desu” as code-switching, as Bloem notes that under Poplack (1980)’s definition of code-switching,

“code switching has to obey the grammar of both languages (Bloem, 2014, p. 28).” I believe that this contradiction is not resolved by attributing the violation of grammatical constraints to limited linguistic ability, but rather that, outside of instances of code- switching which do not violate these constraints, or cases in which the produced sentence is nonsensical within English, it should be taken to indicate the creation of a loanword with different grammatical constraints—as Manivannan argues, this lexical form which does not

12 For instance, Bloem’s data include the following sentence: “At least this isn't a pairing where fangirls stick them together just because they're “kawaii desu desu ne (Bloem, 2014, p. 30).” The construction “desu desu” is not grammatical in Japanese, which would call into question the applicability of the term “code-switching.”

17 conform to the source language’s grammatical constraints has its own, new set of rules within its new environment.

Rather, I will argue that the “desu” within Bloem (2014)’s data is in transition from code-switching in some instances13 into an unusual, specialized loanword discourse marker in others14. In “Exploring the Pragmatic Functions of the Acronym LOL in Instant

Messenger Conversations,” Markman (2013) claims that lol (an acronym for “laughing out loud”) is a pragmatic or discourse marker in IM (instant message) discourse, often used as a stand-alone marker or in a transmission-initial or transmission-final position. Markman argues that transmission-final lol “can be used as a way to align to particular participation frameworks (Markman, 2013, p. 6),” and I believe that “desu,” as is especially clear in its usage on 4chan where it can be automatically converted from “tbh,” performs this function when it is used as a discourse marker and not in code-switching.

In Forms of Talk, Goffman (1981) describes the participation framework as, “the circle, ratified and unratified, in which the utterance is variously received, and in which individuals have various participation statuses,” noting that “[t]he relation of...all the persons in the gathering” to an utterance is the participation framework for that utterance

(Goffman, 1981, pp. 226, 137). In this case, the participation framework would be either friendly or excited anime/manga fan discussion15, or desirable (as per Manivannan (2012))

13 E.g. “This is Taiwan doujinshi desu (Bloem, 2014, p.29).” 14 See footnote number 12 for an example. 15 Of the non-mocking and non-gibberish (the gibberish cases may also be a type of mockery) cases of “desu” given by Bloem, only the sentence reproduced in footnote number 13 does not obviously convey a sort of energetic positivity.

18 discussion among valuable users on 4chan, and in either case the speaker adopts the term to align with the role of valuable community member—either, as a respondent to Bloem

(2014) reports, to prove that they are a “good otaku desu (Bloem, 2014, p. 12),” or to show their enculturation into the 4chan community; Alternatively, users can adopt this term ironically, mocking the people who ostensibly occupy these roles. Further discussion of this analysis will follow presentation of the data collected through this research.

However, if “desu” is indeed a loanword, then it has behaved unusually in its incorporation into English. In “Japanese Loanwords Found in the Oxford English

Dictionary and Kæmpfer’s the History of Japan,” Schun Doi (2013) proposes a three-stage model of naturalization:

1. The loanwords are paraphrased by more common or easily-recognizable words

and phrases.

2. The loanwords are used attributively, with a loanword “and the following English

word together [behaving] as full-scale compound nouns,” as in “tatami room” (Doi,

2013, p. 79).

3. The loanwords acquire greater productivity, including derivation, figurative

usage and changes of meaning; For example, “kimonoed” and “Kabukiesque,” “a

tsunami of comments” and “hibachi,” respectively (Doi, 2013, pp. 82, 84, 86).

However, Doi also notes that technical words do not obey this model, and that “a word which might be naturalised to a certain degree in a specialised field might well be to some extent behind, or less frequently, ahead, in vernacular language in different fields

(Doi, 2013, p. 90)”. While I do not agree with the implication that “desu” must eventually be popularized in vernacular usage given that it is largely used to perform transient identities, I do think that its spread is best viewed as that of a kind of technical jargon16.

“Desu” does not seem to have gone through these proposed stages normally—It could be argued that it is paraphrased in a way in some posts on 4chan through an attached image of an anime girl or, very abstractly, that all of the forms are in a way paraphrased through the conversational context, but this is a far more vague sense of paraphrase than the literal instances considered by Doi, and the term naturally cannot be used attributively in most contexts. Rather, in the sense that fan communities are specialized and may be expected to have a sort of specialist knowledge of the Japanese used in anime, and given that, as previously discussed, mastery of “desu” can be leveraged to construct an identity as a valuable community member in those English-language communities which use it, the term resembles community-exclusive technical language.

Still, it is not clear that it would have been possible for “desu” to go through the stages proposed by Doi (or those proposed by Cannon (1994) or Kimura-Kano (2005,

2006), which Doi reviews) in the first place. The apparent incompatibility of all forms of

“desu” with the provided models of distribution may be largely because of its unusual word class; Discourse markers cannot be paraphrased or used attributively easily because they lack obvious lexical content. However, “desu” does appear to have acquired productivity, given novel constructions like “desu desu”. This process may require further study, and an

16 I owe this insight, and a great deal of invaluable guidance and criticism, to my advisor, Dr. Ann Wehmeyer.

20 expansion of available models for naturalization of Japanese terms into English may be required.

While Manivannan (2012) discusses the memetic nature of “desu” as used before the word filter, “desu” as it exists on 4chan at present is anomalous in that not every instance, and possibly not even the majority of instances, of its occurrence have been intentional. Furthermore, the apparent inability of “desu” to expand on the meaning of

“tbh,” given that the denotative meaning of “tbh” is often transferred directly to “desu” via the word filter, would call into question its memetic success. Analyzing emoticons as a prototypical digital meme, Davison argues that a possible factor in their replicative success is their capacity to “add the possibility of a new level of meaning—a level impossible without them (Davison, 2012, p. 124)”. However, the existence of alternative forms like

“dess” indicates that there are users deliberately producing and reproducing this form. This suggests that the indexical qualities of “desu” have been considered important enough by speakers in the 4chan community to incentivize replication of the term.

