Gairaigo have become indispensable in Japan’s daily life due to their various functions. Some of these functions are employed in the industry of fashion. Here, gairaigo are used for example to...Show moreGairaigo have become indispensable in Japan’s daily life due to their various functions. Some of these functions are employed in the industry of fashion. Here, gairaigo are used for example to refer to new concepts or trends that cannot be described using native Japanese terms. These gairaigo lack a so-called equivalent in the Japanese language and are called cultural borrowings. Gairaigo that do have an equivalent in the Japanese language are called core borrowings, and are often used for their modern image. My thesis focuses on this use of gairaigo in the industry of fashion. In particular I do research into the ratio of core and cultural borrowings on covers of Japanese fashion magazines. The aim of this research is to find an answer to the following research question: “What is the relation between the age of the target group of Japanese fashion magazines and the ratio of cultural and core borrowings on the covers of these magazines?” This is done by gathering all candidate-gairaigo from covers of both magazines aimed at women aged 50+ and magazines aimed at women in their late 10s and 20s. All the found gairaigo are thereafter classified as either core or cultural borrowings. Finally a comparison is made between the ratio of core and cultural borrowings on magazine covers aimed at elderly women and the ratio of core and cultural borrowings on magazine covers aimed at younger women.Show less
Between 2003 and 2006, the Gairaigo Committee, part of the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL), released the Proposal for paraphrasing loanwords, which advocates the...Show moreBetween 2003 and 2006, the Gairaigo Committee, part of the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL), released the Proposal for paraphrasing loanwords, which advocates the usage of Japanese paraphrases for 176 poorly understood loanwords. In the creation of this proposal, the committee prioritized an emphasis on the function of language (i.e., communication problems caused by loanwords) rather than an emphasis on tradition (i.e., ideological issues caused by loanwords). While this is true on an official level, an interview with a key member of the former committee suggests the conceivability that some of its members personally feared the corruption of the Japanese language and culture by loanwords. This outcome has led to an analysis of how Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun, two ideologically distinct newspaper companies represented in the committee, have dealt with the loanwords in NINJAL’s proposal. The research mainly involved a diachronic study of the words between 1995 and 2019 and a comparison of the two newspapers in this regard. The target words show significant differences according to newspaper, as there is an overall tendency of increasing usage in (the more progressive) Asahi Shimbun, while (the more conservative) Yomiuri Shimbun shows a decrease. However, in many cases, it is difficult to associate these changes with NINJAL’s proposal directly. The analysis concludes that there is no clear indication for a relation between the implementation of loanword policy and political ideology.Show less
In Japan, public attitudes towards loanwords are not necessarily positive. However, the country does not have a language regulating governmental body that makes a great effort to translate the...Show moreIn Japan, public attitudes towards loanwords are not necessarily positive. However, the country does not have a language regulating governmental body that makes a great effort to translate the continuously growing amount of western terminology into Japanese. This seeming inconsistency can be attributed to a combination of circumstances. Firstly, those undesirable outlooks towards loanwords have not necessarily formed a trigger for language policy in Japan. Secondly, language policy in Japan has had a clear emphasis on practical matters (e.g. communication) in recent decades and is seldom ideology-based. Thirdly, the current situation in Japan becomes clearer from the perspective of its history, geography, law and the linguistics of its language.Show less
