Scripting Japan: orthography, variation, and the creation of meaning in written Japanese

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgments
1 Scripting Japan
2 Graphic play as a social act: indexicality and orthographic variation
3 Scripted speech and scripted speakers: katakana and non­native Japanese
4 Scripted voices: contrasted identities and contrasting standards
5 Script choice and pronoun choice: indexical fields in interaction
6 Using katakana like an oyaji: script variation and authorial identity
7 The social lives of Japanese scripts
Index

Citation preview

Scripting Japan

Imagine this book was written in Comic Sans. Would this choice impact your image of me as an author, despite causing no literal change to the content within? Generally, discussions of how language variants influence interpretation of language acts/users have focused on variation in speech. But it is important to remember that specific ways of representing a language are also often perceived as linked to specific social actors. Nowhere is this fact more relevant than in written Japanese, where a complex history has created a situation where authors can represent any sentence element in three distinct scripts. This monograph provides the first investigation into the ways Japanese authors and their readers engage with this potential for script variation as a social language practice, looking at how purely script-­ based language choices reflect social ideologies, become linked to language users, and influence the total meaning created by language acts. Throughout the text, analysis of data from multiple studies examines how Japanese language users’ experiences with the script variation all around them influence how they engage with, produce, and understand both orthographic variation and major social divides, ultimately evidencing that even the avoidance of variation can become a socially significant act in Japan. Wesley C. Robertson is Lecturer in International Studies at Macquarie University, Australia. His research focuses on variation and language play inherent in writing, with a focus on Japanese. He completed his PhD in Applied Japanese Linguistics at Monash University in 2016.

Routledge Studies in Sociolinguistics

Revivals, Nationalism, and Linguistic Discrimination Threatening Languages Kara Fleming and Umberto Ansaldo Crosslinguistic Influence in Singapore English Linguistic and Social Aspects Ming Chew Teo Ageing Identities and Women’s Everyday Talk in a Hair Salon Rachel Heinrichsmeier Linguistic Mitigation in English and Spanish How Speakers Attenuate Expressions Nydia Flores-­Ferrán Linguistic Variation and Social Practices of Normative Masculinity Authority and Multifunctional Humour in a Dublin Sports Club Fergus O’Dwyer A Sociolinguistic View of a Japanese Ethnic Church Community Tyler Barrett Socio-­grammatical Variation and Change In Honour of Jenny Cheshire Edited by Karen V. Beaman, Isabelle Buchstaller, Sue Fox and James A. Walker Scripting Japan Orthography, Variation, and the Creation of Meaning in Written Japanese Wesley C. Robertson For more information about this series, please visit www.routledge.com/ Routledge-­Studies-­in-­Sociolinguistics/book-­series/RSSL

Scripting Japan

Orthography, Variation, and the Creation of Meaning in Written Japanese Wesley C. Robertson

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Wesley C. Robertson The right of Wesley C. Robertson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-­Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-­0-­367-­35372-­8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-­0-­429-­33100-­8 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To Mayumi, for everything

Contents

List of figuresviii List of tablesix Acknowledgmentsx 1 Scripting Japan

1

2 Graphic play as a social act: indexicality and orthographic variation

29

3 Scripted speech and scripted speakers: katakana and non-­native Japanese

59

4 Scripted voices: contrasted identities and contrasting standards86 5 Script choice and pronoun choice: indexical fields in interaction110 6 Using katakana like an oyaji: script variation and authorial identity

141

7 The social lives of Japanese scripts

181

Index195

Figures

1.1 A Starbucks in Tokyo uses kanji to represent the Japanese word for coffee (珈琲) on its sign. Picture courtesy of Robin Hancock. 10 2.1 “1776.” Reprinted with permission from James Lecarpentier of GoodBearComics.com.38 2.2 The NSW Police Force mocks email scammers. Reproduced with permission of the NSW Police Force. 47 2.3 A Reddit user alternating case to index sarcasm and mock a political opinion. 47 2.4 A Reddit user is socialized into understanding alternate case. 48 6.1 Assumptions of author gender for “Health Worries.” 150 6.2 Evaluations of author age for “Health Worries.” 153 6.3 Assumptions of author gender for “Reptile Bullying.” 160 6.4 Evaluations of author age for “Reptile Bullying.” 161 6.5 Assumptions of author gender for “Alcohol Advice.” 169 6.6 Evaluations of author age for “Alcohol Advice.” 170

Tables

1.1 An example of a Japanese sentence using four scripts. 3 1.2 A Japanese sentence broken down by script use. 7 1.3 The use of multiple scripts clarifies the meaning of Japanese sentences.8 1.4 Four generally acceptable representations of a Japanese sentence. 9 1.5 Four highly marked representations of a Japanese sentence. 11 1.6 Images commonly linked to each Japanese script. 17 1.7 A guide to pronouncing vowels in romanized Japanese. 22 4.1 Script used for forms of suki across Chokotan’s speech. 96 4.2 Variations in the scripts used for sutegana by character. 103 5.1 Generic description of FPPs in Japanese. 112 5.2 Number of respondents who encountered each script-­pronoun combination.122 5.3 Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for watashi.123 5.4 Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for boku.126 5.5 Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for ore.128 5.6 Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for atashi.130 5.7 Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for jibun.132 5.8 Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for uchi.132

Acknowledgments

I would like to give my sincere appreciation to Robyn Spence-­Brown, Shimako Iwasaki, and Helen Marriot for their support and kindness throughout my postgraduate career. This book would not have been possible without their excellent training, direction, and critique. It was an honor to develop as a scholar under their wings. I am greatly indebted to the editors of Japanese Studies, The Journal of Sociolinguistics, The Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics, and Discourse, Context & Media for allowing me to revisit data I published in their journals in this book. A heartfelt thank you to Jess Birnie-­Smith as well for taking the time to edit and examine the initial draft of this book. I take full responsibility for any overly long sentences that remain despite your best efforts to fix my bad habit. Finally, I would be remiss in not expressing my appreciation to everyone who has worked with me, taken me out for a coffee, given me feedback, or just spoken a few words of encouragement over the last few years. Research can be a lonely process, and so I am forever indebted to those who helped make it less so.

1 Scripting Japan

Scripting Japan is an investigation into the importance of script in how social meanings are produced and negotiated via written Japanese; that is, how changes in the way Japanese words and sentences are represented can reflect and create understandings of language users and language use throughout Japan. On a fundamental level, this basic idea that script selection can be socially and linguistically meaningful may seem odd to some readers. The concept most obviously contrasts with traditional prescriptivist or functionalist explanations of how language functions. After all, the belief that we create meaning primarily through “rule-­governed knowledge of morphemes and syntactic patterns of sentences” (Blommaert, 2016, p. 9) leaves little room for consideration of graphic change as part of the equation. But even within more sociolinguistic discussions of how different ways of “saying the same thing” (Silverstein, 2003, p.  212) become carriers of social meaning, script selection has seen only limited attention to date (Kenzhekhanuly, 2015; Sebba, 2012). However, any idea that graphic language variation is irrelevant to how language users create or interpret meaning represents a major potential oversight. In many contexts around the world, the question of how to best represent language is far from settled. Contrasting styles of representing a language regularly serve as sources of political debate, local language play, assertions of group identity, and socially important linguistic acts (Robertson, 2017; Spitzmüller, 2015; Unseth, 2005). This potential social importance of script use is especially relevant when discussing representations of written Japanese, though, as the standard form of the written language involves the concurrent use of up to four distinct scripts. I should stress early on that the writing system is far from chaotic. National guidelines do exist regarding the “proper” or “normative” use of each script. Nevertheless, the ability to represent any sentence element in multiple ways provides writers with a potential for variation “inconceivable in the case of more familiar [to Western readers] writing systems” (Backhouse, 1984, p. 220). The question of how to “best” represent a given Japanese word in a given context is, consequently, always a potential source of consideration and debate (Konno, 2013a). Scripting Japan is therefore obviously far from the first work to show an interest in why Japanese writers vary their uses of script or depart from the language’s overarching orthographic norms. Research in this vein dates back to the 1950s,

2  Scripting Japan at the latest, and intentional orthographic play and manipulation can be traced to the earliest days of writing in Japan (Konno, 2013a; Saiga, 1955; Sansom, 1928). However, to date this research has generally failed to consider that the constant divides in how individuals have used script throughout Japan – regardless of the reasons for them – ultimately cause script selection itself to become an inherently social practice. At most, discussion so far has been limited to recognition that social divides allow orthographic changes to “project a stereotypical atmosphere or image” (Miyake, 2007, p. 58) in a static, preestablished manner akin to how certain fonts are described as “cute,” “cool,” or “futuristic” in English. This is not to say this prior research has not produced valuable findings or that sociolinguistic perspectives alone can explain the totality of Japanese orthographic practices. Rather, it is a recognition that script selection still demands attention as a potential site where Japanese users actively create, ratify, negotiate, and even potentially resist ideologies about language use and users. In short, the study of Japanese script variation so far has fallen into common traps of treating script as something without “sociolinguistic relevance” (Spitzmüller, 2012, p.  255) and language variation as “existing apart from history, social inequality, politics, and gender” (Bauman & Briggs, 2000, p. 141), leaving important gaps in our understanding of how script use produces meaning throughout Japan. Consequently, my specific goal in Scripting Japan is to expand our understanding of Japanese script selection through bringing prior research of the phenomenon into dialogue with broader contemporary sociolinguistic perspectives of how meaning is created through variation in language use. Most significantly, this means examining Japanese orthographic practices via holistic and emergent analytical methodologies that (1) do not utilize a pre-­assumed (a priori) understanding of what marked use of a given script means and (2) proceed “from the social, cultural and historical to the linguistic” (Blommaert, 2016, p. 11) rather than the other way around. In tackling Japanese script variation from these new angles, I intend to move us to a more thorough understanding of how the phenomenon can create, reflect, and challenge social ideologies about language use and users throughout Japan. As a secondary goal, though, I also hope that this text can contribute to the same global discussions of language variation that it draws from. In raising Japanese writing as a particularly vibrant locus for observing socially meaningful orthographic change, I endeavor to provide insights that are also relevant to our appreciation of similar writing-­restricted social practices around the world. Before any of this can begin, however, it is first necessary for me to establish the basics of what we already know about script use in Japan. For the rest of the current chapter, my goal is therefore to provide an overview of what Japanese script variation is, what we know about its causes, and the reasons why new perspectives are necessary despite decades of prior research. I will begin in the following section with a general introduction to the contemporary Japanese writing system. This section includes basic explanations of how Japanese utilizes multiple scripts as part of standard writing practice, with the goal of assisting readers without a Japanese background in accessing the rest of this text. In the

Scripting Japan 3 second and third sections, I  then respectively cover the fundamentals of how Japanese script variation works and its established causes in contemporary Japan. In the fourth section, I will more explicitly detail the limitations of prior research on Japanese script use, identifying the specific areas of oversight that the studies throughout Scripting Japan are designed to address. Finally, I will close the current chapter with a brief discussion of the terminology and romanization norms I use throughout Scripting Japan and an outline of the remaining chapters.

An introduction to written Japanese Before diving into the social importance of non-­standard script use in written Japanese, it is important to establish the fundamental “norms” of the language through which variation tends to be defined and understood (Sebba, 2012). As I  mentioned, the Japanese writing system differs from all other contemporary writing systems in requiring an interplay of multiple scripts as part of standard writing. Three scripts known as kanji, hiragana, and katakana are found across almost all Japanese writing. Any standard sentence will require the use of kanji and hiragana, and katakana is certain to appear in any writing of length. The Roman alphabet also exists as a sort of supplementary script, although not one that will receive further attention in Scripting Japan. The script is still highly familiar to most users of Japanese, though, as it is required for a handful of specialized uses like writing certain company names, major acronyms like NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation), or variables in math equations (Reiman, 2001). To illustrate how written Japanese uses an interplay of these four scripts in standard writing, Table  1.1 presents an excerpt from a headline of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.1 In the excerpt and its romanization, boxes surround elements written in kanji, and underlines mark elements written in katakana. Uses of hiragana and Roman letters are left unmarked.2 Out of the four scripts shown in Table 1.1, kanji is the oldest and most complex in terms of both function and design. While kanji, hiragana, and katakana all have their roots in Chinese characters, kanji is the only one that still contains clear Table 1.1  An example of a Japanese sentence using four scripts. Japanese

特定のテーマや切り口でネット上の情報をまとめるサイトの代表格 で、ＬＩＮＥが運営する「ＮＡＶＥＲまとめ」が、無断転載と認 めた３４万件の写真や画像を削除した。 Romanitokutei no t¯ema ya kirikuchi de netto jō no jōhō wo matomeru saito no zation daihyōkaku de LINE ga unei suru NAVER matome ga mudantensai to mitometa sanjūyonmanken no shashin ya gazō wo sakujo shita. Translation As a representative of sites that use specific topics or methods to aggregate online information, “NAVER Matome (aggregate),” a website operated by LINE, deleted 340,000 images and films they deemed as having been uploaded without permission.

4  Scripting Japan visual and functional similarities to any form of written Chinese. Most distinctly, it is the only Japanese script that remains morphosyllabic. This means that individual kanji characters can simultaneously possess meaning(s) and phonological information (Matsunaga, 1996). For a practical example of the difference between a morphosyllabic script and a more phonetic one, consider the Japanese homographs ha (tooth), ha (faction), ha (leaf), and ha (edge/blade). If written out of context in any script besides kanji, the sound sequence ha could theoretically represent any of the four words. However, since kanji usually indicate both sound and meaning, the individual characters 歯 (tooth), 派 (faction), 葉 (leaf), and 刃 (edge/blade) instead each respectively represent only one of the four homophones. In other words, while ha has multiple potential referents if represented as ha, は (ha in hiragana), or ハ (ha in katakana), its intended meaning is unambiguous when an author uses kanji. For the sake of accuracy, I should recognize that my description is ignoring complications like ateji and jukujikun. The former term refers to kanji used like phonetic “letters”. The latter term refers to when a kanji set produces a reading particular to the set, somewhat analogous to ph producing an f sound in English. I will put these exceptions aside for now, though, as my prior description applies to the vast majority of kanji use and therefore serves our basic comparative needs at this time. That said, while kanji do represent language in a manner different from the other Japanese scripts, it would be limiting to assume that kanji are simply Chinese characters being used in Japan. Kanji have undergone centuries of modification to fit the needs of written Japanese. This includes the development of new characters distinct to Japan. As a result, some kanji characters are literally not Chinese, and the script’s use in Japan features major differences from how characters are normatively used in any forms of written Chinese. First, kanji can represent multi-­moraic sequences of sound. Here the term “morae” (singular: mora) refers to the syllable-­like units that make up Japanese phonology. Some kanji, such as 死 (shi, death), mirror most Chinese characters in only representing a single mora/ syllable. But kanji like 酒 (sa-­ke, alcohol) can represent two morae, kanji like 桜 (sa-­ku-­ra, cherry blossoms) can represent three, and kanji like 侍 (sa-­mu-­ra-­i, samurai) can represent four. Some verbs, such as 慮る (omonpakaru, to consider carefully), have five of their six morae represented by a single kanji character, with the kanji 慮 here signifying all aspects of the verb besides its final ru sound (represented by the hiragana る). Second, while most Chinese characters have only one reading,3 kanji have an average of just over two. For kanji with exactly two readings, it is typical for one to be based in the (historical) pronunciation of a Chinese dialect. This reading is called the on-­yomi of the kanji. The other reading, known as the kun-­yomi, is based in a native Japanese reading of the character (Sasahara, 2014). For example, the kanji 水 (water) has the on-­yomi of sui and the kun-­yomi of mizu. The on-­yomi shares an origin with the contemporary Mandarin reading shuǐ, while the kun-­ yomi comes from a native Japanese word for “water.” That said, this “one-­on-­one-­ kun” pairing is a norm rather than a rule. Some kanji have only one total reading

Scripting Japan 5 or even multiple readings of one type but none of the other. Kanji with multiple readings of both types exist as well, with simple characters like 生 (life), 上 (up), and 明 (bright) each possessing over a dozen potential readings. The existence of multiple readings for most kanji does not mean that the pronunciation of a kanji is arbitrary, though. In a way, kanji are actually similar to English letters. While both items possess multiple potential readings in the abstract, they have only one (ignoring the complication of accent) when used in a given context. For instance, the kanji 酒 (alcohol) I  mentioned earlier as representing the morae sake actually has three government-­recognized readings. The first is the on-­yomi of shu, which appears when 酒 represents (pseudo-­)Sino-­ Japanese vocabulary like 梅酒 (ume-­shu, plum wine) or 蒸留酒 (jōryu ¯shu, distilled alcohol). However, 酒 also has two kun-­yomi originating in Japan. It is read as the aforementioned sake when used on its own to represent the word “alcohol” and as saka when appearing in native compound words like 酒場 (sakaba, bar) or 酒屋 (sakaya, liquor store). The compounds 酒場 and 酒屋 cannot formally use the “Chinese” reading of 酒 to be pronounced as shuba/shuya or the other native reading of sake to be pronounced as sakeba/sakeya. Likewise, 蒸留酒 conversely cannot be read using kun-­readings of 酒 to produce jōryu ¯sake or jo¯ryu ¯saka. The reason is simple: none of these listed readings produce extant words. In other words, and again ignoring exceptions like language play for now, the reading of a given kanji is ultimately subservient to the vocabulary it represents. Hiragana and katakana contrast with kanji in being primarily phonetic scripts. Like the Roman alphabet, the constituent characters within each script do not have meaning outside of the context of a language act. In the same way that the letter “i” is not inherently a first-­person pronoun, hiragana and katakana representations of the sound e do not necessarily represent the Japanese word e (“picture,” written in kanji as 絵). Hiragana and katakana are also complimentary scripts. Each possesses 46 characters that represent the same selection of morae from Japanese phonology. For instance, the sounds a, i, u, e, and o can be respectively represented by the hiragana あ, い, う, え, and お and the katakana ア, イ, ウ, エ, and オ. Although the existence of two distinct shapes that represent the same sound is in some ways analogous to the upper and lowercases that exist in languages like English, this comparison is imperfect. A hiragana character and katakana character with identical pronunciation are not considered shapes or cases of the same letter. Rather, each is a distinct symbol within a distinct script. Both scripts were also developed independently of the other and are rarely used together to represent a given word (Habein, 1984; Seeley, 2000). While the use of kanji, hiragana, and katakana has changed drastically throughout Japan’s history, contemporary standardized Japan now uses all three together in a regular manner that attributes distinct roles to each script. This situation is again broadly similar to the contemporary use of upper and lowercases in English, albeit obviously more complex, as different ways of representing the same sounds are applied to specific sentence elements and word types. As a result, the use of script in Japan can be described and taught in a fairly regular manner that applies to most situations. For instance, the introductory Japanese textbook