Application of Davison (2012)’s analysis to “desu” as it exists on 4chan is further complicated by the unusual relationship between the point at which “desu” is “produced” and the point at which it is encountered; The point of production may not involve a human at all, but the form “desu” appears in the final text encountered by human readers. Davison presents use and view as qualities of memes, and defines engagement as taking “the form of either use or viewing or, more in keeping with the terms of malleable and replicable, of transformation or transmission (Davison, 2012, p. 126)”.

While I will only analyze cases of “dess” because the form is identical in transformative “use” and its viewed “transmission,” “desu” is very much present in transmission on 4chan regardless of whether it was initially typed as “tbh”. Furthermore, as

I have demonstrated, not every user of 4chan is aware of the existence of the word filter.

Thus, “desu” on 4chan is an interesting case in which the transmission of the term, its

“view” characteristic, demonstrates a far larger presence and correspondingly a much higher degree of engagement than it may independently have achieved through selection for

“use”. While the exact nature of the transformative aspect of engagement with the term is obfuscated when its standard spelling is observed, the existence of user engagement through viewing is self-evident in the many posts containing “desu” on the site, and engagement through use is visible through “dess.”

Pajunen (2017) applies a “netnography,”or “virtual ethnography” approach to studying memes on Ylilauta.org, which Pajunen describes as “the Finnish version of the famous imageboard, 4chan” (Pajunen, 2017, p. 2). Pajunen (2017)’s categorization of meme images in certain threads on Ylilauta by usage, and the illustration of these categories with representative posts, have greatly influenced the methodology of this thesis and the manner in which the data I have gathered are presented.

Pajunen also references Bernstein et al. (2011), which is particularly relevant to the topic of this thesis. Bernstein et al. follow Eble (1996) in noting that, “To communicate high status in the [anonymous 4chan] community, most users tend to turn to textual, linguistic, and visual cues. In many communities, including /b/, slang plays a role in

22 delineating group membership (Bernstein et al., 2011, p. 56).” However, the group users are signaling membership of is not merely the larger body of 4chan users, but that of users of a certain status: Bernstein et al. argue that the “lack of identity [on 4chan] makes traditional reputation systems unworkable,” creating a need for “alternative credibility mechanisms — via language and images,” with “in-dialect writing [serving] as an entry- level signal of membership and status” (Bernstein et al., 2011, pp. 50, 51, 56).

This concept of a “high status” user can be equated to Manivannan (2012)’s

“valuable user;” these roles require that the participant is knowledgeable of the site culture, and the presentation of this knowledge through use of language and images is a “credibility mechanism” in the same way the handbook referenced in Agha (2004) portrays a certain accent as capable of transforming its user’s social role and thereby earning “respectful attention (Agha, 2004, p. 253).” On the other hand, as previously demonstrated via Image

1, users who demonstrate a lack of knowledge of how language on the site works risk discrediting themselves as “newf*gs” who have not earned this sort of respect. This further supports the argument that there is an incentive not just for users to recognize “desu” as used on 4chan, but to understand and leverage the localized rules (automatically enforced and dictated by the community) for its usage.

METHODOLOGY

Data were collected for this study through two surveys and a search of the 4chan archive archived.moe. Sentence data from Bloem (2014) were also considered in analysis, as is described in the Review of the Literature.

Two identical copies of a survey were created for this study. The surveys were created and administered through the survey software Qualtrics and used skip logic to secure informed consent and ensure that only respondents familiar with the term “desu” would be shown questions relating to it. The surveys, which did not gather any names or other personally identifiable information, asked respondents their native language(s), whether they were fluent in English, whether they had studied Japanese (and if so, what their self-reported level of proficiency was), and whether they were familiar with the term

"desu." Respondents who reported that they were familiar with the term were also asked to answer in what context(s) they had encountered it, what connotation(s) the term held for them, in what context(s) they thought it might be used, and in what context(s) they might use it outside of speaking in Japanese.

A link to one of these surveys was anonymously distributed on the “Worksafe

Requests” board of 4chan along with a short request for respondents and a chibi-style image of Touhou Project character Reimu Hakurei holding a donation box17, and this

17 The decisions to post anonymously in the appropriate board in accordance with site culture, not to collect or provide any names, and to include a cute, friendly image were made to attract as many responses as possible and to mitigate the “possibility of trolling,” or respondents deliberately providing untrue information to inconvenience the researcher or protect anonymity, discussed by Pajunen (Pajunen, 2017, p. 44); It was assumed that respondents would be less motivated to hamper the research if the researcher displayed an

24 survey received 11 responses. A link to the other, identical survey was posted under the researcher’s Facebook account to “SwampCon Discussion,” a page for discussion related to the local anime convention SwampCon18. This survey received 14 responses. Responses to both surveys and preliminary analysis of those responses are provided in the Findings section.

Additionally, every post archived on archived.moe made between January 1, 2015 and November 21, 2018 (near the time of application to the IRB) containing the string

“dess” was analyzed by the researcher within a participant observer role19 and was sorted into defined categories according to the criteria described in the Findings section.

Archived.moe consistently displays 25 posts per page of search results unless there are no more posts to show, which made it easy to ensure that all posts were accounted for. Figures

1 and 2 in the Findings section display the total number of posts in each category across all search results.

As a focus of this study was analyzing instances of a “Confessional/Evaluative” usage of “dess,” the criteria for which are described in the Findings section, a screen

understanding of and respect for the site’s community norms, and as the survey contained no threats to respondents’ anonymity, they were not motivated to act to protect it. 18 Facebook requires users to present a name, which is intended to be their actual name, so anonymity is not a cultural norm for the site. However, while the researcher’s name was provided, respondents’ names were not solicited or gathered. 19 This approach, which requires the researcher to have spent time on and familiarized themselves with the site, is similar to that taken by Pajunen (2017). It is especially important that a researcher studying 4chan understand site norms given that, as Pajunen notes in reference to Yliluata, “[i]t is important to recognize trolling and the use of irony in order to understand the context of images (Pajunen, 2017, p. 43),” or in this case, that of posts in general.

