English Use in Japanese Variety Television Shows: Focus on Telop Airi Kawakami Master’s Thesis English Studies Faculty of Arts University of Helsinki September 2020 Tiedekunta/Osasto – Fakultet/Sektion – Faculty Laitos – Institution – Department Faculty of Arts Department of Modern Languages Tekijä – Författare – Author Airi Kawakami Työn nimi – Arbetets titel – Title English Use in Japanese Variety Television Shows: Focus on Telop Oppiaine – Läroämne – Subject English Philology Työn laji – Arbetets art – Level Aika – Datum – Month and year Sivumäärä– Sidoantal – Number of pages Master’s Thesis September 2020 58 + appendices Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract Multi-functional superimposed subtitles called telop are a defining feature of Japanese television programs today. Telops are used to show titles of segments, speaker’s utterances and explanations about situations. In recent years, English telops have been increasingly used although English use as a means of daily communication is limited in the Japanese society. This study examines how English is used in Japanese television programs, focusing on telops. The focus of this research is on a prominent genre of Japanese television shows, variety shows, which often feature comedians and incorporate various entertainment elements. Previously, both English use in Japanese contexts and telops have been studied, but not many studies have focused on English-language telops in Japanese television shows. Therefore, this study investigates English telops, adopting methodologies used in previous research. This study has two aims. The first is to investigate what kind of functional roles English telops play in Japanese television shows. The second is to elucidate how English telops index social functions, such as competence or being (un)cool. This thesis adopted an analytical approach by Maree (2015a) and Furukawa (2014): multimodal analysis in sociolinguistics (sociocultural linguistics) approach. The study used television program data, which broadcasted in 2019 and amounts to 36 hours in total. The total number of English telops extracted from this video data was 2062 and these telops were classified based on three types of categorical frameworks: typology of telop, typology of code-switching and typology of social functions. The results show that English telops have various functional roles and social functions. The result of categorizing based on the typology of telop reveals that English telops were frequently used for situational explanation, speaker’s utterances and titles. In terms of the typology of code-switching, the result shows that English telops were rarely used to describe a code-switching in conversation. Rather, English telops appeared to be used for headlines, mottos or proper nouns. As for the typology of social functions, several functions that were suggested in previous research were found in this research as well. In addition, new social functions such as sexy and hyperactive were also discovered. In conclusion, this research suggests additions to the typological frameworks for English telops but also points out there is still room to develop them. This research provides new insights into English use in Japanese communication and non-English speaking cultures. Furthermore, this research can also contribute to further research on telops and Japanese media communication. Avainsanat – Nyckelord – Keywords sociolinguistics, multimodal analysis, telop, Japanese communication, variety shows, English as a local language Säilytyspaikka – Förvaringställe – Where deposited Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto HELDA (E-thesis) Table of Contents 1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 1 2. Background ...................................................................................................................................... 3 2.1 Japanese Television Shows and Telop ........................................................................................ 3 2.2 English Use in Non-Native English Cultures ............................................................................. 5 2.2.1 Case of Japan ........................................................................................................................ 5 2.2.2 Case of the Other Countries .................................................................................................. 7 2.3 Identity Construction by Language Use ...................................................................................... 8 2.3.1 Indexicality............................................................................................................................ 8 2.3.2 Role Language and Character ............................................................................................... 9 2.3.3 Previous Studies on Identity/Character Construction in TV shows .................................... 10 2.4 Categorical Frameworks ........................................................................................................... 10 3. Materials and methods ................................................................................................................... 14 3.1 Data ........................................................................................................................................... 14 3.2 Procedure and Method of Analysis ........................................................................................... 17 4. Results ............................................................................................................................................ 21 4.1 Results of Categorizing Based on the Typology of Telops in General ..................................... 21 4.2 Results of Categorizing Based on the Typology of Code-Switching ....................................... 24 4.3 Results of Categorizing Based on Frameworks of Social Functions ........................................ 28 4.3.1 Framework of Ciubăncan (2012) ........................................................................................ 28 4.3.1.1 Examples of Decorative (Mood) ................................................................................... 30 4.3.1.2 Examples of Decorative (Message) .............................................................................. 32 4.3.2 Framework of Moody and Matsumoto (2011) .................................................................... 33 4.3.2.1 Example of Courage ...................................................................................................... 33 4.3.2.2 Example of Self-deprecation ......................................................................................... 34 4.3.3 Framework of Furukawa (2014) ......................................................................................... 35 4.3.3.1 Examples of Cool .......................................................................................................... 36 4.3.3.2 Examples of Un-cool .................................................................................................... 38 4.4 New Categories ......................................................................................................................... 40 4.4.1 Examples of Hyperactive .................................................................................................... 40 4.4.2 Example of Sexy ................................................................................................................. 43 4.4.3 Example of Competition ..................................................................................................... 45 4.4.4 Examples of Topic-related .................................................................................................. 46 5. Discussion ...................................................................................................................................... 49 6. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 53 References .......................................................................................................................................... 55 Appendices ......................................................................................................................................... 59 Appendix A. Detailed Information about the Television Programs .................................................. 59 Appendix B. Words That Were Not Counted as English .................................................................. 62 1. Introduction Japanese television programs have been studied in various academic fields, and many studies have shed light on language use in Japanese television programs. This research investigates a popular genre of Japanese television programs, “variety shows.” Variety shows usually incorporate various entertainment contents and feature comedians or media celebrities. According to Broadcasting Ethics & Program Improvement Organization (BPO, 2009), variety shows have changed people’s attitudes toward the old order or social conventions and have had a huge influence on communication in the Japanese society for a long time. Thus, it is said that variety shows are one of the most important genres in Japanese television. Interestingly, English is increasingly used in Japanese variety shows in alternate ways even though English