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Role Language in Swedish a Study of the Comic Åsa Nisse

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Role Language in Swedish a Study of the Comic Åsa Nisse Role Language in Swedish A Study of the Comic Åsa Nisse Marcus Zanteré 2016 1 Contents 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 3 1.1. Purpose .............................................................................................................................. 3 1.2. Theory ............................................................................................................................... 3 2. Method and Material ................................................................................................................... 4 2.1. Introduction of Primary Source ............................................................................................ 5 3. Results ......................................................................................................................................... 5 3.1. Laughing in Swedish ............................................................................................................ 5 3.2. Eye Dialect ............................................................................................................................ 7 3.3. Dialects ................................................................................................................................. 9 4. Discussion and Future Studies ..................................................................................................... 9 5. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 10 References ..................................................................................................................................... 12 Appendix ....................................................................................................................................... 13 2 1. Introduction Yakuwarigo ‘role language’ as coined by Kinsui Satoshi (Kinsui, 2003) is stereotypical language usage connected to specific character types in literature and media. In Japanese fiction it is very common for fictional characters to speak in a specific way dependent on their role in the medium. Role language differs between character types in the form of various linguistic features such as vocabulary, grammar, and style. It can mark features such as gender, age, occupation, personality, etc. in a given character. This gives birth to the samurai dialect, country dialect as well as other fictional dialects that make it easy for the reader to identify the different character types. Although a great amount of research is being conducted on this topic in Japanese linguistics, its presence in many other languages has not yet been investigated to a significant extent. This is also true for the Swedish language. In this paper we investigate the language usage of characters in the comic book series Åsa Nisse and attempt to identify how role language appears in Swedish. 1.1. Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the language usage in a Swedish comic book (Åse Nisse) in an attempt to discover how role language may manifest itself in the Swedish language and culture. We will try to make a preliminary map on which features of the language are used to convey character traits in Åsa Nisse to be used for further analysis of how role language functions in Swedish as a whole in future studies. 1.2. Theory Role language was first introduced by Kinsui Satoshi (2003)who defined it as follows: A specific language usage (vocabulary, style, expressions, intonation etc.) that makes the reader to think of a specific character image (age, gender, occupation, social status, time period, appearance, looks, personality etc.) in other words indicates a specific character image, when there is a language usage that perfectly fits a character type that language usage is called role language (Kinsui, 2003, p. 205) (authors translation). The majority of previous research on role language has been on the Japanese language where it is an especially developed part of the language. This is reflected in many parts of the language, such as first- second- and third-person pronouns, discourse particles, copula and lexicon, which can vary to a great extent depending on the character type. Three male characters in a story could differ in the following ways: Character A Character B Character C First person pronoun Ore Boku Sessha Second person pronoun Omae Kimi Onushi Copula Da Desu Degozaru With this information at hand native speakers of Japanese would be able to say that A is a macho character, B is a pretty boy character and C is a samurai character. They would also be able to connect said characters to a visual representation of the character (Zantere, 2015). 3 Studies on role language have been conducted on languages other than Japanese, for example Korean and English. Korean is similar to Japanese in that they share many grammatical characteristics, including sentence final particles, which constitute a significant grammatical feature in role language. In a study by Jung (Jung, 2007)it is noted that these particles exist in Korean as well, but that the variety in which Korean can express gender is not as abundant as in Japanese but that Korean excels at expressing age through language. It is also noted that both Japanese and Korean to a great extent make use of stereotypes connected to dialects to express role language. Hosokawa (2009)reports on artificial dialects being formed through translation as translators of manga (Japanese comic books) are gradually introducing features of character- specific language usage into the German language. This is combined into artificial dialects by the readers similar to role language. Haruhiko reports on different ways in which English can express role language (2007). The first technique is to utilize non-standard spellings to portray the character as uneducated or as having a non-standard accent in a concept called eye dialect. Examples of this can be spelling you as yeh, your as yer or by dropping the last consonant as in “las’ time”. Another method of expressing role language is by utilizing different types of Pidgin English, which drops articles, subjects, etc. A third option is choosing to use proper nouns in favor of first- or second pronouns such as in the sentence “Dobby has known it for months, sir. Harry Potter must no put himself in peril” from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling, 2014). 2. Method and Material The primary source which will be used is the Swedish comic strips Åsa Nisse appearing in the 1- 6 volumes of the magazine Åsa Nisse from year 1985 (Gummersson & Bergendorff). The character Åsa Nisse first appeared in the weekly magazine Tidsfördrif 1944 (volume 51) in novel form written by Stig Cederholm (Seriewikin, 2015) and later appeared in comic form in his own series, which was first published in the weekly magazine Levande livet (1955, volume 49) (Seriewikin, 2015). Åsa Nisse has since appeared in various weekly magazines as well as 21 movies. For this paper it was decided to use the comic as a primary source due to the fact that Åsa Nisse is most well known in Sweden by its comic form and thus deemed most likely to have an effect on the Swedish image of role language. We will mainly focus on the utterances of Åsa Nisse, Klabbarparen, their two wives Eulalia and Kristin, Sjökvist and Fjärsman but will cross refer to other characters making an appearance. In accordance with our knowledge from Japanese role language these characters should show different speech patterns to fulfill their own specific roles in the Åsa Nisse universe. However, it is possible that the majority of the characters will display similar traits to fulfill the role of speakers of country dialect, or uneducated characters. Much like English, Swedish lacks many of the distinct features of the language which are used to form role language in Japanese such as multiple first- second-person pronouns or sentence final particles. We will therefore rely on comparing the utterances with standard written Swedish as well as utterances by characters in Åsa Nisse who are portrayed as speaking closer to standard written Swedish to discover what parts of the language usage constitutes role language. We define Standard Swedish as a variety 4 of Swedish which can be considered to be mostly socially and geographically neutral and is used both in public and official contexts (Svenska språknämnden, 2005, p. 11). 2.1. Introduction of Primary Source The story of Åsa Nisse takes part in the village Knohult in the southern province Småland in Sweden. The people of Småland are commonly associated with being stingy, or less generous than people from other parts of Sweden. The main protagonists Åsa Nisse and his friend Klabbarparen are portrayed as middle- aged small farmers. They, however, are rarely seen doing any kind of farm-related work in the material analyzed in this paper outside of one sequence when Åsa Nisse is tasked with giving one of his cows medicine. Åsa Nisse is a witty character who is quick to entertain with a joke, and often intelligently manages to solve the miscellaneous tasks he is given throughout the story. Klabbarparen is the less intelligent of the two, but is always happy to assist in any way he can which does not always brings stellar results. Åsa Nisse is married to Eulalia and Klabbarparen with Kristin, both wives are often less happy with the adventures of their husbands and
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