6  Scripting Japan Genki states that “hiragana [. . .] is used for conjugation endings, function words, and native Japanese words not covered by kanji[,] katakana [. . .] is normally used for writing loanwords and foreign names [ . . . and] kanji are used for nouns and the stems of verbs and adjectives” (Banno, Ohno, Sakane, & Shinagawa, 2005, p. 24). Similarly, the textbook Nakama describes hiragana as used for “function words . . . and for inflectional endings,” katakana as “used for words borrowed from other languages . . . and for some scientific terms,” and kanji as “used for content words, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives” (Hatasa, Hatasa, & Makino, 2011, p. 2). To illustrate Japanese script roles via example, consider the phrase mizu o nomu (to drink water). In this sentence, kanji would represent the noun or “content word” (Hatasa et al., 2011, p. 2) mizu (水, water). Hiragana would instead be used for the grammatical particle o (を) that marks water as the direct object in the sentence. The verb nomu (to drink) would then be written as 飲(no)む(mu). The kanji 飲 is used to represent the verb’s stem no, and the hiragana む represents its inflectional element mu. If nomu was conjugated in another manner, such as nonda (“drank”), nomareta (“was drunk”), or nomanai (“do/will not drink”), the kanji 飲 would still represent the non-­inflecting no in each example, but the hiragana would change in relation to the verb’s conjugation. For instance, nomu would be written as 飲む, nonda as 飲んだ, nomareta as 飲まれた, and nomanai as 飲まない. Katakana would then be required if the above sentence involved gairaigo. The word “gairaigo” is often defined as “loan word(s),” but this label is somewhat misleading since Chinese loans are not considered gairaigo (Tomoda, 2009). Still, any words from languages besides Japanese and Chinese generally appear in the katakana script. So if, for instance, our earlier sentence involved drinking coffee (コーヒー, kōhī), beer (ビール, bīru), or a mango lassi (マンゴーラッシー, mangō rasshī) instead of water, the sentence would include instances of the katakana script. Table  1.2 further visualizes these major script roles by breaking down a longer sentence. English explanations of grammatical particles in the sentence are enclosed in brackets. While Japan’s combined use of scripts is certainly an uncommon practice on an international scale, it is in many ways well suited to the needs of the Japanese language and Japanese literacy. This assertion that more scripts assist literacy may seem peculiar to readers of languages written in a single script, and I do recognize that it is not a universally held belief. In fact, the Japanese writing system has seen a history of criticism from both inside and outside Japan. Detractors have long characterized Japanese writing as overly complex and a burden on memorization, and reform movements throughout history have proposed everything from the abolishment of kanji to the complete replacement of Japanese with English or French (Carroll, 2001; Gottlieb, 1993; Sansom, 1928). However, while the Japanese writing system did undergo periods of necessary simplification and standardization throughout the 1900s, the three-­script system remains today. It now is exceedingly unlikely that any script will be abolished, and the reality is that both native and non-­native Japanese readers actually often find texts written exclusively in a single script harder to read (Gottlieb, 2010b).

Romanization Japanese Script Meaning/ Purpose Translation

wa は hiragana [marks topic]

mise 店 kanji ‘store’

I bought a computer at the store.

watashi 私 kanji ‘I’

de で hiragana [marks location of action]

Table 1.2  A Japanese sentence broken down by script use. konpyūtā コンピューター katakana ‘computer’ (gairaigo)

o を hiragana [marks direct object]

ka 買 kanji stem of ‘to buy’

tta った hiragana plain past ending of ‘to buy’

Scripting Japan 7

8  Scripting Japan The usefulness of multiple scripts in contemporary written Japanese is partially due to the huge number of homophones that exist in the language and the fact that written Japanese does not utilize spaces (Honda, 2009). Consequently, the changing scripts throughout a sentence help delineate synonyms and lexical/grammatical boundaries, overcoming ambiguities that often occur when a text is written using a single script (Coulmas, 1989; Sansom, 1928; Shibata, 2007). Table 1.3 presents demonstrative (albeit exaggerated) examples of how script interplay helps break down Japanese sentences. The table features sentence pairs I took from a list of the most popular user-­submitted puns on the Japanese website Dajare Station (Pun Station) (2016). The pairs all consist of two sentences made from the same sequences of morae, as reflected by the shared romanization of each pair. The meaning of each sentence therefore has the potential to be unclear if written using only one script. Once the sound segments are divided appropriately between scripts, however, only one potential meaning remains for each segment of text (Masuji, 2015).

Orthographic flexibility in written Japanese: theory The Japanese writing system’s use of multiple scripts is therefore less chaotic or inefficient than it may initially sound. While the interplay of the scripts is undoubtedly complex, it does follow describable patterns and is in many ways well suited to the needs of written Japanese. Indeed, although obviously anecdotal, in my experience as a Japanese teacher it takes only about a year for most learners to move from complaining about having to memorize kanji to complaining about Japanese sentences written in only the hiragana and katakana scripts. That said, the use of multiple scripts in Japanese does create complications and opportunities that are absent in many other writing systems. As I mentioned at the start of this chapter, the use of multiple scripts means that any word can

Table 1.3  The use of multiple scripts clarifies the meaning of Japanese sentences. Pun pair i

i zu

Romanization

ra ka

tta

いいヅラ買った i

i zu

ra ka

iizurakatta

tta

言いづらかった sa ga shi ni a

ru ka na i

ka

佐賀市に有るか無いか saga shi ni aru ka na i

ka

sagashiniarukanaika

探しに歩かないか yo ku de ki ta nai yō de su

よくできた内容です yoku de kitana i

yō

de su

義父と喧嘩した

It was hard to say. Is it in the town of Sagashi or not? Shall we walk around and search? Well-produced contents. It seems to be greedy and obscene. I loaned out my gift ticket.

gifutokenkashita

I argued with my stepfather.

gi fu to ken ka shi ta

gi fu to ken ka shi ta

I bought a nice wig.

yokudekitanaiyōdesu

欲 で 汚 いようです ギフト券貸した

Translations

Scripting Japan 9 theoretically be written in any script. Additionally, this potential is not only relevant to “casual” mediums. Even in standard written Japanese, the “proper” representation for an individual word can be unclear. There is no official list of how an author should represent every single noun, adjective stem, verb stem, or adverb that exists in Japanese. Even the government’s official list of kanji for general use (known as the jōyō kanji list) describes itself as a meyasu (guideline) rather than an authoritative list of rules (Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo, 2000; MEXT, 1981; Shibata, 2007). Many of the roles for each script I have presented so far are therefore best described as conventions, as there is no guarantee that two authors will agree on the best representation for a word in a given context (Konno, 2013b). Again, I do not wish to imply that standard written Japanese is an unpredictable orthographic mess. Most writing is orthographically identical, and standards like the use of hiragana for grammatical items are strict enough that few would object to calling them rules. My point in stressing the flexibility of written Japanese is to establish that, although we can easily define the most common way to represent a word, there is still enough allowance for flexibility that variation can occur almost anywhere, as the difference between an incorrect and an uncommon representation can be difficult to define (Hayashi, 1979, 1982; Konno, 2013b, 2014b). As a practical example of the potential for script variation afforded to authors of standard written Japanese, consider the sentence “watashi wa kissaten de kōhī o nomu” (I [will] drink coffee at a café). Table 1.4 shows four methods of writing this sentence. All four contain minor differences but fall within a general convention of standard – or at least generally permissible – script use. To assist readers unfamiliar with Japanese, I added spaces between the sentence elements in each example and placed a rōmaji gloss above them. Neither feature is natural in Japanese writing. Between the four sentences, the use of hiragana for the particles wa, de, and o is constant, as is the use of hiragana for the inflectional ending (mu) of the verb nomu. As the use of hiragana for grammatical particles is inflexible in standard writing, no differences can occur between these items without causing potentially objectionable representations. In terms of the other sentence elements, Example 1 contains the most normative representations overall. It uses kanji for all Japanese and Sino-­Japanese nouns and verb stems and applies katakana to the loan word kōhī. Example 2 differs from Example 1 by using hiragana for the stem of the verb nomu, while Example 3 goes one step further in also using hiragana

Table 1.4  Four generally acceptable representations of a Japanese sentence.

Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4

watashi wa

kissaten de

kōhī

o

nomu

私 私 わたし 私 I (FPP)

喫茶店 喫茶店 喫茶店 喫茶店 café

コーヒー コーヒー コーヒー 珈琲 coffee

を を を を [marks direct object]

飲む のむ のむ 飲む to/will drink

は は は は [marks topic]

で で で で [marks loc. of action]

10  Scripting Japan for the first-­person pronoun watashi. While less common than Example 1, both sentences still fit within a broad definition of standard script use. It would be entirely unsurprising to see either sentence in a novel, newspaper, or similar text. Example 4 is the most “marked” of the four. There is a possibility that it would be rejected from some publications for representing the loan word kōhī (“coffee”) in kanji as 珈琲, as the two characters are absent from the government’s jōyō kanji list (Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo, 2000). That said, Example 4 is still far from an “incorrect” way of writing the sentence, and the use of 珈琲 for kōhī is commonplace (see Figure 1.1) to the extent that most Japanese can read it. As a result, Example 4 would certainly be acceptable in signage, essays, blogs, poems,

Figure 1.1 A Starbucks in Tokyo uses kanji to represent the Japanese word for coffee (珈琲) on its sign. Picture courtesy of Robin Hancock.

Scripting Japan 11 general interest works, or any text created by a publisher that does not strictly follow the jōyō kanji list. Further variation is possible when authors are involved in language play or working in mediums that are less concerned with “correct” or “incorrect” language use. Simply put, the fact that any word can be written in any script opens the door for variation on an immense scale. The five representations of “watashi wa kissaten de kōhī o nomu” in Table  1.5 attempt to illustrate this potential. The examples would never appear in formal writing, and they should be considered more illustrative than representative of any extant script practices. That said, Example 5 (written only in hiragana) and Example 6 (written only in katakana) could be normative within the specific respective contexts of a children’s book, telegram, or message sent via pager (Rowe, 1976). The seventh and eighth representations, which I created by applying different scripts arbitrarily to each sentence element (Example 7) or mora (Example 8), are instead markedly non-­ standard. An actual context where they would be used is hard to imagine, but they are still legible despite certainly impacting ease of access. Finally, Example 9 was created using kanji for their phonetic values alone.4 While not a phenomenon that would occur in any standard text, this sort of playful, almost code-­like writing is occasionally still seen in contemporary Japan (Kataoka, 1997; Saiga, 1989). In short, although contemporary Japanese script use can be described and taught in a regular manner, the writing system’s use of multiple scripts provides the potential for extensive orthographic play (Gottlieb, 2010a; Robertson, 2019; Wakabayashi, 2016). Furthermore, while the above examples are extreme creations for the purpose of explanation, decidedly non-­standard uses of script are not simply a theoretical possibility (Joyce, Hodošček, & Nishina, 2012; Nakamura, 1983; Tsuchiya, 1977). Rather, orthographic variation is “a major characteristic of the Japanese writing system” (Joyce et al., 2012, p. 269) and one that has arguably run throughout the nation’s literary history. For instance, drafts of poems written by the haiku poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) sometimes show more revisions to script than vocabulary; the contemporary author Murakami Haruki used hiragana-­only dialogue for a character within his novel IQ84; and major magazines, companies, advertisements, and products in Japan commonly utilize non-­ standard representations for their titles (Gardner, 2006; Hiraga, 2006; Zielinska-­Elliott & Holm, 2013). Orthographic variation, play, and flexibility are therefore an undeniable reality within contemporary written Japanese. Table 1.5  Four highly marked representations of a Japanese sentence.

Example 5 Example 6 Example 7 Example 8 Example 9

watashi

wa

kissaten

de

kōhī

o

nomu

わたし ワタシ 私 ワたSHI 和田氏

は ハ は は 輪

きっさてん キッサテン KISSATEN きっ茶テN 吃差天

で デ で DE 出

こーひー コーヒー こうひい 珈ヒい 個宇非違

を ヲ を を 御

のむ ノム ノム 飲MU 野無

12  Scripting Japan Although Japanese is not the only writing system that uses multiple scripts, it stands alone with regard to how common and accepted variation is, how many types of variation are possible at any time, and how many chances for variation exist within any written act.

Orthographic flexibility in written Japanese: practice Given that Japan’s use of multiple scripts is so commonly argued to increase legibility, it may seem puzzling that “standard Japanese script use” is ultimately a somewhat nebulous term. Why hasn’t Japan made efforts to crack down on variation, at least within formal writing, and turn the unclear guidelines discussed earlier into formal rules mirroring those for spelling? Or, alternatively, why don’t readers demand this consistency? Certainly, script variation in casual contexts is unsurprising. Departures from standard writing are common in advertising, graffiti, text messages, and similar “casual” avenues for written communication in any language (Cook, 2004; Sebba, 2007). However, while a reader of English might be fine with naming their store “Kwik Stop” or their band “Boyz II Men,” most of us could not imagine a serious publication calling themselves “Za Nü Yorc Tymez” or a parent naming their child “K8-­E.” In contrast, the questions of which script should be officially used to write the names of Japanese cities, children, or citizens who have moved overseas have all been issues of debate and controversy in contemporary Japan (Sasahara, 2006; Takamori, 2015). For non-­ Japanese language users, this may seem surprising for an ostensibly standardized writing system used by a country that supports a high literacy rate and thriving publication industry (Alverson, 2013; JETRO, 2007). Broadly speaking, there are three established explanations for the variation that occurs within and across Japanese writing. Note that these explanations are concurrent rather than conflicting. Each has an undeniable influence on script use in contemporary written Japanese and must therefore be considered when attempting to explain any specific instance of variation. Part of my introducing these motives is therefore to draw readers’ attention to the necessity of addressing them during any analysis. This includes during my own studies in the latter chapters of the current text. While my interest in Scripting Japan relates only to the third explanation, all are necessary to consider before I assert a motive for any script variation in my data. The first explanation for variant script use in contemporary written Japanese is simply that a degree of variation is an unavoidable consequence of a writing system that has utilized multiple scripts in tandem throughout its history; in other words, the idea that the guidelines that now govern script use are probably about as strict as they can be given the history of writing in Japan. While the current national standards for script use in Japan are based on long-­running practices, it is important to note that their official codification is a rather recent development. Furthermore, this is a development that emerged from centuries of vigorous debate wherein some allowance for individual preference was required for significant reform to succeed (Gottlieb, 1995, 2005).