25 capture of each post corresponding to this usage was gathered for later demonstration and analysis.

This approach was designed with the assumption that only one category of “dess” usage would occur per post, and was adopted on a provisional basis as it was judged to create the least potential for miscounting posts or otherwise losing track of a usage.

Ultimately, no posts within the data set contained more than one category of “dess” usage per post, and so this assumption was not challenged.

FINDINGS

Gauging Language Ideologies of “Desu” in Two Communities:

4chan’s Worksafe Requests Board

Of the 11 respondents from 4chan’s Worksafe Requests board, all 11 consented to participate in the project. Of the 10 respondents who reported familiarity with desu, eight reported their native language to be English, one German and one Indonesian. Ten respondents reported that they were fluent in English. Five of the respondents indicated some level of familiarity with Japanese.

The respondents reported encountering desu through the Japanese language or in

Japan, through anime, in “English discussion of Japanese culture (typically discussion of the language itself, or of particular works of fiction),” in “General internet browsing/communities,” “in anime and in imageboard memes,” as a “raid meme” and

“imageboard filter word,” and in the context of “someone giving an opinion.” Overall, five respondents mentioned encountering “desu” through anime or Japanese media, and three respondents mentioned meme or imageboard use.

Notably, the respondent who mentioned encountering “desu” in the context of

“someone giving an opinion” did not indicate in any of their responses that they were aware of the word filter20—They did, however, respond that they would define desu as “anime, otaku, weeb, Japanese, hope to live at anime world.” It is possible that this respondent, who

20 Of course, this does not mean that there is no possibility of this respondent knowing about the word filter, but it does indicate that they at least did not describe a causal link between the filter and the usage of “desu” with opinions in their explanation of its context.

27 had reported they were not fluent in English, may have slightly misinterpreted the question, but this response is nevertheless useful in providing a definition of users corresponding to that given in Bloem (2014), where desu is linked to “overly enthusiastic manga and anime fans” and the mockery of those fans (Bloem, 2014, p. 29).

Respondents noted that they thought desu might be used within Japanese-language contexts or discussions of Japanese language, or either accompanying a meme or as a meme itself. One respondent, who like the previously-discussed one did not indicate an awareness of the word filter, stated that they believed in an online context desu was

“usually [used] ironically or to express/indicate a sort of meme/joke,” and noted that the connotation it held for them as an American “seeing it only in Anime and online as a joke” was “primarily an ironic or silly connotation”. This same respondent said that while they would not use desu in any context, “people similar to [the respondent] may put it at the end of their sentences to sound Japanese (or pretending to sound like someone TRYING to sound Japanese) for a joke;” this characterization further echoes Bloem (2014). Aside from this respondent, few participants indicated that desu carried any specific connotations for them, aside from that of “boardspam.”

Only seven of the respondents offered a definition of desu in response to the question, “If you are able to define desu, how would you do so?” with most generally describing its usage in Japanese (aside from the respondent who defined a type of speaker); one respondent also mentioned “tbh” along with the Japanese usage, bringing the total number of respondents who referenced the word filter to two. While all of the respondents

28 who offered a definition for desu corresponded more or less closely to the description given by Tsujimura (2014), with definitions ranging from “polite modifier” to polite “linking verb” to “it is,” one respondent who defined the term in this manner also stated that they thought it might be used in contexts in which “you say it while listening to others talk just to show you’re engaged.” While this is not totally accurate, the respondent may have been referencing aizuchi phrases such as そうですか (sou desu ka), which are used for this general purpose in conversational Japanese.

Only two respondents indicated that they would use desu outside of producing sentences in Japanese, with one respondent saying that they would use it in, “jokes or references about fictional characters who use 'desu' in irregular ways / frequency” and another saying they would use it in “[b]oardspam, except it’s funny when I do it.”

Gauging Language Ideologies of “Desu” in Two Communities:

SwampCon Anime Convention Community

14 people from the SwampCon Discussion page consented to participate in this research project, but only 12 respondents answered any questions beyond providing informed consent. 10 respondents reported their native language to be English, with two respondents reporting that they were native speakers of Spanish and of Burmese in addition to English. One respondent reported that their native language was Mandarin Chinese, and another reported it to be Russian. All respondents reported fluency in English.

Remarkably, all 12 respondents reported some level of proficiency in Japanese—

This may have been because anime fans are generally incentivized to learn Japanese, or are exposed to the language enough to consider themselves to have some level of proficiency with it. It is also possible that posting the survey link under my name influenced these results; while I did not advertise the survey outside of the post on the relevant page and did not describe the topic or contents of this study to others, I am in my university’s Japanese program, and others from the program may have recognized my name and been motivated to answer as a result. However, I have not attended SwampCon and I am not involved in any anime fan communities, and as nobody has made any comments to me about having completed the survey in person or on Facebook, this is purely speculation.

Respondents noted that they have heard desu via anime, Japanese study, as a result of living in Japan, through memes, and "[b]oth correctly used, and the fan-bastardization,” with this final context again echoing Bloem (2014). While 12 respondents claimed to be familiar with desu, only six defined desu (and these six were the only respondents to continue past this point in the survey), with most of these respondents giving general definitions of the Japanese usage and one stating that it was “[a]bsolutely meaningless yet simultaneously essential in japanese,” seemingly referencing its function as a copula.

