Gendered Language in Japanese: Origins, characteristics, and differences between gendered language use in contemporary Japanese and Japanese animation

Japanese animation as well as videogame’s industry put a lot of effort on the voicing of their characters. Often, their speech is what it’s used to give a better representation of the characters own temperament and visual representation. In a flexible game that more than often doesn’t manage to get translated in other languages, the way the characters express themselves tells the Japanese audience a lot of details through the linguistic implications. Some characters are built through the contradiction between their polite appearance and their rough speech; some other would instead have the appearance that the audience would expect based on their linguistic register, et cetera. I have long been interested in the connection between Japanese speech patterns and the way in which they are used for the strong linguistic and social representation in various media. For my bachelor research thesis, I focused on Japanese dialects and their usage and perception between Japanese university...Show moreJapanese animation as well as videogame’s industry put a lot of effort on the voicing of their characters. Often, their speech is what it’s used to give a better representation of the characters own temperament and visual representation. In a flexible game that more than often doesn’t manage to get translated in other languages, the way the characters express themselves tells the Japanese audience a lot of details through the linguistic implications. Some characters are built through the contradiction between their polite appearance and their rough speech; some other would instead have the appearance that the audience would expect based on their linguistic register, et cetera. I have long been interested in the connection between Japanese speech patterns and the way in which they are used for the strong linguistic and social representation in various media. For my bachelor research thesis, I focused on Japanese dialects and their usage and perception between Japanese university students, using two questionnaires. I would like to isolate the main speech patterns and analyze them from a linguistic and sociological point of view before seeing their usage in the media, bringing a few examples from popular culture. In particular, seeing as some of them are taken from still spoken dialects or, for historical settings, mixture of modern Japanese and elements of pre-modern/middle Japanese.Show less

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Gendered Language in Japanese: Origins, characteristics, and differences between gendered language use in contemporary Japanese and Japanese animation