Scripting Japan 13 While the current Japanese writing system is undoubtedly complex and welcoming of variation, it is arguably also the simplest and most regular form of written Japanese to have ever existed. Before the Meiji period (1868–1912), there was no single method of representing the Japanese language through writing. Rather, “Japanese was written in a variety of ways which had in common that they reflected the contemporary language very indirectly or not much at all, mostly being very convoluted and involving some form of the classical written language” (Frellesvig, 2010, p. 381), as throughout most of Japan’s literary history there was no such thing as standardized script use on any national scale. The way a given author represented Japanese in writing instead depended on the time period; the type of text they were writing; or their audience, upbringing, social circles, and gender. Some comparatively codified writing styles used only one script, while others used two or three. Within multiple-­script styles, many variant styles disagreed on which elements to represent in which ways (Konno, 2014a, 2015). Within single-­script styles, conflicting diacritic use, kanji ordering, or even understandings of which characters/shapes were the standard for specific words or sounds could similarly differentiate groups of practitioners or schools of thought (Konno, 2012; Seeley, 2000). In short, in contrast to the contemporary context, literacy in one writing style did not guarantee that one could access the totality of writing in Japanese. Although newspapers and publishing houses began to advocate for the standardization of a single method of writing Japanese in the early 1800s, official movements were slow to take off (Gottlieb, 2012). Many Japanese writers and politicians treated reform and standardization of the writing system as code words for the suppression of individual writing styles and tradition or even the destruction of Japan’s literary history. These opinions, along with a few natural disasters occurring just before major printing changes were scheduled, were enough to stymie over a century of attempts for significant nationwide orthographic reform (Gottlieb, 1995, 2005). Major orthographic policies therefore moved slowly until the postwar period, when reformist factions were finally placed in positions of control. Even with the support of the occupying forces, though, concessions to more traditionalist legislators had to be made to achieve a consensus. The government’s final orthographic reforms explicitly allowed some room for individual taste (Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo, 2000; Shibata, 2007). Even these concessions were not enough, however, as backlash to the initial postwar script reforms has continued unabated to the current day. As a result, the government’s jōyō kanji list is in many ways a living document, as edits and expansions regularly occur in relation to public and political demands (Frellesvig, 2010; Twine, 1991). One perhaps unintended consequence of the various changes to kanji standards over the years is that different generations of Japanese schoolchildren have been expected to learn and use different sets of characters. Since the jōyō kanji list greatly influences the kanji taught in schools, literacy standards and norms have fluctuated across decades, and different readers have had different levels of exposure to different kanji characters. Books written in 1900, 1960, and 2010 might all contain script use that is not meant to be variant but nevertheless contrasts

14  Scripting Japan in noticeable ways. Furthermore, while word processing technology has in some ways weakened the ability of the Japanese to handwrite characters, it has also ironically led to an increase in kanji recognition since “difficult” characters can now be easily produced (Gottlieb, 2005). When all of these factors are combined with the aforementioned desire of many Japanese authors to write in an individual style, differences between what constitutes “best practice” regarding script use in Japan are in many cases irreconcilable (Gottlieb, 1993; Konno, 2013b). It should be again stressed that these differences in script use across (con)texts are rarely large enough to cause significant surprise or reading difficulties. No major authors or corporations are employing a style that normatively uses hiragana for gairaigo or kanji for grammatical particles. Still, the complex history of script use in Japan makes it unlikely that Japan can ever achieve complete national consensus regarding best script practice, and many authors employ variants that are “officially” non-­standard as part of their normative script use. The second major explanation for Japanese script variation is that non-­standard representations often result from concerns of legibility. My use of the phrase “concerns of legibility” here is intentionally broad, as I intend it to encompass a variety of motives. The most discussed is the need to ensure clarity of word boundaries. Even the comparatively inflexible style guides published by newspapers recognize that strict adherence to orthographic norms can result in one script dominating a Japanese sentence. This creates reading difficulties, as it reduces the clarity of word/particle boundaries throughout the sentence. Most style guides therefore recommend, or at least allow, otherwise non-­standard script use in these cases, with ease of reading given preference over strict orthographic consistency (Norimatsu & Horio, 2005). Similarly, locally non-­ standard uses of script are also generally allowed to mitigate issues related to audience literacy. For rather obvious reasons, many authors or editors will often avoid using kanji they assume to be unfamiliar to their intended audiences. Writing aimed at children is a commonplace example. Children’s books are often written without kanji, as it is the last script they learn in school. Other motives for kanji-­absent writing exist as well, such as when the NHK tweeted5 out a kanji-­absent evacuation warning to “foreigners (gaikokujin)” during the arrival of Typhoon Hagibis. Ostensibly, this writing style was designed to assist beginner non-­native Japanese readers (who generally learn hiragana before other scripts) in reading the alert. Unlike word boundaries, though, there are work-­arounds for when an author does not want to use hiragana or katakana in this “non-­standard” manner. By using furigana (hiragana or katakana placed above kanji as a rubric) or including a reading next to a kanji in parentheses, an author can ensure the legibility of any kanji character. For instance, a difficult character like 鬱 can be written with its reading of utsu (うつ) placed above うつ it, as in 鬱 , or beside it, as in 鬱 (うつ). This process has long been mocked by some, as exemplified by Sansom’s oft-­quoted jibe that “one hesitates for an epithet to describe a system of writing which is so complex that it needs the aid of another system to explain it” (1928, p. 44). But the fact that some authors choose to include kanji even when it may impact readability makes sense when

Scripting Japan 15 we consider the aforementioned importance that Japanese authors give to their individual writing styles. The last major legibility-­related explanation for orthographic variation is that marked script use is often employed to draw attention to specific words. Just as an English author may use italics to stress a word or force a phrase to stand out in a text, a Japanese author may utilize a non-­normative representation to ensure that a part of the text grabs readers’ attention. Katakana is by far the script most commonly used for this purpose (Narita & Sakakibara, 2004; Tsuchiya, 1977). The script’s comparatively minimal presence in standard writing makes it often the best suited to catch a reader’s eye, as its use to represent most (Sino-­)Japanese words is obviously marked. Hiragana and kanji can be used for emphasis, though, especially when the author wishes to draw attention to a word normatively written in katakana. For example, rendering a word like pari (Paris) in hiragana as ぱ り or kanji as 巴里 rather than the normative katakana パリ is almost guaranteed to grab readers’ attention (Sasahara, 2017). Finally, the third major motive for orthographic variation in Japanese, and the one I  will be discussing in Scripting Japan, is the idea that variation between kanji, hiragana, and katakana occurs in relation to the meaning(s) an author wishes a given word or sentence to express; that is, the idea that Japanese people may deviate from their normative writing standards when there is a lack of “compatibility between the script type images and the mental representations of what they want to write” (Iwahara, Hatta, & Maehara, 2003, p. 387). On the most fundamental level, this argument is uncontroversial, as there is no real question whether these “script images” exist. Multiple psycholinguistic studies have shown convincingly that hiragana, katakana, and kanji are all described using distinct terms that show consistent commonalities across participants and experiments (Iwahara et al., 2003; Iwahara & Hatta, 2004; Ukita, Minagawa, Sugishima, & Kashu, 1991; Ukita, Sugishima, Minagawa, Inoue,  & Kashu, 1996). Furthermore, casual references to the influence of script images on the meaning of a word or sentence are common within discussions of Japanese writing. The following quotes, taken from academic works on Japanese linguistics, discussions of writing and poetry, and casual dialogues, stand as illustrative examples. Each references script as changing the feel of a word or sentence and treats the question of how a Japanese word is represented as an important decision. When writing furansu [France, normally in katakana] in hiragana, there are lots of examples which try to give off a soft image. Also, when kōhī [coffee, normally in katakana] is written in kanji, the image arises of a thick, rough mug sitting on a table with cabriole legs inside a dim, brick café. At least, it does not seem that instant coffee will be served. (Nakamura, 1983, p. 38) On café signs and the like, you can see words like kōhī written in kanji. Even if there is no difference in the coffee itself, when represented by kanji it seems to have the effect of expressing the weight of the history of coming from the

16  Scripting Japan so-­called nanban [Western nations and their Southeast Asian colonies], an exotic mood, and a kind of kodawari6 [expertise or fastidiousness]. (Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo, 2000, p. 21) But iki [breath] appears twice in the poem, first in kanji, then in hiragana. The first time is probably expressing a loud voice saying “iki o korose” [hold your breath] to everyone, while the second is lightly saying “iki o korose.” That is, expressing softness with hiragana, and expressing things you want to strongly stress using the power and hardness of kanji. (Quoted by Nagano, 1976, p. 142) When writing megane [glasses] in hiragana, it’s the image of an old lady reading postcards or letters, wearing pince-­nez glasses with one temple made out of string . . . for me, megane in kanji fits better. When I write it in kanji, I think of a sharp, educated madam. (Akiyama, as quoted in Hayashi, 1982, p. 182) The density and complexity of two kanji [for the words “cicada” and “voice”] in combination [in this poem] corresponds nicely with the vividness and sharpness of the sound of the cicada breaking the prevailing silence of the mountain temple. (Hiraga, 2006, p. 144) Numerous commentators on this poem have pointed to a poetically effective correspondence between signifier and signified in these contrasting phrases, with the simple, curvilinear hiragana conveying the frailty and fluttering motion of the lone butterfly, while the dense and infrequently encountered kanji for dattan kaikyo [Straight of Tartary] convey a sense of rugged, vast, and inhospitable terrain. (Gardner, 2006, p. 66) In short, the idea that hiragana, katakana, and kanji are all able to change the feel of words and sentences is well established in both academic research and literary discussion on Japanese writing. Table 1.6 presents a list I made of the “images” (imēji), “impressions” (inshō), “feelings” (kimochi), and “effects” (kōka) – to borrow the terms of prior research – that have been connected to the various scripts in academic studies and general commentaries ranging from the late 1950s to present. Broadly speaking, the origins of the descriptions throughout the table are linked to each script’s “appearance, usage, and guidelines” (Iwahara et al., 2003, p. 138). The respective links between kanji and masculinity or hiragana and femininity, for instance, are commonly attributed to historical gendered divides in their use, and the description of katakana as angular or jarring is attributed to the sharp edges of its constituent characters (Masuji, 2015; Tsuboi, 2003; Yoda, 2000). Any contradictory descriptions within each category reflect the at times individualistic nature of the general commentaries used to construct Table 1.6 and conflicting findings from the results of prior research.

Scripting Japan 17 Table 1.6  Images commonly linked to each Japanese script. Kanji

Hiragana

Katakana

abrupt, angular, cold, cool, administrative, Beautiful, childish, cute, emphasizing, erotic, authentic, adult, elegant, emotional, fake, feminine, foreign, beautiful, businesslike, familiar, feminine, frail, friendly, fun, futuristic, cold, complicated, friendly, gentle, graceful, graceless, hard, high tech, conspicuous, Chinese, healing, intimate, illegitimate, imitative, cumbersome, Japanese, kind, light, individualistic, inorganic, cultural, deep, dense, literary, lovely, mellow, international, jarring, difficult, elegant, elite, mild, nice, poetic, masculine, marked, erudite, extravagant, private, round, refined, modern, new, precise, formal, hard, heavy, simple, smooth, soft, progressive, rigid, intellectual, Japanese, tender, tepid, traditional, robotic, rough, sexual, learned, masculine, unreliable, warm, weak, scientific, sharp, simple, militaristic, official, old, welcoming, young strong, stylish, unique, pretentious, refined, vivid, vulgar, young rigid, sacred, scientific, stiff, substantial, threatening, traditional, unwelcoming, upperclass

Toward a sociolinguistic study of script variation in Japan Although the idea that images of each Japanese script affect their employment is uncontentious, studies into how script creates meaning in natural contexts (i.e., outside of laboratory settings or tests) have had their specific analyses restricted by long-­running issues. This is not to say that there have been no important developments in our understanding of the phenomenon. A large number of influential studies on script use for effect appeared during the 1980s, with Satake’s work (1980, 1982, 1989) in particular seeing heavy citation even in latter decades, and the topic has seen continual scattered study to date. Through identifying uses of script that cannot be explained by individual preference or legibility, these studies have made it clear that authors are using script play to convey something to their readers. The studies have also provided key insights regarding where variation is found, which sentence elements are most common targets of variation, and what social groups seem to spend the most time considering script use during writing (Norimatsu  & Horio, 2006; Tsuchiya, 1977; Yazaki, 2003). However, persistent limitations in terms of data selection, research methodology, and theoretical framing have prevented these investigations from accessing or evidencing specifics of what is conveyed via marked uses of script, or even the process through which a specific meaning is conveyed at all. As a result, much is left unknown about the “meaning” of script use in Japan. Among the limitations of prior research, the most pressing issue is simply that the findings of studies on script images have been employed uncritically to explain script practices. The initial wave of studies into affective motives for script use generally analyzed the motives for interesting selections of script by relying

18  Scripting Japan entirely on studies of script images, or even just the researcher’s personal impressions as a native speaker (Masuji, 2011). Few researchers engaged in any explicit investigation into the intent of the author as an individual, be it through attention to the contexts in which an author repeatedly uses a given representation or direct interviews with an author regarding their script use. This is obviously problematic from a sociolinguistic perspective, as (individual) understanding of how a variant is viewed in the abstract is not the same as understanding how the same variant is interpreted within a context of use (Campbell-­Kibler, 2007; see also Chapter  2). Even more problematic, though, is the fact that early studies employing top-­down interpretive methodologies have been consistently relied upon in future studies, creating a sort of feedback loop. New studies cite older work to evidence that a given use of script in their data is intended for a particular effect, and then use these assertions to claim that a previously argued motive for script use is correct. As a result, the idea that a given script’s marked use produces a given image appears to have greater empirical support, but there is no actual increase in bottom-­up or emergent data that evidences that the script is used for this specific purpose. The effect created by each script’s marked use is simply seen and treated as absolute. In raising this critique, I want to be clear that I am not arguing that explanations that reference common script images or native speaker interpretations are always wrong. When a study shows a marked example of hiragana and claims that it is intended to convey “cuteness” because hiragana is seen as “cute,” to give one example, the explanation is often plausible and may even be correct. The problem with much research to date is not that all explanations produced so far are wrong, but that analytical methodology has relied almost entirely on researcher perceptions rather than holistic analysis of the data. That top-­down explanations can be correct does not mean that they always are, nor does it justify their use to explain all future instances of a given script’s marked use. For example, in a 1997 study, Kataoka presents a single sentence that has been written using marked selections of katakana and states that this script use is “clearly an intentional manipulation for emphasis or familiarity with the addressee because [the] sentence is usually written in hiragana” (1997, p. 115). Again, this explanation may be correct. Non-­standard katakana use has been noted as part of youth-­to-­youth writing practices since the early 1980s, at the latest (Satake, 1980, 1982). But as Kataoka’s assertion is not rooted in comparisons with other cases where katakana is used in a marked manner by the same author, and as it makes no reference to the surrounding language use or the contexts in which the author avoids this style of katakana use, we cannot be sure. The conclusion, therefore, ultimately does not move beyond being one potential explanation of author intent and potentially overlooks novel or undiscovered motives for the particular use of script in this context. After all, the way young people of one generation understand use of a language variant is unlikely to be the same as a new generation years down the line, as what is “cool” is constantly in flux (Blommaert, 2016). Clearly then, the solution to this first limitation is methodological at its core. Without moving from a priori or top-­down analysis of individual examples to

Scripting Japan 19 bottom-­up, context-­focused, and holistic text-­wide analysis of variation, we simply cannot increase the confidence or detail with which we describe the motives for a given selection. Furthermore, without including attention to how readers respond to variation, we cannot access the totality of meanings created by a given instance of script use. Just as how understanding that swearing in the abstract is considered vulgar in English fails to explain the totality of reasons why people swear, or the totality of ways in which swearing is perceived, discussions of script images in the abstract risk misrepresenting both the motives for and the understanding of script use in specific contexts (Burridge  & Allan, 2006; Christie, 2013; Stapleton, 2003). Simply put, the fact that an interpretation or motive is plausible does not mean that it is accurate or assured. Although static descriptions of a language variant out of context are not irrelevant to discussions of a variant’s meaning or the reasons for (someone’s reaction to) its employment, they are also not the same as perception of that variant in use (Agha, 2007; Campbell-­Kibler, 2011). The second major limitation of prior studies on Japanese script use is that non-­standard script use has been identified by referring to published style guides or the researcher’s conception of standard script use. This tendency is problematic for a multitude of reasons. The most obvious is that, as mentioned earlier, standard Japanese script use (like all standard language use) is not always simple to define (Jaffe, 2000; Konno, 2013b). Not only do authors have personal orthographic preferences, but these personal preferences may also be contextually flexible. Just as I write differently in this book than I would when texting a friend or trying to beg a publisher for an extended deadline, the script preferences a Japanese author employs in a formal letter may not align with those they use when attempting to create a more intimate or friendly persona (Kataoka, 1997; Satake, 1989). To convincingly define a use of script as intentional, or calculated to create some kind of effect, we must therefore first establish that it is non-­standard for the author’s local writing style. While we can “treat as conventional those practices found either in formal writing or across a range of genres” (Tranter, 2008, p. 136) when teaching Japanese or discussing script use as a whole, these practices are often too ill-­defined to be useful when identifying marked script use in the specific. At best, studies that analyze a text without establishing its local script norms risk overlooking marked script use that happens to align with national conventions. At worst, they risk analyzing locally standard script use as marked applications of script for effect. Furthermore, if an author’s style deviates strongly from standard conventions, this may be worth discovering and attending to in its own right, as formally non-­standard writing styles are often themselves socially meaningful choices (Androutsopoulos, 2000; Shaw, 2008; Vosters, Gijsbert, van der Wal, & Vandenbussche, 2012). The final issue with prior research on how Japanese script selection creates meaning is that there has been a distinct bias toward certain materials as data sources – specifically, newspapers, magazines, advertising copy, and sentence-­level excerpts of youth writing. The work using these sources has certainly produced valuable findings, especially regarding how texts with a younger audience tend to

20  Scripting Japan engage in more script play than texts written for older readers. However, I would argue that they are ultimately limiting sources of data. As these texts are written by multiple authors, the question of whether a variant is marked or just results from contrasting writing styles cannot be easily answered. Establishing text-­wide norms is also not possible, as different norms may apply across headlines, article types, contributors, and even messages within an interaction. Consequently, the purpose behind variations must be explained as though the entire text represents a singular intent. A text aimed at teenagers that is katakana-­heavy, for instance, will be argued to use katakana to seem casual and cool, to show emotional connection, or to recreate the feel of spoken language (Satake, 1980, 1982, 1989). Once again, these explanations are not necessarily wrong. But it is also quite possible that they only scratch the surface of the individual author’s intent or the motive behind any specific use of script. The analysis of these texts also generally occurs on the word level, with the contexts that spawn particular styles of variation ignored in favor of discussion of the specific words subject to variation. Finally, these sources all leave attention to reader response absent, with no studies to date fully engaging with how people actually engage with variant script use in context. In summation, a lengthy dialogue exists regarding the marked use of Japanese scripts for effect. While this dialogue has shown convincingly that script selection can be involved in the creation of meaning, its commonplace nature belies a lack of varied, holistic, bottom-­up, or context-­sensitive analysis of the phenomenon itself. While we can state that certain scripts are viewed in certain ways, or used to alter the nuance of individual vocabulary, we ultimately know little about this orthographic process beyond the surface level. Examinations of script use for effect have thus far mostly treated it as a stagnant, stimulus-­response style phenomenon, with no real consideration of the potential for script use to function as an active language practice; that is, as constantly evolving and negotiated linguistic acts whose meaning is not only inherently contextual but also arises from competing ideologies about language use(rs) rather than just images of a script in the abstract (Agha, 2007; Eckert, 2008; Silverstein, 2003). This situation creates limitations for Japanese translators, students interested in participating in casual communicative arenas, and anyone who wishes to engage with any written Japanese outside of formal texts, as it leaves us with a superficial understanding of what is undoubtedly a major aspect of the language. To further our knowledge of how script is used to create meaning in Japanese writing, it is therefore necessary to analyze script selection via new data sources and in a holistic manner that combines four major ideas. The first is that Japanese writers hold distinct images and understandings of each script or its marked use. The second is that language variants can encode social information. The third is that accessing the meaning(s) created by a language variant requires engagement with the language use in context. And the fourth is that language users may differ in their understanding of the effect a variant creates (Masuji, 2011; Ochs, 2012). Importantly, only the first of these four conditions is specific to the Japanese context. In improving our understanding of how Japanese script

Scripting Japan 21 selection creates meaning, we are therefore also required to expand our perspective outside of Japan or written Japanese. Rather than treating the creation of meaning through marked use of kanji, hiragana, or katakana as a purely Japanese phenomenon, as has been done in the past, we need to move into viewing it as a localized manifestation of a more universal act: the creation of meaning through language variation. However, although users of all languages are likely to have little difficulty recalling discussions that link speech styles to defined populations, traits, or interactive goals, the idea that script selection can be linked to social identities and practices in a similar manner may still seem foreign. For instance, while users of English are undoubtedly aware of social divides between how the language is spoken or spelled, they may be less aware of cases where the language is written in anything other than the Roman alphabet. Even readers literate in languages that feature script variation may pause at viewing the practice as potentially analogous to variation in speech, as in many contexts script variation is seen as something that occurs between texts or authors rather than actively throughout language acts. In the next chapter, I  will therefore take a step back from the discussion of Japanese script variation itself to further explain and evidence this text’s fundamental conceit that variant script use is in fact an inherently social act. To accomplish this goal, I  will look at established styles of graphic variation around the world, demonstrating that even the users of single-­script writing systems are performing written acts that engage with “sets of beliefs attributed to and expressed by means of graphic phenomena” (Spitzmüller, 2012, p. 255). Ultimately, the chapter will make it clear that the idea that variant script use can produce and reflect social beliefs in Japan is at heart an overdue application of an established perspective to an understudied context, rather than any kind of novel or Japanese-­restricted claim.