Respondents generally stated they thought desu would be used in conversational contexts, with one respondent stating they thought it would be used in “multiple contexts” and another referencing a meme21. Regarding the connotations desu carried for them, one

21 The respondent simply submitted DESU VULT, a reference to “Deus Vult,” which knowyourmeme.com describes as having “gained popularity among fans of the strategy video game series Crusader Kings, as well

30 respondent noted that when “[w]ritten in romaji, [the connotation is] of western-born otaku impersonators.” This would appear to further reflect Bloem (2014), though it is unclear whether the otaku “impersonators” are thought to be those impersonating otaku to mock them, or otaku impersonating Japanese people. Another mentioned that they were “aware of the american mockery of [desu],” which is similarly ambiguous. Two respondents noted a polite or “neutral/polite” connotation, and two others viewed desu as a simple function word.

Outside of Japanese sentences, one respondent noted that they would use desu

“[o]nly to others who speak both english and japanese, embedded at the end of english clauses,” while another (not the same respondent who referenced a meme previously) responded that they would use desu in “[m]eme usage.” Finally, one respondent noted that,

“Before I studied Japanese in the mid 2000's, it was very common for anime fans to say

"desu" to describe a certain style of anime (big eyes, childish demeanor, strange clothes, high-pitched voice etc). Or it would be tagged at the end of sentences to mock otaku.”

Analyzing Instances of “Dess” on 4chan, as Archived on archived.moe

The site archived.moe offers 1069 results for the string "dess" between 01/01/2015 and 11/21/2018. Of these, 343 miscellaneous results were excluded. These excluded results included phrases like "god(dess)" which incidentally contained “dess,” typos, names,

as the alt-right camp on Reddit's /r/The_Donald and 4chan's /pol/ (politically incorrect) board, typically in the context of discussions relating to Islamic extremism and the moe anthropomorphized humanization character Christ-chan (Know Your Meme, 2018).”

31 intentional misspellings (e.g. of “this”) and so forth. In addition to these instances, results which were not composed as part of a larger string of phonetically-approximated Japanese

(which has been categorized independently, as discussed later in this section) or English were also excluded from analysis, as this is an English-focused study. While few occurred within the data, replies to deleted posts were not considered either, unless they were in a category which was not dependent upon context (for example, a reply containing an image of an anime character which is obviously using “dess” as roleplay would be marked

Anime/Manga regardless of the original post).

A number of posts contained “dess” at the end of sentences which primarily convey some information about the speaker or their opinions. I have classified such posts, which primarily communicate some desire, belief, condition or personal quality of the speaker, or appraisal of/reaction to another’s post or a salient topic, as “Confessional/Evaluative”. This categorization appears to use “dess” similarly to the acronym “tbh,” which is to be expected given that “desu” is, as has been previously mentioned, a word filter for “tbh” on 4chan.

However, it should again be noted that the users whose posts are included in these data have chosen to type “dess” as opposed to “tbh” or “desu,” making it clear that they have used this phrase deliberately and that it is not appearing as a result of the word filter.

Following previously-discussed connotations of “desu” as describing a type of anime with, as one respondent put it, “big eyes, childish demeanor, strange clothes, high- pitched voice etc,” and being associated with “too enthusiastic anime fans (Bloem, 2014, p.

24)” and the mockery of those fans and qualities, I have classified posts which I believe use

“dess” to directly reference, or roleplay in relation to, anime, manga or associated cultural elements as “Anime/Manga.” While many posts including "dess" as what appears to be a discourse marker in a “Confessional/Evaluative” context are accompanied by a picture of, or reference to, an anime or manga character, posts were categorized as “Anime/Manga” and not “Confessional/Evaluative” when referencing or roleplaying as the character or fan community appeared to be the primary motivation for the inclusion of “dess.”

Karen Kujo of Kin-iro Mosaic and Kongo of Kantai Collection appear frequently in these roleplay-type posts, with both being associated strongly with “dess” or “desu” by posters on the site—Kongo is frequently referred to as “Kongo Dess” and both Kongo and

Karen are often simply called “the Dess” or a variant of that phrase. Many posts responding to posters which have used these images also contain “dess,” creating a back-and-forth exchange with the in-character posts.

Walls of repeated, capitalized “DESS” or “DESU” also appeared semi-frequently, replicating the DESU spam meme described by Manivannan (2012). These posts were also frequently replied to, either directly or simply by posting below them, with only “desu,”

“dess,” or strings of “DESU”/”DESS.”

Usage in larger sentences which phonetically approximate Japanese (used to ask questions about grammar, easily transcribe sentences, make puns or mock an accent, etc.) has been classified as “JPN.”

Instances in which “dess” is used either to quote a thread-internal source (i.e., another post) or external source (such as a specific line said by a character) have been

33 classified as “Quote.” However, when users were roleplaying as, or referencing, anime or manga characters or fans and generating novel lines with “dess,” the posts were classified as Anime/Manga. References to a specific popular meme in which a user responds to a prompt asking questions such as, “What is the saddest book you’ve ever read?” with the set phrase, “My diary desu” or, “My diary dess,” were also classified as “Quote.” This usage may be classifiable as “Confessional/Evaluative” in form22, but its primary intent is to quote or echo the meme and so it has been categorized accordingly.

The data below should be taken as an approximation of usage frequencies across the posts reviewed, holding for the form “dess.” These instances were categorized according to my understanding of site culture and personally-held communicative norms, so it is possible that another individual would evaluate some posts differently. For instance, many posts which were accompanied by images of Karen Kujo or Kongo or responses to those posts contained several instances of sentence-final “dess” or various puns on the term, and while they may have contained “Confessional/Evaluative” content, almost all instances of this sort of post were categorized as “Anime/Manga.” Of course, it is also possible that users composing posts within Anime/Manga contexts chose their accompanying image in relation to their post’s content rather than creating content to function with an image, but as this could not be clearly determined it was assumed that roleplay was their primary function.

