Weeaboo Japanese’: Exploring English-Japanese Language-Mixing in Online Japanese Popular Culture Fandom
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. i ‘WEEABOO JAPANESE’: EXPLORING ENGLISH-JAPANESE LANGUAGE-MIXING IN ONLINE JAPANESE POPULAR CULTURE FANDOM A THESIS PRESENTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS AT MASSEY UNIVERSITY, ALBANY, NEW ZEALAND ROWAN ELIZABETH ARBUTHNOTT GARDINER 2019 ii ABSTRACT The complexities of a globalised modern society pose methodological and theoretical issues for linguistic research in areas such as Language Contact, Language-Mixing, and Sociolinguistics, due to the commodification and transmission of language and language features resulting in new language interactions. The boundary between definitions of language borrowing and code- switching is currently a matter of increased interest, particularly in terms of research identifying cases of language use involving unskilled participants. This study investigates and linguistically analyses the presence of Japanese language features within English language contexts that are produced by members of online discussion forums who are fans of Japanese popular culture, and for whom fluency in Japanese language is not assumed nor required for participation. Corpus linguistics techniques were employed on data gathered from two online sources in order to identify what linguistic features were present and establish their extent according to frequency. These same corpora were qualitatively analysed to establish community attitudes towards English-Japanese language mixing and what these results indicated in terms of policing and community norms, and overall what both the quantitative and qualitative results meant for how the language phenomena could be defined according to current theoretical paradigms. The results showed that the most frequent word class was nouns, and the semantic domains found were mostly related to Japanese fandom concepts that were topical to the forum, such as specific interests, clothing and fashion, food, media related terms, and religion and cultural terms. Most instances were single-word insertions, and where the few multi-word segments occurred they were specifically in reference to a negative stereotype within the community (weeaboo). This stereotype also indicated language policing was a factor affecting language use, and the results showed that while the Japanese language had high status, language use was socially restricted to specific situations and extents of use. The language phenomenon is described as mostly language borrowing behaviours, but as the words retain a high level of knowledge of related assignations and also occur concurrently with a few code-switching type behaviours, the usage-based approach where both elements are considered different aspects of the same continuum is seen as a preferable theoretical paradigm. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A heartfelt thanks to my thesis supervisors, Dr Mary Salisbury, Dr David Ishii, and Dr Arianna Berardi-Wiltshire, who all gave me invaluable input, support, and encouragement throughout the whole master’s thesis process. I would also like to thank my mother, Anne Rundle, for her encouragement and editing and proofreading, and my father, Stuart Gardiner, for his encouragement and help with statistics. Finally, I would like to respectfully acknowledge the anonymous members of the online communities I gathered my linguistic data from. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. iv List of Appendices ............................................................................................................ vi List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ................................................................................................................... vi 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 2 Theoretical Background ............................................................................................. 4 2.1 Contact Linguistics and Language Mixing........................................................... 4 2.2 Research Paradigms ........................................................................................... 5 2.3 English-Japanese Language mixing .................................................................. 10 3 Methodology............................................................................................................ 12 3.1 Approaching CMC data collection .................................................................... 12 3.2 Sources and data collection ............................................................................. 13 3.2.1 /CGL/ ......................................................................................................... 14 3.2.2 Troper Tales............................................................................................... 21 3.3 Tagging and analysis system ............................................................................ 25 3.4 Tools ................................................................................................................. 28 4 Results ...................................................................................................................... 30 4.1 Language Features............................................................................................ 30 4.1.1 Orthography .............................................................................................. 31 4.1.2 Word Classes ............................................................................................. 32 4.1.3 Semantic Categorisation ........................................................................... 37 4.1.4 Modification and Non-modification ......................................................... 41 4.1.5 Loanwords ................................................................................................. 47 4.1.6 Multi-word Segments................................................................................ 49 4.2 Language Attitudes ........................................................................................... 50 4.2.1 Positive and Neutral Attitudes .................................................................. 51 4.2.2 Negative Attitudes .................................................................................... 53 4.2.3 Language Policing ...................................................................................... 57 5 Further Discussion ................................................................................................... 60 v 5.1 Language and Language Learning .................................................................... 60 5.2 Language Change Continuum........................................................................... 62 6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 65 7 References ............................................................................................................... 68 8 Appendices............................................................................................................... 76 vi LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix 1: Comparison of the current study’s tags to previous research’s tagging systems .................................................................................................... 76 Appendix 2: Japanese token tag set with notes and examples ...................................... 78 Appendix 3: All JNS, JNC, and JNE words found in the CGL corpus ................................ 81 Appendix 4: Lexicon of Japanese romaji words found in the /CGL/ corpus ................... 83 Appendix 5: Comparison of frequency of part of speech tags in the CGL and Troper Tales corpora ........................................................................................... 84 Appendix 6: The Top 20 Most Frequently Appearing Japanese Words in the CGL Corpus ................................................................................................................. 85 Appendix 7: All Japanese Romaji multiple word segments found in the CGL corpus .... 86 Appendix 8: Main attitudes towards language use and the people who use it found in the Troper Tales text ............................................................................... 87 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Percentage occurrence of Japanese in CGL corpus overall............................... 31 Table 2: Frequency of the orthography tags in the CGL corpus ..................................... 32 Table 3: Frequency of Part of Speech Tags in the CGL Corpus ....................................... 33 Table 4: Distribution of Japanese Words According to Word Class in the CGL Corpus .. 34 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Demographic characteristics of 4chan users ..................................................