Standards, terminology, and chapter outline Before concluding this introductory chapter, I need to establish a few practices and terms that will be used throughout this book and provide a brief outline of the latter chapters. First, romanization of Japanese throughout Scripting Japan will almost always follow the Modified Hepburn system. As mentioned earlier, I intend for the contents of this book to be accessible to people with no background in Japanese. As Modified Hepburn bases its rules on English/Latin pronunciation, it is best suited for assisting non-­Japanese speakers in accessing excerpts in this text (Carr, 1939; Gottlieb, 2010b). The only time I will deviate from Modified Hepburn is when a referenced source or speaker uses a different method of romanization for their own name, in accordance with the advice of Neustupný (1985). Within Modified Hepburn Romanization, each letter of the Latin alphabet represents only one phoneme. These are expressed in Table 1.7. Extended vowel sounds are then represented by either a macron (e.g., ō) or a double vowel (e.g., ii), depending on the word type and vowel (Kenkyūsha, 1974). Noting extended

22  Scripting Japan Table 1.7  A guide to pronouncing vowels in romanized Japanese. Vowel

a

i

u

e

o

Pronunciation

as in “father”

as in “key”

as in “too”

as in “bet” as in “toe”

vowels is important in Japanese since many words are differentiated only by vowel length. For example, koto refers to the Japanese instrument, kōtō means “verbal,” kotō is an “isolated island,” and kōto means “coat” or “(tennis) court.” Vowels can also be extended to depict irregular lengthening of a word’s pronunciation, in a manner analogous to writing “no” as “noooooo” in English. Second, in Scripting Japan I  will only use the word “script” to refer to “a system of writing” (“Script [Def. 5],” 2018); that is, a distinct set of letters or symbols used to represent a language. This clarification is necessary because a “script” can also refer to a formalized style of representing letters in a language. For instance, the logos of the Ford Motor Company and Coca-­ Cola are written in what is commonly referred to as the Spencerian script, and German was written in what are commonly called the Fraktur, Antiqua, and Sütterlin scripts before postwar changes enshrined the Latin script as standard (Florey, 2009). As I need to differentiate different ways of rendering letter forms from entire sets of characters used to represent a language, I will refer to variants like Spencerian or Fraktur as “hands” or “styles” instead of “scripts.” Quotes from other texts will be amended using brackets to match this norm. I  admit that my use of “styles” as a term is arbitrary, as is the hard line I am drawing here between a style and a script. However, this does not change the necessity of separating the terms I  use to refer to hiragana, katakana, and kanji from those I use to refer to competing depictions of “the same” characters or letters. I also similarly treat the word “orthography” as a synonym for “script” throughout this text based on a definition of “orthography” as a system of symbols used as a method of representing a language (“Orthography [Def. 4],” n.d.). My uses of “orthography” in this book will never refer to any other definitions of the word, including its more common reference to a spelling system or its accompanying rules. Phrases like “orthographic variation” and “non-­standard orthographic usage” will therefore refer only to variation between scripts. For example, 食べている and たべている (both “eating”) are each romanized as tabeteiru since they use different scripts for their stem but are uniform in all other respects. By contrast, 食べている and 食べてる both use kanji for the verb stem but are, respectively, romanized as tabeteiru and tabeteru since they use different spellings (the pair is perhaps analogous to “eating” vs. “eatin’ ”) (Miyamoto, 2014). I will therefore only refer to the first word pair as an example of “orthographic variation” in this text. The need for a word that broadly encompasses any recognized collection of written symbols is important here, as phrases like “changes to case,” “syllabaric variation,” etc., are simply not comprehensive enough to describe the potential replacement of any one of the four scripts used in Japanese writing with any of the others.

Scripting Japan 23 Finally, the rest of Scripting Japanese will continue as follows, with all chapters adhering to the above standards. As mentioned in the prior section, in Chapter 2, I will give an overview of the sociolinguistic perspectives on language variation that motivate the research throughout Scripting Japan. In doing so, I  specifically aim to introduce non-­linguists to the sociolinguistic concept of indexicality and establish that purely graphic styles of variation can point to (i.e., “index”) social groups or associated traits. From Chapter 3 to Chapter 6, I will present and analyze how meaning is created through Japanese script selection across a variety of data sources and studies. I begin in Chapter 3 with an examination of non-­standard uses of katakana in representations of non-­native Japanese speech. My primary goal in the chapter is to further our understanding of this established style of marking, showing directly how sociolinguistic perspectives and bottom-­up analytical methods overcome limitations in prior explanations of Japanese orthographic phenomenon. In Chapter 4, I expand on the methodology of Chapter 3, looking more broadly at how the authors of three Japanese manga utilize complex interplays between all three Japanese scripts to contrast speaker groups and stance-­taking acts. In doing so, I will also evidence that entire norms for the use of all three scripts can be connected to ideologically defined identities, with even standard or “unmarked” styles of script use functioning as potential social acts. In Chapter 5, I will change and narrow my focus to look at how script selection can interact at the word level with other indexes. More specifically, my analysis examines the meanings created by or associated with pronoun-­script combinations, looking at how both authors and readers engage with these items as indexes of specific social actors. In Chapter  6, I  continue the reader-­focused perspective introduced in Chapter 5, presenting the results of a matched-­guise study on how orthographic variation influences assumptions of author identity. This final analysis chapter shows that readers’ understandings of what styles of marked script use index are both context-­and ideology-­dependent. Consequently, even the use of a specific script in a specific text can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Finally, in Chapter 7, I will survey the findings across Scripting Japan as a whole, bringing the wide range of data together to demonstrate their combined contribution to our understanding of script use throughout Japan.

Notes www.asahi.com/articles/ASL4T722TL4TULFA04F.html?iref=comtop_8_02. 1 2 Unless noted otherwise, all translations of Japanese across Scripting Japan are by the author. 3 The definition of “reading” throughout this book follows that of Japanese kanji dictionaries. Cases where a kanji is read the same way when representing distinct vocabulary are considered different readings. For instance, while 生 is read as i in both 生かす (ikasu, to make use of/apply [knowledge, abilities]) and 生きる (ikiru, to live), these are treated as distinct readings for the kanji. See Frellesvig (2010) or Konno (2012) for more details. 4 The character 御 is actually written in hiragana as お, whereas the hiragana is a grammatical marker written as を. Both hiragana are pronounced the same in contemporary Japanese, however, so if this sentence was read aloud this discrepancy would not be noticeable.

24  Scripting Japan https://twitter.com/nhk_news/status/1182136319050432513. 5 6 The word kodawari is difficult to define. White (2012) describes it broadly as skill and attention to craft and detail that includes elements of advertising, obsessiveness, perfectionism, and aesthetic performance.

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Scripting Japan 25 Gottlieb, N. (1995). Kanji politics: Language policy and Japanese script. London and New York: Kegan Paul International. Gottlieb, N. (2005). Language and society in Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gottlieb, N. (2010a). Playing with language in e-­Japan: Old wine in new bottles. Japanese Studies, 30(3), 393–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2010.51 8600 Gottlieb, N. (2010b). The Rōmaji movement in Japan. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 20(1), 75–88. Gottlieb, N. (2012). Language policy in Japan: The challenge of change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Habein, Y. S. (1984). The history of the Japanese written language. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Hatasa, Y. A., Hatasa, K.,  & Makino, S. (2011). Nakama 1a (2nd ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Hayashi, Ō. (1979). Nihongo no hyōkihō. In Bunkachō (Ed.), Shin kotoba shiriizu 10: Nihongo no tokushoku (pp. 75–85). Tokyo: Ookurashou Insatsukyoku. Hayashi, Ō. (1982). Nihongo no goi no hyōki. In K. Satō (Ed.), Kōza nihongo no goi 2: Nihongo no goi no tokuchō (pp. 179–200). Tokyo: Meiji Shoin. Hiraga, M. (2006). Kanji: The visual metaphor. Style, 40(1–2), 133–147. Honda, K. (2009). Homographic kanji, their ambiguity and the effectiveness of okurigana as a device for disambiguation. Written Language  & Literacy, 12(2), 213–236. https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.12.2.06hon Iwahara, A., & Hatta, T. (2004). Can we encode emotional semantic information in written message? A basic study towards a development of a new miscommunication-­ free e-­mail system. Proceedings of PRICAI 2004 Workshop on Language Sense on Computer, Auckland, New Zealand, pp. 10–17. Iwahara, A., Hatta, T., & Maehara, A. (2003). Effects of a sense of compatibility between type of script and word in written Japanese. Reading and Writing, 16(4), 377–397. Jaffe, A. (2000). Introduction: Non-­standard orthography and non-­standard speech. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 4(4), 497–513. JETRO. (2007). Manga industry in Japan. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/ web/20120402072416/www.jetro.org/trends/market_info_manga.pdf Joyce, T., Hodošček, B., & Nishina, K. (2012). Orthographic representation and variation within the Japanese writing system: Some corpus-­based observations. Written Language & Literacy, 15(2), 254–278. https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.15.2.07joy Kataoka, K. (1997). Affect in letter writing: Unconventional conventions in letter writing by young Japanese women. Language in Society, 26(1), 103–136. Kenkyūsha. (1974). Kenkyusha’s new Japanese-­English dictionary (4th ed.). Tokyo: Kenkyūsha. Kenzhekhanuly, R. (2015). Ideologies and alphabet reforms in Asia. In B. del Chiesa, J. Scott, & C. Hinton (Eds.), Languages in a global world: Learning for better cultural understanding (pp. 133–150). Paris: OECD Publishing. Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo. (2000). Hyōgen keishiki ni yoru tsukaiwake. In Shin kotoba shirīzu 12: Kotoba no tsukaiwake (pp. 20–27). Tokyo: Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku. Konno, S. (2012). Hyaku nen mae no nihongo. Tokyo: Iwanami. Konno, S. (2013a). Seishohō no nai nihongo. Tokyo: Iwanami. Konno, S. (2013b). Seishohō no nai nihongo. Tokyo: Iwanami.

26  Scripting Japan Konno, S. (2014a). Kanazukai no rekishi. Tokyo: Chuokoron. Konno, S. (2014b). Nihongo no hyōki no tayōsei. AJALT, 37, 23–27. Konno, S. (2015). Nihongo no rekishi. Tokyo: Kawade. Masuji, H. (2011). Gendai nihongo ni okeru mojishu no sentaku. Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. Masuji, H. (2015). Terebi bangumi no mojishu jōhō ni okeru hihyōjun teki na katakana hyōki: “Mojiretsu he no maibotsu kaihi” no kanten kara. Kokubungaku Kenkyū, 176, 67–82. Matsunaga, S. (1996). The linguistic nature of kanji reexamined: Do kanji represent only meanings? The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, 30(2), 1–22. MEXT. (1981). Jōyōkanjihyō. Retrieved from www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/ nc/k19811001001/k19811001001.html Miyake, K. (2007). How young Japanese express their emotions visually in mobile phone messages: A sociolinguistic analysis. Japanese Studies, 27(1), 53–72. https:// doi.org/10.1080/10371390701268646 Miyamoto, Y. (2014). Inuki kotoba [Keio University]. Retrieved from www.gakuji.keio. ac.jp/hiyoshi/hou/fukusenkou/3946mc000002ddoh-­att/a1399948036427.pdf Nagano, M. (1976). Nihongo no mojihyōki. In H. Kindaichi (Ed.), Nihongo Kōza 1: Nihongo no Sugata. Tokyo: Taishūkan. Nakamura, A. (1983). Kokugo kyōiku ni okeru retorikku no mondai. Nihongogaku, 2(3), 35–42. Narita, T.,  & Sakakibara, H. (2004). Gendai nihongo no hyōki taikei to hyōki sakuryaku: Katakana no tsukaikata no henka. Ningen Bunka Kenkyū, 2, 41–55. Neustupný, J. V. (1985). Japanese: A brief introduction. Melbourne: Japanese Studies Center. Norimatsu, T., & Horio, K. (2005). Wakamono zasshi ni okeru katakana hyōki to sono kanyōka wo megutte. Kitakyūshū Shiritsu Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō, 69, 35–44. Norimatsu, T., & Horio, K. (2006). Wakamono zasshi ni okeru jōyō kanji no katakana hyōkika: Imi bunseki no kanten kara. Kitakyūshū Shiritsu Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō, 72, 19–32. Ochs, E. (2012). Experiencing language. Anthropological Theory, 12(2), 142–160. Orthography [Def. 4]. (n.d.). Dictionary.com unabridged. Retrieved October  13, 2015, from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/orthography?s=t Reiman, E. O. (2001). Nihongo to kanji to arufabetto moji. In Y. Hida & T. Sato (Eds.), Gendai Nihongo Kōza 1: Gengo Jōhō (pp. 112–148). Tokyo: Meiji Shōin. Robertson, W. (2017). He’s more katakana than kanji: Indexing identity and self-­ presentation through script in Japanese manga. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 21(4), 497–520. Robertson, W. (2019). Unspeakable puns: Kanji-­dependent wordplay as a localization strategy in Japanese. Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2018. 1548628 Rowe, H. M. (1976). A study of the use of katakana for non-­foreign words in some contemporary Japanese newspapers and magazines (Master’s thesis). Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Saiga, H. (1955). Sougou zasshi no katakana go. Gengo Seikatsu, 46, 37–45. Saiga, H. (1989). Gendaijin no kanji kankaku to asobi. In K. Satō (Ed.), Kanji Kōza 10: Gendai Seikatsu to Kanji (pp. 250–280). Tokya: Meiji Shoin. Sansom, G. B. (1928). An historical grammar of Japanese. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Scripting Japan 27 Sasahara, H. (2006). Nihon no kanji. Tokyo: Iwanami. Sasahara, H. (2014). Kunyomi no hanashi: Kanjibunka to nihongo. Tokyo: Kadokawa. Sasahara, H. (2017). Kanji ni miru nihonjin rashisa. AEJF. Retrieved from http:// aejf.asso.fr/files/symposium_actes/2017_actes/2017_actes_1/01Sasahara.pdf Satake, H. (1980). Wakamono zasshi no kotoba: Shin genbuntchi tai. Gengo Seikatsu, 343, 46–52. Satake, H. (1982). Wakai sedai no bunshō. Gobun, 40, 36–43. Satake, H. (1989). Wakamono no bunshō to katakana kōka. Nihongogaku, 8(1), 60–67. Script [Def. 5]. (2018). Dictionary.com unabridged. Retrieved from www.dictionary. com/browse/script?s=t Sebba, M. (2007). Spelling and society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sebba, M. (2012). Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power. In M. Sebba, A. Jaffe, J. Androutsopoulos, & S. Johnson (Eds.), Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power (pp. 1–20). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Seeley, C. (2000). A history of writing in Japan. Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press. Shaw, P. (2008). Spelling, accent and identity in computer-­mediated communication. English Today, 24(2), 42–49. Shibata, M. (2007). Hōsō to kanji. In Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo (Ed.), Shin kotoba shirīzu 20: Moji to shakai (pp. 35–42). Tokyo: Gyōsei. Silverstein, M. (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication, 23(3–4), 193–229. Spitzmüller, J. (2012). Floating ideologies: Metamorphoses of graphic “Germanness”. In M. Sebba, A. Jaffe, J. Androutsopoulos, & S. Johnson (Eds.), Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power (pp. 255–288). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Spitzmüller, J. (2015). Graphic variation and graphic ideologies: A  metapragmatic approach. Social Semiotics, 25(2), 126–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/1035033 0.2015.1010323 Stapleton, K. (2003). Gender and swearing: A community practice. Women and Language, 26(2), 22–33. Takamori, A. (2015). “Henna nihongo” (strange Japanese): On the linguistic baggage of racial strangeness. Japanese Language and Literature, 49(2), 485–508. Tomoda, T. (2009). The foreign word tsunami: Perceptions, politics and policies on loanwords (gairaigo) in contemporary Japan. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. Tranter, N. (2008). Nonconventional script choice in Japan. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 192, 133–151. https://doi.org/10.1515/ IJSL.2008.040 Tsuboi, M. (2003). Otokode/onnade: Seisa ni yoru hyōki yōshiki no bunrui. Tsukuba Nihongo Kenkyū, 8, 1–21. Tsuchiya, S. (1977). Gendai shinbun no katakana hyōki. Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo Hōkoku, 59(8), 140–159. Twine, N. (1991). Language and the constitution. Japan Forum, 3(1), 125–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/09555809108721412 Ukita, J., Minagawa, N., Sugishima, I., & Kashu, K. (1991). Nichijō buppinmei no hyōki keitai ni kansuru kenkyū kaku hyōki no shukanteki shutsugen hindo to tekisetsusei ni tsuite no hyōtei. Jinbunronkyū, 40(4), 11–26. Ukita, J., Sugishima, I., Minagawa, N., Inoue, M., & Kashu, K. (1996). Nihongo no hyōki keitai ni kansuru shinrigakuteki kenkyū. Tokyo: Nihon Shinrigakkai Monogurafu Iinkai.