22 In fact, there is at least one instance in which a respondent does not recognize the meme and takes it as such.

It should be noted that, as posts can perform several functions and contain several of the described qualities at once, categorization of a post into one category is not meant to imply that it does not contain any elements of the other categories. In order to ensure any possible roleplay or metatextual elements were accounted for within posts which were primarily “Confessional/Evaluative” in nature, these posts have been subcategorized as follows23:

1. Without Anime/Manga context: Describes posts which did not include any

pictorial or textual reference to anime, manga or their associated fan communities,

and which did not reply to a topic or post related to the aforementioned topics.

2. With direct Anime/Manga context: Describes posts which directly included a

pictorial or textual reference to anime, manga or their associated fan communities,

but which were still deemed to be primarily “Confessional/Evaluative” in intent, as

discussed previously.

3. In response to Anime/Manga context: Describes posts which replied to a post or

topic which contained a pictorial or textual reference to anime, manga or their

associated fan communities, but which, like 2.), were still deemed to be primarily

“Confessional/Evaluative” in intent.

23 I am indebted to Dr. Christopher Smith for his observations regarding roleplay as an incentive to use “dess” among the data, as well as for various other insights which have been of great help in the development of this thesis.

Figure 1. Total Distribution of “Dess” Across 726 Posts

Confessional/Evaluative Anime/Manga JPN Quote Total

40 571 81 34 726

As can be seen here, the most common usage of “dess” by far was in primarily

“Anime/Manga” contexts. The strong association of “dess” with several characters, and more broadly with anime characters24, resulted in this disparity, with entire roleplay- or anime-centric threads of “dess”-marked exchanges and heavy usage accompanying simple image posts of female characters.

Figure 2. Classification of “Confessional/Evaluative” Instances of “Dess”

Without Anime/ With direct Anime/ In response to Anime/ Total Manga context Manga context Manga context

28 3 9 40

In the following section I will discuss each of these categories, offering several representative posts for each one. I will also discuss posts which were challenging to categorize, or which demonstrate additional qualities or usages of “dess.”

24 Notably, almost every associated image was of a female character, which suggests that “dess,” and thus “desu,” are, as would follow from the previously-described associations of “desu,” coded as strongly feminine by anime and manga fans.

For all screenshots of 4chan posts or threads preserved on archived.moe, I have adopted the convention of capturing only relevant posts. Exceptionally long posts or those with irrelevant sections significantly extending their length have been trimmed. A white space in the middle of a post indicates that it has been trimmed, while a white space between posts indicates that intervening posts were deemed irrelevant and removed, creating an abridged section of the thread. Black or dark grey space between posts is simply the normal background of archived.moe and indicates a continuous thread.

1. Confessional/Evaluative “Dess” without Anime/Manga context

These usages of “dess” were the ones most commonly categorized as

Confessional/Evaluative, but this is likely at least in part because the

“Confessional/Evaluative” elements in these posts were not accompanied by Anime/Manga elements which were weighed against them to determine primary intent; posts in a direct

Anime/Manga context or those which were a response to that context were generally treated as Anime/Manga unless there was strong proof that their primary intent was

“Confessional/Evaluative.” Most of these posts were found on the boards /ck/, Food &

Cooking; /o/, Auto; and /lgbt/, a board intended for discussion of topics of particular interest to the LGBT community. However, these posts were not limited to those three boards.

Many of the posts using “dess” in this manner conveyed a primarily evaluative stance, as in the following examples. Here, “Evaluative” posts were classified as those

37 which primarily communicated a belief of the speaker which contradicted another user’s previously-stated belief, or which criticized or assigned value to another user’s post, the topic of that post, or another user or community.

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

One post also used “dess” in this evaluative sense metatextually:

Image 6

In this case, the poster does not directly offer any sort of explicit evaluation of the thread. Instead, the simple “dess” appears to be a commentary on the previous responses, indicating that the poster has read the previous posts and deems them to merit no more than a simple, flippant, content-less evaluation. However, this usage would be anomalous with the discourse marker “tbh.”

This difference in distribution can be explained through the previously described connotations of “dess” as describing kawaii (cute) anime with “big eyes, childish demeanor, strange clothes, high-pitched voice etc” or its overenthusiastic fans (Bloem,

2014, pp. 23, 24, 29); the poster sets these connotations against the inflammatory, harsh tone of the original post, creating a comprehensible appraisal of the content without posting any additional analysis. These connotations are always accessible to some degree within usages of “dess,” but here the reader must rely upon them to an exceptional degree to give rise to a coherent interpretation (whereas a reply of simply “tbh” would be incoherent)25.

Meanwhile, posts which primarily communicated some belief of the speaker which did not contradict a previous post, or which primarily conveyed some information about the poster’s desires, condition or personality or character, were classified as “Confessional.”

While some of these “Confessional” posts were more likely to be controversial than others, including posts which gave the poster’s opinion on a matter (a form of evaluation), they did not evaluate the opinions or character of others, and could not directly initiate conflict.

25 Despite the availability of these connotations, it should be noted that none of these posts bear any direct relation to anime, manga, their fandoms or Japanese culture.

The categorization of how likely a post was to be controversial is not clearly- bounded, and so I have not attempted to quantitatively differentiate posts within the

“Confessional” category. However, examples of less controversial posts can be found below:

Image 7

Image 8

In the above image, the poster is the only one in the thread to use “dess,” but a poster above (indicating that they posted earlier in the thread) uses “desu”—Though it is not possible to determine the intent of the creator of post number 9291348, the creator of post number 9291593 has chosen to echo the form while communicating their intent to do so through using “dess” rather than “desu,” either in reference to the previous post or to the general convention of ending this sort of post with “tbh”/“desu,” as followed by the creator of post number 9291348. Despite this, the content of post number 9291593 does not

42 strongly interact with that of post number 9291348—It is still largely an independent statement of personal preference in relation to a prompt soliciting such statements.