28  Scripting Japan Unseth, P. (2005). Sociolinguistic parallels between choosing scripts and languages. Written Language & Literacy, 8(1), 19–42. Vosters, R., Gijsbert, R., van der Wal, M.,  & Vandenbussche, W. (2012). Spelling and identity in the Southern Netherlands (1750–1830). In M. Sebba, A. Jaffe, J. Androutsopoulos, & S. Johnson (Eds.), Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power (pp. 135–159). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Wakabayashi, J. (2016). Script as a factor in translation. Journal of World Literature, 1(2), 173–194. White, M. (2012). Coffee life in Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Yazaki, S. (2003). “Nazuke” ni miru wakamono no kotoba to moji: Arufabetto moji no zōka wo chūshin ni. Gogaku Kyōiku Kenkyū Ronsō, 20, 223–234. Yoda, T. (2000). Literary history against the national frame, or gender and the emergence of Heian kana writing. Positions, 8(2), 465–497. Zielinska-­ Elliott, A.,  & Holm, M. (2013). Two moons of Europe: Translating Murakami Haruki’s 1Q84. The AALITRA Review, 7, 5–19.

2 Graphic play as a social act Indexicality and orthographic variation

In the first chapter of Scripting Japan, I argued that furthering our understanding of Japanese script variation requires attending to contemporary sociolinguistic perspectives on language variation. However, my fundamental conceit that script can be part of how “a reader or writer constructs an identity” (Sebba, 2018, p. 8) across day-­to-­day interactions may still seem questionable to many readers. In the current chapter, I will therefore take a brief step back from the Japanese context to more broadly establish that people around the world regularly utilize variant language representation to actively establish their identities, engage with linguistic ideologies, and produce social meaning. Consequently, the way we represent words can itself be a “socially relevant communication practice” (Spitzmüller, 2012, p. 256) that contributes to the meaning of any language act. Chapter  2 will unfold across three main sections. I  will begin by providing an introductory overview of indexicality, a major contemporary sociolinguistic framework that helps us grasp how different ways of “saying the same thing” (Silverstein, 1985, p.  222) acquire or produce social meanings. By design, my discussion of indexicality will be somewhat summary. I  will not be providing the level of detail and history found in core writings on the topic, such as those by Agha (2007), Eckert (2008, 2012), Ochs (1992), or Silverstein (2003). My primary intents are instead to assist readers without a sociolinguistic background in accessing the ideas and language used throughout Scripting Japan and more explicitly detail how indexicality directly assists with overcoming the limitations of prior research on Japanese script raised in Chapter 1. In the second section, I  will problematize the speech-­focused dialogues common to explanations of indexicality to date. To do so, I will demonstrate that styles of variation inherent in the written mode have also become resources for indexing identities, social voices, and sociopolitical stance around the world. My focus will begin by broadly attending to writing-­restricted forms of variation in general, but quickly move to looking more explicitly at purely graphic forms of language variation. Finally, in the third section I will evidence that the use of graphic variation to create social meaning is not limited to text-­wide changes or one-­off language acts. Through discussing recent online language practices in English, I will show that graphic manipulation can also occur as part of how writers index identity and stance across local interactions, with in-­the-­moment negotiations of meaning via these

30  Graphic play as a social act techniques observable even in languages without Japan’s long history of script-­ based language variation and play. Taken together, the discussions across Chapter 2 will therefore evidence that graphic language variation is an important – if often overlooked – element of meaning creation around the world. Consequently, the lack of prior attention to Japanese scripts as potential indexes is due to a lack of communication between two fields of research rather than incompatibility, with perspectives and frameworks used to study spoken forms of language variation having clear potential to help expand our understanding of script use in written Japanese.

A brief introduction to indexicality At the most elementary level, indexicality refers to “the creation of semiotic links between linguistic forms and social meanings” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005a, p. 594). In other words, it attends to questions of how linguistic items or features (i.e., “indexes”) that are identical on the dictionary-­literal level ultimately point to distinct social identities and meanings (Agha, 2007; Eckert, 2008; Ochs, 2012). A fairly straightforward example of two potential indexes in English is the word pair “lift” and “elevator.” A completely neutral actor would interpret the use of either term in the same way, as both fundamentally refer to the same object. In an actual context of use, however, especially where the chosen variant is non-­ standard or “marked,” the selection of one term over the other may be perceived (at the very minimum) as a marker of nationality (Finegan, 1992). Indexes do not have to be geographic markers, though, as they can arise from any situation where there is a perceived social divide in language use. For instance, in Japan a language user’s choice of pronoun is often seen as socially meaningful, with each available option stereotypically treated as indexing both gender and a level of politeness (Matsumoto, 2002; Miyazaki, 2002; Nakamura, 2014). The question of who uses a given pronoun in a given context therefore results in quite different understandings of the language user or language act despite the fact that all these items are technically translatable as “I.” That said, while the cases I  have presented so far are useful as introductory examples of potential indexes, they are poor representatives of the value of indexical perspectives on understanding language variation. Both are overly direct examples based on what Agha calls “folk assumption[s] of contextual invariance” (2005, p. 47), as they gloss over the complex processes through which an index gains life, develops, and operates. Furthermore, they act as though language use “simply unfold[s] from the speaker’s structural position” rather than existing as “part of the active – stylistic – production of social differentiation” (Eckert, 2012, p. 98). In many ways, my earlier examples therefore suffer from the same top-­ down style of explanation prevalent in research on Japanese script variation that I critiqued in Chapter 1. Although common dialogues often treat the connection between language features and particular meanings or language users as direct and immutable, and although certain language features are statistically more common in certain demographic groups, indexes and the repertoires that interpret them

Graphic play as a social act 31 are always rooted in intricate and evolving webs of social and linguistic ideologies (Hanks, 2000; Ochs, 1992, 2012; Silverstein, 2000, 2003). Measurable linguistic divides and prevailing stereotypes are still absolutely of interest to sociolinguists. But discussions of indexicality are not simply discussions of common ways a variant is perceived in the abstract or statistically evidenced “realities” regarding differences in where it is used. Indexicality does not view language variation in a way that treats semiotic links as spontaneous, autonomous, inherent, accurate, or possessing universally accepted interpretations. Rather, indexes are participants in their own evolving social lives and consequently subject to reflexive “text-­in-­context evaluation” (Agha, 2007, p. 149). Discussions that treat variants as having obvious or immutable referents/users consequently ignore the individual and interactive intentions of language users and skim over the influence of context and ideology on how meaning is interpreted (Bauman & Briggs, 2000; Bucholtz & Hall, 2005b; Irvine & Gal, 2000). For example, although a Japanese pronoun may be perceived, described, or even used as a direct, incontestable marker of a given gender or level of politeness, this is only one of its potential interpretations or uses. Indeed, pronoun use that fails to fall along stereotypical gender/politeness divides is well evidenced in Japan (Camp, 2009; Maree, 2013; Miyazaki, 2002, 2004). Likewise, literal status as an American is, of course, not a condition of the use of “elevator” as a term. Nothing aside from quizzical looks or social tutting is stopping a British speaker from adopting the term for their own (potentially novel) purposes and needs (Khan, 2010). Indeed, the adoption of variants by groups outside of their “source” or stereotyped user base is quite common around the world, as seen quite clearly in the spread of items from African American Vernacular English around the world, with evolving patterns of language use constantly creating new connections between language variants and interactional purposes or language groups (Spitzmüller, 2012; Bucholtz, 1999; Camp, 2009; Moskowitz, 2015). In actual practice then, full understanding of linguistic variation requires awareness that individual language users are able to elicit and even develop different effects through their active social application, interpretation, or rejection of particular forms in specific interactions (Eckert, 2008; Miyazaki, 2002; Ono & Thompson, 2003). Differences between the linguistic and social worlds we engage with ensure that there will always be multiple ideologies and observations regarding how and why certain types of people (should or should not) use certain language features and styles. More fundamentally, these divides can even affect whether we view a feature as marked or meaningful at all. To fully understand how a language variant acquires or creates meaning, indexicality therefore holds that it is necessary to look at the contexts of its use, as neither the stereotyped nor intended meaning of an index is ever guaranteed to be produced (Blommaert, 2010, 2016; Eckert, 2008). The term “context” here includes at minimum the language users present, the surrounding language use, the social ideologies that the users/interpreters engage with (even via rejection) upon encountering the variant in the given context, and the sociolinguistic histories that are associated

32  Graphic play as a social act with the variant due to common dialogues about its use (Inoue, 2004b; Silverstein, 2003). Silverstein’s (2003) concept of indexical order provides a useful method of tracing these paths that indexes travel as they accumulate or produce social meanings. Indexical order views indexes as functioning through connections that develop across ideological layers. Relationships across the lowest of these layers, wherein a language feature has an observable relationship to a form, function, or extant population, are known as first (or lower) order indexes (Johnstone, Andrus, & Danielson, 2006). Connections at the first order are therefore often “straightforward” or even able to be statistically evidenced. Still, even here interpretation is social and ideological, as it is contingent to some degree on stereotypes, assumptions of uniformity, and individual beliefs regarding social constructs like class (Eckert, 2008; Moore & Podesva, 2009). For example, an accent an American treats as a first order index of “British” might be specifically understood as “northern” by a citizen of the United Kingdom. Someone from an area where the accent is widely found might even more precisely associate it with a certain age, socioeconomic status, occupation, or specific interactional purpose (Agha, 2007; Collins  & Slembrouck, 2007). Furthermore, high levels of a variant in an area do not mean that all speakers in the area use the variant equally, that it is not found in other areas or speaker populations, or that all interpreters have accurate understandings of the variant’s “true” form (Eckert, 2012; Irvine & Gal, 2000). We must therefore afford some tolerance for individual (mis)perceptions at this level as well. As a personal example, every year I have lived in Australia, my (ostensibly American) accent has caused multiple people to ask me whether I am Irish. These perceptions of my accent as an index of “Irish” do not reflect the historical realities that spawned the peculiarities of my English pronunciation. Nonetheless, they are actively participating in the creation of meaning, influencing how my accent and identity are understood. Higher order indexes result from ideological moves across individual, local, or cultural interpretive repertoires regarding the populations or effects indexed at the previous level(s) (Banks, 1987; Bauman & Briggs, 2000; Bucholtz & Hall, 2005a). These ideological moves are based on the idea that “the context in which [the index] is normatively used has a schematization of some particular sort, relative to which we can model the ‘appropriateness’ of its usage in that context” (Silverstein, 2003, p. 193). In other words, higher order indexes develop when a first order connection between an index and a population leads to the index later evoking “ways of belonging to, or characteristics or stances associated with, that population” (Eckert, 2012, p. 94). As an overly simple example, if an interpretation of an accent results not just in assumptions of origin (e.g., “American”) but also traits ideologically linked to the indexed population (e.g., “loves hamburgers”), the accent is functioning as a higher order index. As higher order indexes inherently arise from complex sociolinguistic ideologies about who uses specific variants in which contexts and why, they are entirely dependent on fluctuating understandings of language users, language norms, and the meanings or motives behind styles of language use. Because of this, even “straightforward”

Graphic play as a social act 33 higher order indexes are regularly reinterpreted over time. For example, former indexes of “aristocratic” or “cultured” speech in many languages have changed into markers of pretention, distance, or even impoliteness as perceptions of their use or users have fluctuated (Agha, 2007). The question of what styles of language index “cool” is another straightforward illustration, as language use linked to valued identity performances during one period or context may be connected to stale, boring, or even simply unmarked language use in another (Blommaert, 2016; Moore & Podesva, 2009). In short, indexical order provides a useful method of understanding how linguistic features become evolving and negotiated carriers of social information. It allows us to go beyond simple stereotype-­level discussions that treat a variant’s origin or general description as the be-­all and end-­all in understanding its meaning and reminds us that the study of language in use is always in part a study of social histories, practices, and beliefs. However, two caveats are necessary in my description so far. First, the discussion of an “order” may depict ideological moves as certain, linear, or resulting in a singular result. In reality, indexical connections instead “progress simultaneously and over time in multiple directions, laying down a set of related meanings” (Eckert, 2012, p. 94). The steps between orders are also highly complex, and the ideologies that facilitate them are not global or even “explicitly recognized in conscious awareness” (Silverstein, 1985, p. 265) by those who engage with them. Finally, interpretation is always potentially subject to influences from competing ideologies, previous or other potential orders, and traditionally “non-­linguistic” elements that co-­occur with any language act (Agha, 2005; Eckert, 2008; Okamoto, 2002; Silverstein, 2003). For instance, the aforementioned understandings of my accent as “Irish” in Australia are no doubt in part rooted in the “co-­ occurring signs” (Agha, 2007, p. 24) of my red beard and lighter skin. When taken together, these complicating factors mean that the use of the same variant by two speakers with different backgrounds, dress, behavior, or overall styles of speech is likely to result in different interpretations even when presented to a single interpreter. Simply put, understandings of the major linguistic ideologies people engage with are therefore not enough to predict their ultimate interpretation of a language act. Second, as higher order connections between an index and a referent grow in salience or acceptance, they can easily replace the lower order relationships that initially facilitated them (Inoue, 2004b). When this occurs, knowledge of a variant’s history or the “correct” orders that connect it to a given interpretation may no longer reflect the steps through which language users travel during interpretation. To give a Japanese example of how these indexical orders can become “restructured,” consider the sentence-­final particles wa and zo. In contemporary “folk” discussions of Japanese, these items are often respectively described as rather direct markers of female and male language use or users (Okamoto, 2002; Okamoto & Shibamoto Smith, 2004); that is, as items that arise from femininity or masculinity itself rather than interactional needs (Inoue, 2003a; Nakamura, 2007). However, these common assumptions or assertions that both particles are

34  Graphic play as a social act strictly separated between contrasting gendered linguistic registers simply do not hold up in fact (Okamoto, 1995; Sturtz-­Sreetharan, 2004; Yoshimitsu, 2005). First, from a historical perspective the particle wa is better described as indexing delicacy at the first order. The particle zo instead indexes coarse intensity. The evidence for the primacy of these more local effects is found in their respective origins, as both particles initially appeared in written representations of both male and female speech. Gendered descriptions only surfaced decades later, arising due to new Japanese social dialogues that began to treat delicacy and coarseness as performances suited to different genders (Inoue, 2004a; Miyazaki, 2002; Nakamura, 2014). Arguably then, despite now being treated as primary, the links between these items and gender were at first the higher order indexical effect. Second, even within modern Japan uses of wa and zo that don’t follow a strict gender divide are still easily observed. Take the dialogue below, which comes from an elderly Japanese sararīman (businessman) in the 1985 Japanese film Tanpopo. While we cannot dismiss the fact that contemporary dialogues about wa as a feminine particle influence its usage in this scene, the fact that uses of wa (underlined in the dialogue to distinguish them from the homophonous grammatical particle wa) are given to a male speaker minimally shows that strict description of the particle as a direct or absolute marker of “femininity” or “women’s speech” ignores the complexities of its use. Certainly, there is nothing transgressive about the interaction. The character is simply ordering during a normal business lunch, and he also uses stereotypically masculine indexes like the pronoun boku within the same conversation. WAITER:  sūpu ka sarada o otsuke itashimashouka? [Would that be with the soup or the salad, sir?] SALARYMAN:  konsume. sarada wa iranai wa. [Consommé. I don’t need salad (wa).] WAITER:  onomimono wa? [And what will you have to drink?] SALARYMAN:  boku mo bīru ni suru wa. [I will also have a beer (wa).]

This perception of wa and zo as inherently or primarily gendered particles is therefore not the simple result of the items’ actual history or an accurate observation of their contemporary use. Rather, it is in no small part a consequence of hundreds of years of metalinguistic dialogues about which genders do or should utilize which specific language features in Japan (Nakamura, 2014). Furthermore, these dialogues were not rooted in “natural” observations or actual use, as is obvious in their nature as critiques of how people are using language compared with how they “should,” but rather the top-­down promulgation of new linguistic and social ideologies. They required, and still do require, the dismissal of inconvenient cases as “not real language” or even examples of people failing to be “proper” men or women, relying on no-­true-­Scotsman style argumentation to “retroactively manufacture the context or what the given speech form indexes

Graphic play as a social act 35 [.  .  .] as if the manufactured context had actually preceded the given speech form” (Inoue, 2003b, pp. 168–169). Given the complications listed thus far, it is useful to look at potential interpretations of a given index as part of what Eckert calls an “indexical field.” That is, as existing within a “constellation of ideologically related meanings” (2008, p. 454) rather than as the outcome of a set of connected interpretations that expand out from the lower order in a linear manner. In identifying a given user, use, or interpretation of a variant, we have therefore simply identified one potential aspect of its field. There is no guarantee an index will produce the same meaning across two contexts, and the salience of individual contents of any indexical field has the potential to change as a variant moves throughout new areas of use or appears in new metalinguistic discussions. In short, this means that a language user’s ultimate interpretation of an index within a context of use occurs in real time and is mediated by their understanding of the context itself, the multitude of linguistic ideologies they engage with, and their prior experiences with language users and language use (Agha, 2007; Wortham, 2008). Indexicality, therefore, certainly complicates how we attend to the creation of meaning through language variation. However, the considerations it raises also provide clear directions for moving beyond the limitations of the script-­image– based discussions of Japanese script variation that I  critiqued in Chapter  1. Understanding how variant script use creates meaning in Japanese has always been held back by the idea that perceptions of each script are fairly universal and set in stone. Prior research has also often treated individuals’ engagement with scripts in the abstract as evidence for how scripts are understood within given contexts of use. By moving to an awareness of the evolving and social nature of how we index meaning through language variation, we can design research methodologies and perspectives that avoid these limitations. More specifically, this is done through attending to script use in a way that is emergent, holistic, and context-­sensitive and allows for novel and diverse understandings of any language act. The use of these methodologies in turn allows us to avoid reliance on our own assumptions or common dialogues, providing a more complete understanding of how language users understand and engage with forms of variant language use.