On the other hand, the following posts may be somewhat more controversial:

Image 9

Note that in this case the poster has typed “dess” alongside either “desu” or “tbh,” allowing them to create a post which both displays the standard form of the term26 while also demonstrating their intentional usage of the meme. The addition of “imho,” “in my humble opinion,” further emphasizes the poster’s awareness that their opinion is subjective and debatable, with the stacking of three qualifications bordering on a farcical or self- mocking modesty. The attached image is also mostly unrelated, referencing controversial public figure and author Sam Harris. Its only relevance may be to the literary nature of the

26 Alternatively, though this is unlikely as they were probably aware of the word filter given their choice of an alternate spelling, it is possible the original composition instead contained the “tbh” discourse marker in place of “desu” and thus exploited the characteristics of that term.

43 board and the general value of memes on 4chan as localized cultural capital, discussed by

Manivannan (2012, p. 2).

In the following image, the poster does express agreement with another’s opinion, but “dess” marks the confessional, informative clause of their post:

Image 10

Overall, 16 instances of this usage of “dess” were deemed to be more strongly

“Evaluative,” 11 instances were deemed more “Confessional,” and one instance was deemed ambiguous. The ambiguous case is given below:

Image 11

While the “dess” in this image is more “Evaluative” than “Confessional” in that it follows the poster’s complaints about the other users in the thread, this usage differs somewhat from the others in that the “Dess,” typed as a separate sentence, seems to convey a performative return to the kawaii or positive tone of “desu” as examined previously following the poster’s complaints. Alternatively, it may be intended to give the impression that the poster is legitimately too irritated to participate in the “dess” meme, momentarily forgetting themselves (if in appearance only) before reclaiming their in-group status.

“Tbh,” which would be awkward in this position, does not carry either of these indexical relationships, and so its inability to perfectly replace “dess” is again due to a difference in indexicality.

2. Confessional/Evaluative “Dess” with direct Anime/Manga context

These posts were deemed to be the least common variant of “dess,” in large part due to the difficulty in ascertaining that they were not a form of roleplay. For example, the following post looks very much like a report of the poster’s opinion on anime:

Image 12

However, the post is accompanied by a picture of Karen Kujo, which creates a strong possibility that “dess” has been included in the post primarily to reference the character as an example of “good” anime or an indication that the poster is a Karen roleplayer and thus obviously enjoys anime. As such, posts of this kind were generally considered Anime/Manga unless the accompanying image was of a character which no other posters linked to “dess,” and there was no strong contextual cue for the addition of

“dess”.

For example, in the following image the character Rei Ayanami of Neon Genesis

Evangelion is discussed. Rei is not mentioned in any of the 725 other relevant posts made within the studied time period, and so there is no contemporary convention of associating

46 her with the term. The poster’s usage of “dess” appears to be primarily associated with

“best girl,” a meme phrase itself, in stating the poster’s preference:

Image 13

Similarly, the instance of “dess” in the following example is its only usage in the thread (though a later poster does comment in regard to a different image that, “maki looks tokuni kawaii here desu”):

Image 14

Aside from the aforementioned reference with “desu,” there was no evidence of a strong convention of associating the characters in the image, who appear to be Maki

Nishikino and Nico Yazawa of the Love Live franchise, with “dess” within the data.

However, several “Waifu Threads,” which are related in that they exist primarily to share pictures of anime characters, did make use of “dess.”

Overall, one instance of this usage of “dess” was deemed to be more strongly

“Evaluative” and two instances were deemed more “Confessional.”

3. Confessional/Evaluative “Dess” in response to Anime/Manga context

These posts were very similar to those classified under category 2.), aside from the obvious difference in how strongly-related their context was. This distance made it a bit easier to differentiate roleplaying from Confessional/Evaluative usage, though as has been previously mentioned, the categories are not totally mutually exclusive. Representative examples of this category are given below:

Image 15

This post represents the only usage of “dess” in its thread. While its poster did not directly reply to a previous post, “this” is used here and in other threaded CMC contexts to easily express agreement with a previous statement—a similar evaluative usage occurs in the following post with “same”:

Image 16

An ambiguous usage identical to that in 1.) also occurs in this context, together with

a sarcastic, “You’re welcome.”

Image 17

As this usage has already been examined, an explanation will not be repeated here.

Similarly, the following post demonstrates a possibly-evaluative situation in which

“dess” is used primarily for its connotations, and could not be naturally replaced with

“tbh:”

Image 18

As ‘loli” refers to “characters which are the objects of [attraction to underage girls]

(Bloem, 2014, p. 21)” within the anime and manga fan communities, this post must be considered within that context. This “dess” is evaluative in the sense that its poster is attempting to communicate that the creator of post number 763093 is not welcome on the site (through labeling them as a “shill” for a content aggregator site), but the primary quality it imparts upon the sentence as a whole is its ironic contrast with the aggressive tone of the message.

In total, none of these usages were deemed mostly confessional, seven were determined to be mostly evaluative and two were found ambiguous. The lack of a confessional usage may be due to the necessarily-interactive nature of these posts, but the provided statements of shared opinion could also be interpreted as primarily confessional—

They are on the border between the two categories in the sense that they state the user’s opinion in the context of agreeing with another post.

4. Further Considerations

Given the anonymous nature of 4chan, it is possible that a significant portion of

“dess” usage is attributable to a small number of posters. However, while an exact number of posters cannot be determined, the content of some posts (e.g. differing reported professions and areas of study) necessitate multiple posters, and several traits of the posts suggest that they were made by a number of unique individuals.

One such trait is the flag by some posts, a feature available in certain threads that is used by posters to self-report their nationality. The few flags which are present in the data indicate that users from America, Canada and Mexico have used the

Confessional/Evaluative “dess.” Another trait is the variation in typing styles across posts

(capitalization, punctuation, etc.), implying multiple authors. Additionally, 4chan allows users to post under a unique username secured with a tripcode27 in order to identify their

27 A “tripcode” is a numeric hash generated by a keyword. The hash follows the user’s name, and is used by some posters to authenticate which posts they have made and prevent imitators from simply adopting the same name.

posts. Only one post from a named user appeared with a Confessional/Evaluative usage in

the data, and the username did not reappear among other Confessional/Evaluative posts

using “dess” from the same board, further supporting this analysis.