Graphic manipulation as a social practice While indexicality provides a clear framework for furthering the study of variant script use in Japan, it is not an accident that all the indexes I have discussed so far came from variation originating in speech. To date, the vast majority of research on indexicality has focused on variation that is either inherent in or originates in spoken language (Sebba, 2009, 2012; Spitzmüller, 2012, 2015). For instance, in a thorough review of how analysis of linguistic variation has changed over time, Eckert (2012) refers to language variation as a “linguistic practice in which speakers [emphasis added] place themselves in the social landscape through stylistic practice” (p. 94). She then similarly defines “indexical mutability” as something

36  Graphic play as a social act achieved “as speakers [emphasis added] make social-­semiotic moves” (p.  95). Likewise, Irvine and Gal note in one of their discussions of indexicality that “the use of a linguistic form can become a pointer to (index of) the social identities and the typical activities of speakers [emphasis added]” and describe language ideologies as resulting from “speakers and hearers” attending to linguistic forms (2000, p. 37). These linguists’ use of “speakers” can, of course, include writers. The two terms are not antonyms. Still, there is value in attending to their references to speech and speakers in the specific over broader phrases like “language use” and “language users.” The choice of vocabulary reflects an atmosphere that often implicitly treats spoken interaction as the primary site where indexes are developed and deployed, with variation inherent in writing seen as limited or secondary (Bender, 2008; Sebba, 2018; Unseth, 2005). Indeed, forms of writing-­ restricted variation are often discussed only as attempts at recreating indexes that originated in speech, leaving “the area of linguistics focused on the nature of writing [. . .] in its infant stages” (Kenzhekhanuly, 2015, p. 134). This is not to say that we need to drive a hard wedge between writing and speech. Many types of variation are obviously available in both modes of communication. The use of pronouns or particles in Japanese, for example, is equally salient in either channel. The extensive study of these variants to date has made use of an extensive body of data covering both writing and speech (Hiramoto, 2009, 2013; Inoue, 2003a; Kinsui, 2003; Nakamura, 2013, 2014; Ochs, 1990; Suzuki, 2018). But although there may not be a need for a hard wall between spoken and written language, certain features do remain in the realm of either system. Audible features of language like accent, as an obvious example, clearly originate in speech and are never perfectly reflected in writing (Hill, 1995; Preston, 1982). No current writing system can accurately reproduce every audible flub and fluctuation that potentially distinguishes two acts of speech. Graphic language variation is likewise entirely absent from spoken language, as, obviously, no one speaks in handwriting or a font (Brideau & Berret, 2014; Konno, 2013; Robertson, 2017). Despite the fact that both speech and writing contain forms of variation inherent in each respective mode, only links between styles of speech-­ restricted variation and social identities are well established in both the popular and academic conscious. As a result, discussions of language variation often overlook the fact that individuals can have beliefs about who represents language in which ways and why. I touched on this fact in Chapter 1 but will discuss it in the current section in greater detail. I will begin with the indexical potential of variation in spelling, as it is likely the most universal form of language variation inherent in the written mode. Certainly, spelling variation is not entirely isolated from spoken variation. In standardized spelling norms, the symbols used to represent a language generally have at least an appreciable correlation with specific sounds. Some cross-­cultural variation even reflects this property. For example, the spellings “aluminum” and “aluminium” are each respectively standard in American and British written English, and the contrast between them reflects differences between how certain speakers of these English varieties pronounce the word. That said, contrasting

Graphic play as a social act 37 national standards for spelling a single language can also contain peculiarities that do not correlate with phonetic contrasts. British dialects do not generally render “colour” or “rumour” as though they end like the plural possessive “our,” for instance. Despite being primarily related to contrasts inherent in the written mode, these forms are still salient enough that they can minimally index nationality at the first order. Indeed, English language publishers will often localize the spelling in a text before releasing it in a nation outside of its origin to reduce any perceived foreignness, as was done for Harry Potter before it was sold in the United States (Eastwood, 2011; Nel, 2002). By contrast, there are obvious limits to any discussion of the indexical potential of entire national spelling standards. Despite the fact that both spelling standards and speaking standards are part of community practices, only the use of speech appears to be influenced by common higher order indexical connections. There is no parallel version of My Fair Lady wherein a lower-­class language user learns new spelling standards to pass themselves off as upper class or a person of “good breeding.” Similarly, the use of a specific standardized spelling system by people within the nation where it is standard is not commonly argued to be a consequence of morality or education. Unlike when he discusses styles of pronunciation, Professor Henry Higgins never argues that Americans should change their spelling to avoid producing language that “offends the Lord.” Even more importantly for our discussion of Japanese scripts as indexes, the interactional use of spelling standards to actively position oneself during language acts is limited at best. As mentioned, my studies in Scripting Japan are interested in how graphic variation throughout language acts indexes meaning. But while an entire text may be written in a spelling style for a specific purpose, authors do not switch between region-­specific spelling standards to index social alignments in a manner akin to how, say, global youth cultures adopt features of formerly region-­specific dialects (Bucholtz, 1999, 2003; Bucholtz & Hall, 2005a; Coulmas, 1989). Even in dialogue-­heavy fictional texts, where an author might render accents differently, this will generally occur through creative respellings rather than the adoption of national spelling systems. As far as I know, there is no novel where the speech of two characters of different nationalities is represented through contrastive use of multiple formalized spelling norms. The indexing of character nationality through this method is seemingly limited to the realm of humor, with the rarity of using variant spelling standards to index identities itself serving as the source of humor in Figure 2.1. Variation in national spelling styles therefore shows that salient forms of variation can be inherent in the written mode, but it ultimately fails to evidence that graphic variation can function like variation in speech. The aforementioned use of non-­standard spellings shows more promise, though, as creative respellings are unquestionably used by authors to index social voices in written texts. Both Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, to raise two prominent examples, are well known for drawing upon marked spelling styles to index accents or social identities (Agha, 2003; Cook, 2004; Crystal, 2010; Fishkin, 1993; Overfelt, 2017). These respellings are often broadly modeled after phonological phenomena,

38  Graphic play as a social act

Figure 2.1 “1776.” Reprinted with permission from James Lecarpentier of Good BearComics.com.

though, and so at first glance they may seem outside the realm of our current interest. However, although phonetic (re)production may be an author’s intent in utilizing marked spelling, the fact of the matter is that respellings within dialogue are very rarely accurate or consistent (Preston, 1982, 1985). Furthermore, these respellings also often involve (and can even rely entirely on) non-­phonetic changes that evoke ideologies about the indexical field of standard language use as a whole to produce speech, with non-­standard spelling itself more directly indexing broadly “non-­standard” identities rather than a specific accent or form of speech. To give an example, consider the text below from an advertisement by STA Travel, wherein the following dialogue appeared over a photo of a tourist and a bartender in an Irish pub.

Graphic play as a social act 39 TOURIST:  What’s on tap? BARTENDER:  A point o’ the black. Awed jew care foreign Irish red? If ye don’t

like eider o’ doors, oil poor ye a peel eel.

Certainly, some of the misspellings in the Irish bartender’s statement create phonetic connections that are reflective of what a layperson might understand as an “Irish” accent. The spelling would undoubtedly be different if the advertisement was attempting to depict English spoken by someone with an accent from Texas, Australia, Germany, or Japan. That said, we should note that any goal of authentic, accurate, or phonetic Irish speech is not achieved by the respellings in the ad for a multitude of reasons. First, the choice of which words are marked is somewhat arbitrary. The words “a,” “the,” “black,” “care,” “Irish red,” “if,” and “don’t like” are left untouched, despite the fact that they would also be distinct from the accent(s) the creator of this ad copy treats as normative. More importantly for our interest in ideologies regarding writing-­inherent practices, though, is the use of eye dialects within the dialogue. The bartender’s employment of “poor,” “foreign,” and, arguably, “awed” carries no significant phonological difference from the intended referent terminology. “Poor” is homophonous with “pour.” The spellings “foreign” and “awed” could easily fit into a recreation of almost any casual or hasty production of “for and” or “how’d” despite arguably not being fully homophonous with their respective referents. Outside of the context of the ad itself, there is nothing about these elements that clearly connects phonetically to Irish speech. Any interpretation of the spellings as indexing “Irishness” results from their non-­standard nature and the co-­occurring items that exist around them. They could just as easily be seen as part of any other marked speech style if combined with other indexes or placed in another context. In other words, while eye dialects like “pour,” “luv,” “kno,” “sez,” and “wuz” commonly participate in indexing (again, at the bare minimum) dialect, they do so via their existence as incorrect spellings rather than via their phonetic makeup (Jaffe, 2012; Jaffe & Walton, 2000; Miethaner, 2000). As the indexing of non-­ standard voices and accents occurs without actually reproducing specific pronunciations in these cases, interpretation of the eye dialects as reflections of accent must arise from other co-­occurring signs and ideologies about which accents, styles, or even identities are unable to be “authentically” reproduced via standard writing (Eisenstein, 2015; Jaffe, 2012; Miethaner, 2000; Preston, 1985). Indeed, as Preston notes, marked respellings in American texts are generally limited to groups that have “traditionally supported negative stereotypes in American culture” (1982, p. 306), with violations of spelling norms reflecting social ideologies regarding “proper” language users and use (Blommaert, 2010; Hill, 1995; Vaisman, 2014). The “Irish” speech in the earlier advertisement is therefore ultimately a “linguistic mockery” (Hiramoto, 2009, p. 259) that points toward “Irishness” in part via being a non-­standard act of writing. Though it includes some phonetic elements that may “sound” Irish when read aloud, it also relies on phonetically uninteresting forms we treat as deficient, incorrect, or inferior to

40  Graphic play as a social act establish a voice similarly perceived as non-­standard, abnormal, or foreign. It also does so while simultaneously ignoring that there would also be phonetic disconnects between spelling and pronunciation within the tourist’s English production, with standard spelling norms indexing the tourist’s voice as socially – and consequently audibly – normative (Coupland, 2010; Kinsui, 2014). However, this is not to say that non-­standard spelling always indexes marked or negatively valued identities. Just like any other index, standard spelling is also not equally valued by all writers. In contrast to the top-­down marking of a speaker as “other” discussed earlier, researchers around the world have noted that authors who do not align with the stances, identities, or communities they perceive standard spelling to index may employ variant spelling styles as part of their “process of constructing an identity” (Sebba, 2018, p. 7) via writing. This gives the features what Androutsopoulos calls “covert prestige” (2000), with spelling styles that may formally be viewed as indexes of deviance or poor education instead valued by their users as markers of (sub)cultural identities and stances. While these “misspellings” can also potentially link to pronunciation styles, they are just as often restricted entirely to the written mode. In other words, the non-­standard nature of the spelling itself is what is important for signifying identification with a subcultural or “non-­standard” identity (Blommaert, 2010; Jaffe, 2012; Sebba, 2007, 2009, 2012). To give one example, English-­speaking black metal bands and fandoms are noted for utilizing the letter “k” to replace “c” and the letter “v” to replace both “u” and “f.” This practice manifests in song titles like “Ov Fire and the Void,” band names like “Konvent,” and localized adjectives like “kvlt” (from “cult”) and “trve” (from “true”) that are used to both sincerely and parodically evoke “insularity, community and hermeticism” (Hagen, 2014, p. 224) in the black metal scene. These respellings are, importantly, a wholly writing-­based practice, as they are all eye dialects rather than “phonetic” recreations of some kind of observable “black metal accent.” The specific style of spelling variation therefore serves to mark “black-­metal-­ness,” indexing identity, values, and community membership in a way that is inherent in the written mode. However, while the discussion so far makes it clear that spelling-­inherent styles of variation can participate in the indexing of specific identities, spelling is still not script. The changes I  have discussed so far do at times create pronunciation changes that can be measured, and even eye dialects are not wholly graphic phenomena. The difference between “was” and “wuz” or “cult” and “kvlt,” for instance, involves distinct letters rather than distinct ways of representing a single letter. Furthermore, the idea that variant spelling creates meaning through its non-­standard nature is also potentially problematic, as variant Japanese script is not necessarily “incorrect” (Konno, 2013). Documentation of spelling-­based indexes therefore provides us with the important fundamental evidence that writing-­restricted forms of variation can serve as indexes, but it cannot fully guarantee that this is the case for marked script as well. We still need evidence of social divides and ideologies related to purely representational forms of language variation and play. To this end, I will now turn my attention to metalinguistic dialogues regarding

Graphic play as a social act 41 variation in handwriting, font, and script use across multiple contexts outside of Japan, showing that these graphic forms of variation are also evaluated and employed in undeniably social ways. Beginning with handwriting, it is difficult to say when the first discourses appeared espousing relationships between identity and the way people produce language on the page. There is some evidence that handwriting has long held the potential to index social meaning and groups. The Roman Emperor Nero once claimed that a courtier’s handwriting showed him to be treacherous, a Chinese philosopher in the 11th century argued that handwriting can distinguish nobles from commoners, and Erasmus of Rotterdam disparaged users of the Gothic hand in 1528 by comparing them to speakers with incorrect pronunciation (Trubek, 2016). However, claims of this sort were at least uncommon until the 19th century. When discussing the history of handwriting, it is important to remember that writing has only recently become an activity regularly enjoyed and observed by most language users. For centuries, literacy was not something expected of the common populous, but rather a skill that often led an individual to pursue a career as a scribe. Furthermore, much writing was performed to copy extant documents rather than produce original works. Literacy in Babylonian cuneiform, for example, often involved learning to produce language in a manner that would be indistinguishable between tablets. Much early writing in the West was similarly performed by scribal monks with the goal of eradicating “any sign of personality” (Trubek, 2016, p. 37) from the documents they reproduced. Individual flourishes have certainly always existed to some extent, as obviously not all early writing was simply transactional records and copies. Even in these cases, though, any notice of differences in how people represented language was likely limited to literate elites. For many centuries, contrasting styles of writing were perhaps best understood as akin to accents or national spelling standards. Observable variation did exist but mostly as part of entire norms connected to empires, political or religious alignments, time periods, or writing purposes rather than individuals (Florey, 2009; Trubek, 2016). It is therefore not surprising that discussion of writing styles as reflective of individual identities or traits was not common in Western discourse until the 1800s. As increases in literacy raised the amount of people communicating via writing, social/professional divisions and disagreements began to grow regarding how best to represent language. Also important, though, and obviously not entirely unrelated, is the appearance of the pseudoscience of graphology during this same period. The “research” and metalinguistic dialogues that grew out of graphology specifically described handwriting as a product of identity, with followers of the theory asserting that differences in how people represented language could be attributed to the possession of certain social traits (Florey, 2009). Both initial and continued attempts by graphologists to empirically support any specific links between a way of writing and a specific personality trait have been unsuccessful. The conclusions of their studies across individual graphologists, time periods, and languages are also frequently contradictory. However, there is no question that graphology raised ideas about the importance of handwriting

42  Graphic play as a social act that captured  – and continue to capture  – the public imagination (Christen, 2012; Florey, 2009; Spohn, 1997). Consider the idea that different handwriting styles reflect (i.e., serve as a first order index of) an author’s sex. In the English-­writing world, the idea that handwriting contained “sex signs” (Young, 1931, p.  488) that divided male and female authors was prevalent enough that the Journal of Applied Psychology published three articles titled “Sex differences in handwriting” between 1926 and 1931 (Broom, Thompson, & Bouton, 1929; Newhall, 1926; Young, 1931). An article titled “More on sex differences in handwriting” then followed in 1934 (Tenwolde, 1934). These studies differed in their ultimate conclusions regarding how accurately sex (to use their term) can be evaluated through handwriting. But they all noted that their respondents treated certain characteristics as being inherent in men/women and the writing they produce. Deviations from these expectations were often taken as evidence that an author was deficient – such as weak or “womanly,” in the case of men – rather than as evidence against the idea that sex alone caused guaranteed distinctions in letter production. While contemporary readers may find the idea that sex “produces” a writing style somewhat silly, even in our current era graphic flourishes are still closely associated with particular groups, movements, and values. The development of “good” handwriting, for instance, now often describes something other than simply improving the legibility of one’s writing. Arguably, the formalized hands like Spencerian and Palmer that are taught in handwriting courses are now rather difficult to read. They may still have aesthetic appeal, but they certainly do not ensure that the widest range of readers can access a given text. Desire to learn Spencerian or Palmer instead reflects in part long-­running historical discussions that treat these styles as indexes of personality, class, or “good breeding,” with the idea that handwriting reflects or even produces good citizens having, in fact, motivated their very development (Florey, 2009; Trubek, 2016). That said, and again mirroring variation in spoken language, handwriting does not need to be “neat” or “proper” to be desirable. Just as speakers may purposefully deviate from standard or “correct” spoken English to assert subcultural identity or identification, many “proud cacographers believe bad writing is a way of declaring their individuality and creativity” (Florey, 2009, p. 135). For an example from the Japanese context, younger women in the late ’80s and early ’90s were often critiqued for using so-­called “deviant” styles of handwriting and text representation known as hentaimoji (lit: strange letters) and marumoji (lit: circle letters) (Kataoka, 1997; Miller, 2004, 2011; Sadanobu, 2005; Yamane, 1986). These styles were highly criticized during their heyday, being commonly treated as an index of poor education or upbringing by educators and the press. Nevertheless, they contained important values beyond their aesthetic appeal for their producers, serving as an index of membership in local communities of practice or associated values. In the digital age, though, font has perhaps overtaken handwriting as the major avenue for graphic written variation in our daily lives. Furthermore, writers have access to many more fonts than handwriting styles, with word processing

Graphic play as a social act 43 increasing the frequency with which we can employ (and view) alternate methods of language representation. Certainly, not all font use is social or ideologically motivated at heart. Some fonts are chosen for their visual impact or appeal, and others gain popularity through simply being the defaults provided by software, websites, and the like (Rivers, 2005). But even in the comparatively short history of word processing technology, we can already see major social divides appearing in terms of font use. Contemporary discussions of font include dialogues not just about aesthetic qualities but also about a font’s users or what its application implies. The most obvious example of a socially relevant font in English is Comic Sans. Comic Sans is easily the most reviled contemporary font, as it is argued to potentially elicit “contempt and summary dismissal” (Morris, 2012, p. 3) of a document’s author or contents. While dislike for the visual design or “look” of Comic Sans does appear in critiques, complaints are often not just discussions of the font’s aesthetic qualities. Rather, discussions of Comic Sans often include references to “how many perceive people who use [the font]” (Trubek, 2016, p. 47), with the Comic Sans user base seen as lazy, shallow, or possessing poor taste or technical incompetence (Garfield, 2012; Steel, 2009). A colleague of mine even noted a discussion with her students wherein the class collectively declared that a thesis written in Comic Sans should be failed outright, regardless of the quality of the writing within. For these students, the selection of the font alone was evidence that the student didn’t care or was trying to “mess with” the teacher (J. Birnie-­Smith, personal communication, October 15, 2019). While Comic Sans was developed in just 1994, many English language users have already developed an ideologically defined image of a “Comic Sans user” in the same way one might have an image of which people possess a certain style of handwriting or speak in a specific accent. If this current book were written in Comic Sans, for instance, it would be likely that many readers would have long ago put it down due to doubt about my sincerity or credentials. While my font choice here has no literal effect on the quality of the content within Scripting Japan, common ideological conceptions regarding the identity of a “Comic Sans user” are likely to minimally exclude academics worth taking seriously. Interestingly, this idea that certain fonts are best suited to certain social voices is even an influence on the invention of Comic Sans itself, as the font’s designer created it after feeling that Times New Roman was inappropriate for representing the speech of a cartoon dog (Steel, 2009). Finally, scripts themselves have also been shown to hold indexical potential, serving to mark specific user groups, identities, and social stances in languages other than Japanese. This potential is evident not only in reviews of metalinguistic commentary on script use(rs) but also in changes in national language policies over the years. The question of what script a group, country, or region uses to write its language often carries significant importance on national and political scales. For instance, since the 1900s the official script of Mongolia has vacillated between the native bichig script, Mongolian-­Cyrillic, and (very briefly) the Roman alphabet. Mongolian-­Cyrillic is now standard, but the nation is planning

44  Graphic play as a social act to return to the native script by 2025 to return to “its linguistic roots” (Tang, 2020, p.  1). Furthermore, one can still currently find all three scripts used in different locations across the Mongolian linguistic landscape, with their spread relating to the “specific history and set of values” (Grivelet, 2001, p.  76) that resulted from this complex sociopolitical history of each script’s use. Similarly, in Korea the local hangûl script is now considered a source of national pride, but it was once looked down on by members of the aristocratic literati. Their objections were primarily social and ideological, rather than aesthetic or practical, as they insisted that representing Korean via anything but writing practices based on Chinese characters indexed a writer as vulgar, feminine, or lacking in education (Silva, 2002). In Kazakhstan, a Cyrillic-­based script was abandoned in 2017 in favor of a script based on the Roman alphabet, with the change explicitly intended to distance the country from Russia and promote (inter)nationalism (BBC, 2017; DW, 2017). This phenomenon has also appeared in other former Soviet states (Sebba, 2006). In an opposing case, the previously defunct native Baybayin script is now seeing increasing use in the Philippines as an index of Tagalog youth identity (The National, 2019). Finally, even in North America script variation has been used to assert independence or index local identities. Both the Cherokee peoples and the Mormon settlers developed local methods for representing Cherokee and English. While each script certainly had practical motives influencing its design, studies of the locations where these two scripts are used or avoided (i.e., replaced by the Roman script) in contemporary America show the clear influence of links between each script and a desire to assert distinct social values/identities via orthographic means (Bender, 2008; Miller, 2011; Thompson, 1982). In sum, the indexical potential of graphic variation is clear, as ideologies regarding graphic language use are evident in both the use and discussion of graphic forms of language representation around the world. However, there is one issue I still need to address before beginning this book’s formal study of how Japanese script variation indexes meaning. All the styles of graphic indexes I  have listed thus far manifested in inflexible, all-­or-­nothing text-­wide selections. I have yet to show examples of authors changing handwriting styles, spelling styles, fonts, or scripts between sentences or language acts in the same way that we might vary our speech between or within conversations. My discussion so far may give the impression that graphic variation is akin to dialect in dividing nations, language users, or entire language acts but mostly irrelevant to local variation throughout day-­to-­day linguistic acts (Unseth, 2005). In the following section, I will therefore attend to this final area of concern, evidencing that graphic variation can be part of how language users perform identities, convey interactional stances, and produce expressions of affect across local language acts.

DoN’t DiScUsS mEmEs iN An aCaDEmIc TeXt Over the last few decades, casual online spaces have created copious avenues for new forms of graphic language play. Due to texting, online forums, and websites

Graphic play as a social act 45 like Twitter that facilitate written dialogues, text-­based, near-­instantaneous interaction has become part of our daily lives. In turn, the new needs created by these spaces have led to novel avenues for “customizing [our] linguistic self-­ presentation” (Eisenstein, 2015, p.  182) via the written mode. The language users I  discuss in the current section are participants in these new spaces who use graphic variation to both respond to other users and index themselves as members of local internet-­fluent groups. In other words, just as speakers of niche subcultural registers like oinoglossia (“wine talk”) use specific vocabulary during speech acts to produce local effects and index membership in wider communities, these users similarly rely on graphic styles of variation to convey local meanings and display their identities as internet-­fluent language users (Blommaert, 2016; Ivković, 2013; Silverstein, 2003). Importantly, though, these graphic forms of play are not simply static symbols of meaning. They do not absolutely mark a set reaction or absolute meaning, as we may (often incorrectly, as Parkwell (2019) notes) think of when discussing emoji, emoticons, kaomoji, or online shorthand like “lol.” Rather, the graphic styles serve as linguistic resources used for a multitude of negotiated meanings, with their intended or interpreted meanings highly dependent on individual understandings of language use and the contexts of their employ. The data I  will discuss here come primarily from online interactions across Reddit. Reddit is a content aggregation website wherein users can upload links, images, or text for others to view, evaluate, and discuss (Literat & van den Berg, 2017). These activities do not occur in one general space, but rather in specific communities known formally as “subreddits” and colloquially as “subs.” Subreddits each have individual names that follow the pattern “r/[subredditname].” This naming convention arises from how the website provides subreddits with URLs. For instance, the major subreddit for discussions of Japan is known as “r/ Japan,” referencing its direct URL of “www.reddit.com/r/Japan.” While viewing any given content on a subreddit, a user can engage with it by voting it “up” or “down,” actions referred to respectively as “upvoting” and “downvoting,” or reply to the content via a new text post. Other users can then reply to or vote on these posts, allowing for lengthy multi-­user conversations to develop on the website over time. As with many content aggregation websites, internet memes1 are a common presence on Reddit (Literat  & van den Berg, 2017). Indeed, many subreddits are explicitly dedicated to sharing memes related to extremely specific topics or community interests. Subreddits like r/dankchristianmemes (memes about Christianity), r/historymemes (memes about history), r/prequelmemes (memes about the Star Wars prequels), r/trebuchetmemes (memes about the superiority of trebuchets over catapults), r/hydrohomies (memes about drinking water), r/surrealmemes (memes designed to be bizarre), r/wholesomememes (memes with positive messages), and r/antimemes (memes mocking memes) all exist for the purpose of sharing, appreciating, and commenting on memes made in certain styles or referencing extremely particular topics. While memes are not traditionally considered linguistic, as they tend to primarily involve a “template” based on

46  Graphic play as a social act a particular picture or series of pictures, specific styles of graphic variation have been considered key parts of certain meme formats or genres (Gal, Shifman, & Kampf, 2015; Grundlingh, 2018; Wiggins, 2019). The font Impact Bold, for instance, is a required element of the “advice animal” memes that were popular from the late 2000s to the middle of the following decade (Brideau & Berret, 2014; Dynal, 2016). There are also cases where styles of graphic variation that originated as part of a meme have gained a life of their own. A key example of this is found in the “Mocking Spongebob” meme, a format that gained popularity during the first half of 2017 (Kim, 2018). The basic template of the Mocking Spongebob meme is as follows: 1 At the top of the image, a piece of advice is written in accordance with standard English case use and attributed to a particular speaker. This speaker is generally only a vague “Them,” i.e., someone speaking to the meme’s creator. As in “Them: Don’t discuss memes in an academic text.” 2

Below the initial statement, the same advice is rewritten in a call-­and-­response style using alternating upper and lowercases and attributed to another speaker. Usually this speaker is “Me,” i.e., the person making the meme. As in “Me: DoN’t DiScUsS mEmEs iN An aCaDEmIc TeXt.”

3

A picture of the Nickelodeon character Spongebob bent over and distorted into the pose of a chicken is then presented below the two lines of text. This image is usually reproduced at a low resolution, reflecting the intentionally obnoxious or unpleasant “internet ugly” aesthetic, a “cultural dialect” (Douglas, 2014, p. 315) that in part shows a user “gets” meme-­based humor and community values (Literat & van den Berg, 2017).

In the end, the “point” of the Sarcastic Spongebob meme is to mock an idea or statement. The irregular capitalization is intended to convey a sarcastic repetition of advice or a social voice the author disdains or is planning to ignore. While the inclusion of a copyrighted character prevents reproduction of the meme here, extensive examples are available on the internet, with the website Know Your Meme2 containing a particularly descriptive repository that includes the first memes made in this style. What is interesting about the “Mocking Spongebob” meme is that although it is not the first to use specific fonts or text styles as part of its template, its use of alternating case has now gained independence from the meme itself. In fact, the alternating case technique has arguably outlived the meme in popularity. While the meme template has become an uncommon sight over the years, the alternating case style that came with it is now used across online interactions as a method of indexing sarcasm or mockery at the first order. This use is not simply restricted to obscure meme-­focused areas of the internet either, as even major government bodies and corporations are now employing the style online. Figure 2.2 shows a capture from the official Facebook page of the New South

Graphic play as a social act 47 Wales Police Force in Australia, who use the style to mock the “warnings” found in a common scam email. Of particular note is how the style ends after the second exclamation point, with the police department changing back to standard case use for the hashtag “#scamalert” and in so doing indexing reversion to a more serious stance. The use of alternate case is not restricted to advertisement or announcement-­ style posts, though, as it is also frequently found across online interactions. Figure  2.3 shows a Reddit user (“User A”) employing the technique as part of a

Figure 2.2 The NSW Police Force mocks email scammers. Reproduced with permission of the NSW Police Force.

Figure 2.3 A  Reddit user alternating case to index sarcasm and mock a political opinion.

48  Graphic play as a social act political argument online. The user’s comment is a reply to a poster who argued that all major political parties are guilty of inaction on climate change. Rather than quote the other user’s opinion as is, User A changed the original comment to “tHeYre aLl aS bAd aS eAcH oThEr,” mocking the statement by rephrasing it and representing it in alternate case before continuing on with a rebuttal. In contrast to the use of handwriting, fonts, or scripts discussed so far, the graphic manipulation occurs across an individual language act, with User A  changing case styles with a fluidity we might traditionally associate more with speech than writing. This sarcastic rephrasing is then recognized and appreciated by the local community, as evidenced by the positive number of upvotes or “points.” What’s more – and again just like indexes originating in speech – re-­or misinterpretation of alternate case is possible. The graphic form of play is not simply a stable conduit for expressing a certain effect. In contrast to the example of “fluent” alternating case use in Figure 2.3, there are also multiple instances online where users “misinterpret” alternating case and consequently evidence a lack of “cultural competence [.  .  .] with the community’s norms” (Literat  & van den Berg, 2017, p. 4). Via the nonlinear effects created by locally marked speech acts, these users can even risk becoming “uncool” due to their inability to participate in the contemporary linguistic practices treated as evidence of online-­fluent identities (Blommaert, 2016). Figure  2.4 shows the starting point for a Reddit user (“User B”) becoming acclimated to the alternating case style. The comment the user makes is in response to a meme that contained alternating case. In contrast to the aforementioned Spongebob meme, however, the use of alternating case in this context was explicitly defined via the meme’s creator writing “[mockingly]” in front of the affected text. User B commented appreciatively that this meme helped them understand the intent behind alternating case, a sentiment apparently widely valued by this specific online group of users given the high number of upvotes. After the comment in Figure  2.4, however, User B was then immediately mocked by another user via alternating case. This new user rephrased the entire comment in Figure 2.4 via alternating case as “OhhH sO THaTs hOw You’RE supPosEd To sAy pHrAsEs LiKe ThIs,” with their orthographic hazing and expression of “superior” internet fluency similarly receiving community praise and validation in the form of upvotes. In an entirely inverse interaction, however, another user replied to User B by saying that the meme isn’t worth learning because it is “dead,” devaluing the alternating case practice. This comment was instead downvoted into negative “points,” and the author was then mocked by

Figure 2.4  A Reddit user is socialized into understanding alternate case.

Graphic play as a social act 49 a third user, who recreated the negative evaluation in alternating case. In both instances, we see alternating case appearing within interactions rather than simply as part of a style that will apply to the entirety of language acts once selected. In other contexts, these users would all be united by the same formal norms for case use, but they switch to this marked orthographic style to both locally parody a voice they perceive as foolish and index broader membership in an online community that appreciates memes or this style of language use. Indeed, in another interaction I even saw a user heavily downvoted for having ignorance of the style, as they replied to an instance of alternating case by telling an earlier poster that they needed to include the sarcasm marker “/s” after the comment. This advice showed that the author did not understand the purpose of the style, causing the comment to become highly downvoted and, as one might expect by now, mocked via a comment that reproduced the advice to use “/s” in alternating case. Like other indexes we have discussed so far, alternating case is not restricted to a single purpose or user group. Just as indexes emblematic of specific spoken registers or dialects can exist within numerous language communities, alternating case is used in multiple online communities to index distinct local and identity-­ related effects (Eckert, 2008; Irvine & Gal, 2000). On Reddit, a second major hub where alternating case is found is the subreddit r/peoplefuckingdying. This subreddit uses a name that is purposefully misleading. The title is intentionally designed to create a negative first impression, encouraging assumptions that the subreddit is a hub for morbid content. This expectation is humorously destroyed once readers engage with the subreddit’s actual content, however. Posts on r/ peoplefuckingdying consist entirely of cute pictures and videos labeled in a manner that, to paraphrase the subreddit’s self-­description, is intended to exaggerate or subvert each post’s content. In producing this subversion, posters write titles that include frequent reference to violent acts, vulgarities (especially the titular “fucking”), and the use of alternating caps. Examples I  have observed include “cHild ANd CAT BRUtaLly shot tO dEAth,” used to title a video of a baby and kitten rolling over and playing dead after being “shot” by a finger-­gun hand gesture, and “KIdS FoRCeD ONtO TOrTuRE dEViCE UNtIL THeY DIE oF NaUSEa,” which linked to a video of children enjoying a merry-­go-­round. While alternating case is clearly not the only means by which users produce a sort of faux brutality via these titles, it is arguably the most important. Posts that avoid vulgarities are present on the subreddit, but posts that are written according to English norms for case use are not, with the importance of the style evident in the multiple links to an alternating case title generator that exist across the subreddit’s front page. In a conversation with a moderator of r/peoplefuckingdying, I  was able to learn about the origin of the alternating case title style used by this sub. According to the moderator, the style arose independently of the Spongebob meme discussed earlier, with the subreddit created about a year before the meme first appeared. While this does not mean that r/peoplefuckingdying and the Spongebob meme have no current relationship, there is also no evidence that they share an origin. The use of alternating case to index sarcasm

50  Graphic play as a social act or a devalued voice via the Spongebob meme likewise appears to have originated on Twitter (Kim, 2018). By contrast, the use of alternating case by r/ peoplefuckingdying was locally developed in a specific effort to “convey to potential readers of the subreddit that the ‘death’ occurring in the videos was not at all real but rather an exaggeration” (W. Hicks, personal communication, July 25, 2018). While multiple techniques were considered, alternating caps was felt to be the most fruitful, with the moderator attributing this to the idea that “we rarely lend abnormally written statements the same gravity that we do more correctly written and punctuated statements.” The view of alternating case as indexing a lack of seriousness expressed in these comments is clearly ideological, with standard case use, just like standard language or spelling use, seen to index gravity, propriety, or authoritativeness (Davila, 2012; Sebba, 2009). As alternating case has become strongly associated with the subreddit, though, the non-­standard use of case has also developed importance beyond just a way of indexing a lack of “gravity.” The practice now has a double role as a marker of membership in the local r/peoplefuckingdying community as well. Users of the subreddit sometimes comment on posts by using the alternating case style to propose their own humorous titles, showing that they “get” said style and are (therefore) successful participants in the community (Blommaert, 2016; Nissenbaum & Shifman, 2017). In this way, the use of alternating case throughout r/peoplefuckingdying is clearly distinct from the mocking style presented earlier in both its intent and employment, as the users are not mocking beliefs or sarcastically evoking social voices they disagree with, but rather engaging in an ironic style of faux brutality that serves as an emblem of the community itself. Taken as a whole, then, analysis of alternating case across this section shows that distinct communities are utilizing distinct graphic styles across their online interactions for their own purposes and needs. Indeed, even outside of the major hubs discussed so far, alternate case is seeing new uses for purposes that seem to have no relationship to prior applications. I  have personally observed the style used to represent a “child” voice, with the idea that children don’t understand proper case use apparently allowing the style to index childishness for the user. A colleague of mine similarly noted an example that appeared to convey a sense of celebration or joy, with a friend of theirs wishing another a “HaPpY HaPpY BiRtHdAY to YoU!” in a message that showed all indication of being sincere (H. Kunert, personal communication, December  28, 2019). Regardless of the motive, though, these practices all also evidence that changes to graphic representation of language can be part of local interactions. Combined with the data in the earlier sections showing that graphic variants can serve as indexes, they therefore demonstrate the clear potential for graphic play to serve as a social part of interactional meaning-­making in Japanese. If meaningful graphic forms of social language variation can become present in communities without a substantial history of orthographic variation, we certainly cannot ignore their importance in a writing system wherein orthographic variation has long been possible within almost every written language act.