Given the prevalence of Anime/Manga-type posts, it is logically possible that some

posters have acquired the habit of ending sentences in “dess” in a roleplay context and are

transferring it to their posts of other types without a particular meaning in mind. Indeed, in

a post classified as Anime/Manga one user notes that, “When I use [dess] it's nonsense, I

just use it to make sentences feel more ‘finished’..? I don't know how to explain, think of it

like an itch that you want to scratch, dess.”

Image 19 (This post has been abridged because it contained several irrelevant replies, making it too long to reproduce in its entirety.)

This usage is interesting in that it challenges the boundaries of what might be

defined as code-switching; the user claims their own usage is “nonsense,” which implies

that they are not attempting to respect the grammatical restraints of Japanese. At the same

time, however, they are imitating a specific anime speech context.

But, this explanation cannot be applied to each instance of “dess” in the data set.

The meaningful usage of “dess” in contexts which leverage its indexicality, as described in the previous sections, cannot be explained by a simple habit, nor does this justify the distribution of “dess” across specific types of post, rather than at random. Moreover, an analysis of that sort does not take into account the widespread occurrence of the word filter- enforced “desu” specifically on 4chan.

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

Through this study, I have examined the usage of “dess” on 4chan, showing that it is used within the contexts I have named “Confessional/Evaluative,” “Anime/Manga,”

“JPN” and “Quote.” Of these, I have chosen to closely analyze only those usages of “dess” within “Confessional/Evaluative” contexts, both in reference to anime and manga and without visible reference to these areas. Within these “Confessional/Evaluative” contexts, a user is commenting in reference to themselves, or providing their appraisal, or reaction to, a post or topic. In all of these cases, users have an obvious motive to present themselves in a manner that “‘give[s] importance’ to message content and ‘engages the respectful attention’ of the [reader] (Agha, 2004, p. 253);” on a site where anyone can easily post and there are many posts to potentially read, posters are incentivized to justify why another user should spend time reading their post or care about their opinions or personal information, and positioning themselves as a “valuable user” with “a discerning eye for valuable cultural capital” provides such a justification (Manivannan, 2012, p.2).

Usage of “dess” within a “Confessional/Evaluative” context is thus a linguistic strategy adopted by users to participate within the system of “alternate credibility mechanisms (Bernstein et al., 2011, p.51)” on 4chan, aligning the poster with the role of valuable community member within a participation framework (worthwhile discussion by or between enculturated users,) which merits the attention of other users (Goffman, 1981).

This is an especially effective credibility mechanism because there is little available information, and almost no information available on easily-accessible paratexts and meta-

56 archives, regarding this usage of “desu” or its variant, “dess.” So, through demonstrating knowledge of these forms, users may present themselves as someone who has likely gained an understanding of the usage through experience with the site.

Indexicality as a motive for the popularization of Japanese loanwords in English is already noted (although it is not directly referred to as such) in Bloem (2014), who states that, “...Japanese words might sound exotic and appealing to English speaking manga and anime fans,” who then use adopt these terms as loanwords “to distinguish Japanese media” rather than to fill lexical gaps (Bloem, 2014, p. 10). This shows that a broad first-order indexical relation (a distribution of Japanese terms among anime and manga) and a higher- order indexical relation of usage within fan communities discussing these media have led to the adoption of these Japanese terms by fans who wish to “express their sociocultural identity as members of the fan culture” and “maintain solidarity and cohesiveness within the subcultural discourse” (Bloem, 2014, p. 30)28.

While I have distinguished between 4chan users and an anime/manga fan community in order to focus on the indexicalities tying the English-language “desu” to each, it should be noted that these are not mutually exclusive communities, both in the sense that 4chan users can participate in anime conventions and vice versa, and in that

4chan itself contains places for fans to discuss anime and manga. As I have previously mentioned, 4chan started out as an anime fan community itself, and the site currently

28 Bloem also mentions the possible utility of preventing “outsiders from understanding what the discourse is about (Bloem, 2014, p. 30).” While 4chan’s usage of “desu” is similarly exclusive in intent, there is no lexical content to obfuscate.

57 advertises nine boards under the heading “Japanese Culture” on its main page, including

“Anime & Manga,” “Anime/Cute,” “Anime/Wallpapers,” “Cosplay & EGL,” and “Otaku

Culture.”

I have also demonstrated that, in addition to those indexical qualities tying “desu” to

4chan, it also retains a connection to anime and manga, and specifically to usage by “overly enthusiastic manga and anime fans Bloem, 2014, p. 29)” and in anime including characters with “big eyes, childish demeanor, strange clothes, high-pitched voice” and so forth, in many situations on 4chan, even beyond those in which “desu” or a variant is being used in part to roleplay as an anime character. These additional indexicalities are available to users wishing to evoke the speaker image of an overenthusiastic otaku or kawaii anime character, allowing for ironic humor and self-aware reference.

Furthermore, even in cases without any clear reference to these images, they are always possible connections for any reader aware of them, and so an insult regarding culinary tastes or a discussion of car ownership gains an additional layer of possible humor through the apparent incongruity of those indexicalities and the situation in which they are being used. This layer of humor, which would not have been possible in instances of “tbh” if they were not converted to “desu” (as they do not share the same indexicalities,) may have even motivated the creation of the word filter in the first place, given, as Manivannan

(2012) argues, that 4chan is a site with “anti-civility” norms and “an economy of offense,” with apparently offensive terminology and aggressive interactions being used to identify

58 and discourage new, unacculturated users from participating and potentially making less valuable posts (Manivannan, 2012, p. 4).

It is absurd, and therefore potentially funny, to imagine kawaii anime characters or their enthusiastic fans in these situations. At the same time, the filter can also potentially poke fun at unaware users, suddenly rendering their inexperienced attempts to participate in the site culture discordantly kawaii while exposing them as new if they react in confusion.

But, in using the “dess” spelling or otherwise indicating awareness of the filter, users convey that they, too, are in on the joke, transmuting a potential threat to the image they want to evoke into a tool to enhance their credibility. Manivannan (2012), in reference to

Knuttila (2012), notes that “[t]he unpredictable implementation” of features on 4chan, including word filters, is “destabilizing,” but that users “respond subversively through ludic memetic incorporation—'gaming the system’... to reclaim 4chan’s interfaces”

(Manivannan, 2012, pp. 3, 4). Similarly, experienced users have playfully incorporated

“desu,” anime indexicalities and all, into their displays of credibility, ironic style and humor.

The incorporation of these site-specific features into users’ linguistic repertoires as a means of proving their status as an experienced user, and the comments from respondents from both Worksafe Requests and the SwampCon Discussion page referencing “desu” in the context of usages or memes popular on 4chan, demonstrate that the term carries indexical, place-specific qualities tying it to 4chan. This indicates that, while “desu” is not an exclusive “place-distributed linguistic [feature] (Squires, 2010, p. 461)” as Squires

59 describes (in the sense that it is, even as a loanword, distributed outside of 4chan, e.g. in anime fan communities;) the exclusive, place-distributed first order indexical relationship of a specific usage “characteristic only for 4chan community (Lisecki, 2011, p. 40)” members has been an adequate force in leading to the enregisterment of “desu” as speech used by the 4chan community without a widespread metadiscursive association with 4chan.

This process of enregisterment is only possible because 4chan, despite existing only in cyberspace, actually is a “bounded place” (albeit with cultural, rather than geographical, borders) with a “clearly definable population of ‘speakers’ (Squires, 2010, p.461).” Its borders, as described by Manivannan (2012), are not impenetrable, nor is its population entirely static, but the same could be said of most physical regions, and new members of the 4chan community will encounter localized linguistic and cultural features just as one might expect when moving to a new geographical region. This means that many sociolinguistic theoretical frameworks originally intended for studying physical communities can be applied, not just to 4chan, but to other internet locales spread across cyberspace—and, given the widespread distribution of the internet and the large role CMC plays in the lives of many, these internet locales merit study just as physical locales do.

One feature which does notably differentiate communication on 4chan from communication in physical space (and many other virtual spaces) is the presence of a word filter. Several other word filters were also implemented on October 31, 2015, including other word filters using Japanese terms: “smh,” “shaking my head” (e.g., in disappointment or disapproval) was filtered into “baka,” meaning “idiot;” and “fam,” a way of addressing

60 users, was changed to “sempai” and later “senpai,” a term for one’s senior in school, work, etc. (Bibliotheca Anonoma, 2018). Both of these terms are mentioned in Bloem (2014) as loanwords borrowed from Japanese by anime and manga fan communities, and knowyourmeme.com lists memes containing both baka and senpai.

According to this site, baka is used ironically and unironically, in reference to and by, English-speaking otaku and is also associated with tsundere characters in anime who use the word “to insult those whom they have crush on,” while “I hope senpai will notice me” is “a catchphrase commonly associated with anime shows and manga books that can often be found on the microblogging site Tumblr to express a quest to resolve unrequited admiration” (Know Your Meme, 2016). These memes are similar to “desu” in their ties to anime and manga fan communities and their adoption on 4chan, and each one could be studied using the methods developed for this thesis.

More broadly, these word filters merit further study as a novel influence on linguistic development and meme formation. As discussed earlier in this thesis, they are unusual in that they result in a situation in which speakers’ utterances diverge from those speakers’ intended utterances—This is somewhat analogous to speech errors, but unlike errors, the output of word filters is recognizable as having been predictably and systematically modified, and so speakers can interact with these filters in different ways than errors. Similarly, the terms chosen for these fillers can spread memetically even without deliberate selection by speakers, since there is still a “transmission,” or “view,” characteristic (Davison, 2012, p. 126).

While I have assumed that speakers using “dess” are doing so intentionally and are aware of the word filter, further research into the motivations of speakers who use “dess” would enrich understanding of this topic. However, it would be difficult to target these users for surveys of self-reported usage while maintaining anonymity. Additionally, making the research topic too obvious, especially for such a specific target, or asking users about their behavior outright outside of appropriate contexts (e.g., replying to a post using

“dess” asking why the poster used it and hoping the original poster responds, though there is no way to verify this) could invite trolling as mentioned in Pajunen (2017) or otherwise bias responses (Pajunen, 2017, p. 44).

Further research into how speaker images of Japanese-derived loanwords used both in anime/manga fan communities and in reference to those communities affect ideologies regarding speakers of Japanese would also be valuable. For instance, I have noted that when “desu” accompanies anime or manga characters on 4chan, those characters are almost exclusively female, and this image fits with the reported association of “desu” with kawaii characters or with “fangirls” labeling characters as “kawaii desu desu ne (Bloem, 2014, p.

30);” notably, this image is also a target for mockery. If these terms are being spread memetically, then their speaker images and the ideologies surrounding those images are spreading as well—This raises the question of to what degree, if any, those images and ideologies then transfer to evaluations by English-speakers who do not speak Japanese of the Japanese language and its speakers.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to repeat my thanks to my advisor, Dr. Ann Wehmeyer, and also Dr.

Christopher Smith, and also to thank Ben Rice, for valuable discussions and feedback. I would additionally like to thank Sarah Howard, in whose course I developed the idea of researching the indexicality of Japanese terms spread through memes, for her feedback and guidance on that proposal, which eventually became this thesis. Thanks are also due to my brother, Sean Springfield, for offering advice on readability—Readers have been spared a number of atrocious run-on sentences through his intervention. Finally, I am sincerely grateful to those anonymous participants from the SwampCon Discussion page and

Worksafe Requests, without whose kind cooperation the survey portion of this study would not have been possible.