Graphic play as a social act 51

Studying Japanese script selection as a social act Throughout the current chapter, I have surveyed multiple styles of graphic variation around the world to evidence that beliefs about language use and users are influencing how people represent language. Perceived social divides in the way different groups represent language, the solidification of a graphic style as “proper” or “best,” localized writing habits and forms of play, and explicit metalinguistic discussions regarding graphic language use all exist in contemporary practice and can result in indexical links developing between styles of language representation and social actors, voices, or meanings. Most importantly, these indexical connections do not simply exist in the abstract once they appear, nor do they produce static uses of graphic play to convey predetermined or universally understood meanings – in a way mirroring how the use of different font sizes or colors is often discussed in comics (Cohn, Pratha, & Avunjian, 2016; McCloud, 2006; Whitty, 2003). In all the examples of graphic language variation surveyed in the current chapter, understandings of a given variant’s use are instead dependent on beliefs about who uses language in which ways and why. Even more importantly, this chapter shows that the use of script to index meaning is not restricted to a given medium or communication style. Sociolinguistic studies of graphic language variation have often treated the phenomenon as akin to language choice or dialect, with graphic variation generally described as something that occurs between groups rather than something engaged with throughout and across more local interactions (Unseth, 2005). However, as we have seen here, even languages that lack any tangible tradition of graphic play have produced forms of language representation that index acts of stance-­taking and identity expression in locally meaningful ways. In Japanese, wherein multiple options for graphic variation have existed as part of the literary landscape for over a millennium, the value and necessity of analyzing script selection as a potential social act are clear. The shortage of sociolinguistic attention to Japanese script practices to date is a simple issue of negligible communication between variational sociolinguistics and researchers interested in the Japanese scripts, rather than any inherent impossibility for graphic variation to be viewed or used as a linguistic act. Limiting our discussion of how meaning is made through Japanese script variation to script images alone is therefore tantamount to overlooking a multitude of potential factors behind the use or interpretation of any given selection of script. With this background now established, the following chapter will begin my first major investigation into this indexical potential of Japanese script use. As the primary step in my analysis, the chapter will attend to an established orthographic phenomenon: the non-­standard application of katakana in representations of non-­native Japanese production (Kinsui, 2014; Robertson, 2015). My choice to begin with a recognized type of marked script use in Japan is primarily practical. Doing so allows for comparison between my own findings and prior descriptions of this marking technique, providing a concrete illustration of how the sociolinguistic perspectives on meaning-­making I have discussed in the current

52  Graphic play as a social act chapter can expand our understandings of established forms of Japanese script use. As we shall see, by looking at katakana use in context, the chapter’s findings show that the motives for the technique are not easily grasped through attention to static views of katakana in the abstract. Rather, each of the analyzed texts shows authors employing the marking style in different ways, with these contrasts reflecting their individual conceptions of certain socially defined identities and orthographic practices. My study in Chapter 4 will then take this finding one step further, looking at how ideologies about language use and users influence variation between all three Japanese scripts.

Notes 1 I use the term here in a broad sense to refer to “any artifact (a film, spoof, rumor, picture, song, etc.) that appears on the Internet and produces countless derivatives by being imitated, remixed, and rapidly diffused by countless participants” (Dynal, 2016, p. 662) 2 See https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mocking-­spongebob.

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3 Scripted speech and scripted speakers Katakana and non-­native Japanese

At the end of the 2018 US Open, Naomi Osaka defeated Serena Williams to become the first Japanese tennis player to win a Grand Slam title. Due to the historic nature of this contest, it is obviously not surprising that Japanese variety programs produced multiple segments following Osaka’s run. However, the content of these segments was irregular compared with prior coverage of other tennis players. Discussions of Osaka in Japan often focused more on her upbringing and Japanese linguistic abilities than her athletic training or tennis skills. While Osaka holds Japanese citizenship, her father is Haitian, and she has spent the majority of her life in America. As a result, while Japan legally considers Osaka Japanese and she competes representing Japan, her background and appearance clash with many traditionalist dialogues that link “Japaneseness” to race and linguistic ability (Gottlieb, 2005; Kowner  & Befu, 2015; Yamashiro, 2017). In both 2005 and 2020, for instance, Deputy Prime Minister Tarō Asō courted controversy by falsely asserting that Japan is a nation with a single culture, ethnic group, and language (The Japan Times, 2020; Kimura, 2020). Consequently, Japan’s desire to see Osaka as a Japanese champion has complicated discussions of “what it means to be Japanese” (Adelstein, 2018, p. 1), and it continues to influence the type of media attention Osaka receives (Hiramoto, 2019; Rich, 2018). Japanese reporters are still regularly noted to ask Osaka questions completely unrelated to tennis during post-­match interviews or pressure her for Japanese sound bites despite her occasional outright refusal to answer in Japanese (Elbra, 2019; Sarkar, 2016). During one of these aforementioned discussions of Osaka’s Japanese abilities, the Japanese variety show Mōningu shō (Morning Show) made a number of controversial choices that would be unthinkable during coverage of any other Japanese tennis star. Whenever Mōningu shō showed Osaka speaking Japanese, it represented her Japanese on the screen in a manner that incorporated multiple non-­standard uses of the katakana script. To be clear, the recreation of dialogue on the screen itself is not of note. The use of screen drops known as teroppu to “summarize, contextualize, recap, emphasize and decorate” (Maree, 2015, p.  171) action or dialogue is commonplace in Japanese media (Gagné, 2008; Hambleton, 2011). However, the non-­standard use of katakana is by no means an expected part of teroppu, with the script use by Mōningu shō being especially atypical of how news media use teroppu in Japan (Livedoor, 2018; Shirabē,

60  Scripted speech and scripted speakers 2018). Excerpts 3.1 through 3.4 below catalogue some of the representations Mōningu shō used in their teroppu reproductions of Osaka’s Japanese speech. Each excerpt contrasts the teroppu recreation of Osaka’s Japanese statement with a representation that does not contain marked katakana use. Conflicting script use between the representations is underlined in the Japanese excerpts and bolded in the romanization. Note that all punctuation (or lack thereof) reflects the original teroppu.

(Excerpt 3.1) TEROPPU:  ウレシイトキンチョウシテタジャナイ STANDARD:  うれしいと緊張してたじゃない ROMANIZATION:  ureshii to kinchō shiteta janai TRANSLATION:  Happy and was nervous, yeah?

(Excerpt 3.2) TEROPPU:  今はうれしいとなんか . . . レンシュウシタイ STANDARD:  今はうれしいとなんか . . . 練習したい ROMANIZATION:  ima wa ureshii to nanka . . . renshūshitai TRANSLATION:  Right now I’m happy and like . . . I want to practice.

(Excerpt 3.3) TEROPPU:  きょうの試合 すごくガンバリマシタ　次の試合もガンバリマス STANDARD:  きょうの試合 すごく頑張りました　次の試合も頑張ります ROMANIZATION:  kyō no shiai sugoku ganbarimashita tsugi no shiai mo

ganba­rimasu

TRANSLATION: 

I tried really hard during today’s match. I will try hard in the next match too.

(Excerpt 3.4) TEROPPU:  オウエンシテ . . . クレテアリガトウゴザイマス STANDARD:  応援して . . . くれてありがとうございます ROMANIZATION:  ōenshite . . . kurete arigatōgozaimasu TRANSLATION:  Thank you for cheering . . . for me.

The uses of katakana just shown are clear violations of the norms of formal written Japanese. However, it should be noted that Mōningu shō is not the first media entity to utilize marked applications of katakana during representations of Japanese speech treated as marked or non-­native. At the bare minimum, this practice has existed for over a century. A Japanese poet named Kōtarō Takemura discussed his fondness for the marking style in an essay from 1955, and Kinsui

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 61 (2014) notes examples of the phenomenon in Japanese manga (comics) dating back to the early 1900s. Furthermore, as evidenced by Osaka’s dialogue, the marking is not simply a relic of the past either. While the use of katakana in Osaka’s speech is somewhat surprising given that she is Japanese, the practice itself is still commonly found in contemporary representations of non-­native Japanese production. For instance, in 2009 McDonald’s Japan used a mascot named Mr. James to promote a line of specialty “American” burgers. The character was presented as a sort of Japan-­obsessed “gaijin [foreigner] clown” (Arudo, 2009, p. 1), and his often grammatically marked productions of Japanese were rendered entirely in katakana on posters and pamphlets. In 2013, Toshiba similarly released an advertisement featuring a Japanese actress performing an exaggerated foreigner stereotype to advertise a home bread machine. The actress wore a blond wig, heavy amounts of face-­whitening makeup, and a large plastic nose and spoke Japanese in a stilted, arrhythmic style that was reproduced on the screen via katakana-­heavy teroppu (Arudo, 2013; Ashcraft, 2013). Most recently, the 2019 Netflix program Queer Eye: We’re in Japan utilized katakana for the subtitles of all Japanese phrases spoken by the five main non-­Japanese characters but translated their English speech in accordance with standard Japanese orthographic norms. In short, katakana marking of non-­native Japanese speech is a well-­recognized phenomenon in Japan. It has a long history throughout Japanese media and has seen both use and controversy to the present day. But what is it exactly that motivates this particular marking style, and what is the specific meaning it conveys? Broadly speaking, general explanations to date tend to argue that the technique draws upon the “foreign” image of katakana to indicate accented or inaccurate Japanese production. For instance, in Takemura’s aforementioned discussion of the technique, he argued that katakana “records the sound of unfamiliar stilted Japanese, contributing to a humorous feeling” (1955, p.  30). Kinsui, discussing katakana marking in representations of non-­native speech in older manga, similarly wrote that the katakana’s non-­standard use “makes one think of accent” (2014, p.  177), and Rinko Nagami, author of the manga Indo Meoto Jawan (discussed later in this chapter), stated in an interview with me that “by changing [a word’s representation] into katakana, readers naturally understand that the pronunciation and intonation are spoken in the particular, halting rhythm of foreigners.” Contemporary online commentary also reflects these claims. Posts on the Japanese content aggregate website Girls Channel [sic] critiquing the aforementioned marking of Osaka’s speech included comments like “Was the katakana used to convey that the Japanese is broken to deaf people? Um . . . is that necessary?” “I thought she was speaking Japanese normally though?” “Because she can’t speak Japanese fluently, it would be better if they supported her through the use of kanji.” (Girls Channel, 2018)

62  Scripted speech and scripted speakers While these comments differ in terms of whether they question the necessity of marking non-­native speech, all show clear engagement with the idea that katakana is used to represent broken, abnormal, or non-­fluent Japanese. However, although we cannot ignore the fact that katakana is commonly felt to directly signal accent or linguistic abilities, we also need to recognize that this is just a general perception. More importantly, it is a general perception that is not supported by even a basic body of academic research. To be clear, I am not arguing that general perceptions are inherently incorrect, meaningless, or wrong. Metalinguistic dialogues about a linguistic form must always be attended to when discussing the meaning created by a form or attempting to understand how the form creates meaning. As I noted in Chapter 2, there is also no doubt that metalinguistic discussions can easily override more “natural” processes/connections through influencing public understandings (Ahman, 2012; M. Inoue, 2004b; Vosters, Gijsbert, van der Wal,  & Vandenbussche, 2012). Finally, as seen with Mr. James and in certain (but importantly not all) excerpts of Osaka’s teroppu, the katakana marking does often co-­occur with speech containing grammatical errors, lending credence to the idea that it is motivated by or reflects poor Japanese production. Nevertheless, just as we cannot reject ideas outright for lacking extensive research-­based support, we also cannot simply overlook situations where generalist perceptions are accepted without even a cursory body of ground-­up analysis. Without in-­depth and context-­sensitive research into katakana marking of non-­native speech, saying that the script’s marked use conveys or reflects understandings of accent cannot be taken as more than just one common or plausible interpretation. At best, it leaves us unable to move beyond an argument that may overlook or ignore features – aside from accent – that are also relevant to the script’s employment. Common dialogues may reflect an understanding that mistakes one part of an explanation for the whole. At worst, presenting katakana’s foreign image as an explanation for why the script marks accent (or any other trait) is confusing perception of a language item in the abstract with perceptions of language users and language use. Stating that katakana has some inherent capability to reflect sound risks may put the cart before the horse, mistaking one outcome of the marking for the fundamental beliefs about language use(rs) that it produces and reflects. Finally, on the most basic level, awareness that katakana is often seen to represent accent does not attend to questions of how purely graphic variation is able to reflect or recreate phonological elements of speech. My primary goal in this chapter is therefore to more thoroughly investigate the motives for this well-­recognized style of katakana use. In doing so, I  also intend to tackle the more underlying question of how a style of graphic variation has become perceived as an index of accent. The data I  will use during these discussions come from the entirety of non-­native dialogue in 21 volumes of Japanese manga spread across three distinct series. My data collection involved coding each lexeme across the dialogue of all characters in these texts based on their orthographic representations. This process created local corpuses for each manga’s orthographic norms, allowing me to produce local understandings of

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 63 what features were restricted to depictions of native and non-­native speech in each text. Consequently, my analysis was able to avoid reliance on script images in attempting to understand any author’s motives, instead surveying their own orthographic habits in context to identify triggers that consistently stimulated styles of katakana-­marked Japanese production absent from local depictions of native Japanese speech. The first of the three titles I will discuss in the current chapter is Naoki Urasawa’s Yawara! This manga focuses on the adventures of the titular Yawara, a teenage Japanese girl training to become a world champion in judo. Yawara! is the oldest and most famous of the three manga series. Twenty-­nine volumes exist in total, and the comic has spawned a film and an anime series. My data analysis includes all dialogue from the first to the tenth volume of Yawara!, covering stories published between 1987 and 1989. Yawara! differs slightly from the other two manga, as the characters within it are not based on real people. However, the manga is still intended as a “realistic” story, as it lacks fantasy elements and the characters participate in real-­world events. The second manga I will examine is Chūgoku Yome Nikki (Chinese Wife Diary, hereafter CYN). This series is ostensibly non-­fiction, as it focuses on the relationship between the author/ illustrator, Junichi Inoue, and his Chinese wife, Yue. CYN began as a webcomic in 2010 before being published in book form in 2011, making it the most recent of the three series. My analysis here includes data from the first two published collections and a supplemental volume called Yue to Nihongo (Yue and Japanese). Finally, the last manga I will examine is Rinko Nagami’s Indo Meoto Jawan (Indian Couple’s Wedding Cups, hereafter IMJ). This comic is similar to CYN, in that it is a slice-­of-­life comic depicting the author’s marriage to a non-­Japanese spouse, but it differs in detailing the life of a female Japanese author married to an Indian man. The data I  collected from IMJ include the manga’s first seven volumes and its spinoff Hataraku!! Indojin (Work!! Indian). These combined eight volumes were published between 2002 and 2009 and cover the same general timeframe in the life of the author and her family. The analysis of IMJ is also supplemented by an interview with Rinko Nagami regarding her writing process and the script use throughout her work. My choice of these three specific series over other potential options is a consequence of four primary considerations. The first is popularity. The overall success of each title helped ensure that the script use within is intended to be accessible to, and appreciated by, a general audience. The second consideration is the three series’ use of non-­native speakers as major characters. Compared with titles I considered that featured many non-­native speakers in minor roles, the inclusion of non-­native speakers as main characters in these three manga increased the variety of non-­native dialogue and the detail with which non-­native speakers’ identities could be contrasted and detailed. Third, my selections were intended to create a sizeable contrast between the titles in terms of time period of authorship, perspective, and story content. Doing so allowed me to compare uses of the marking technique over time and look for potential differences between representations of distinct non-­native identities and nationalities. Finally, the titles were selected

64  Scripted speech and scripted speakers over other options due to their sole authorship. Having one person working on both the art and dialogue throughout each text helped guarantee that all script use within was the consequence of a singular perspective or intent. Finally, before moving to data analysis I also want to address my fundamental use of manga as a data source. As the current study is one of the first in-­ depth sociolinguistic investigations into a style of Japanese graphic language play, manga offer two primary benefits. The first comes from needs that are inherent in the broader medium of comics. Comics – a term I use here to refer to a global medium that includes manga – represent a valuable space for studying language variants in depictions of social voices due to the medium’s inherent visual aspects. Unlike many other narrative texts, comics do not have a method of easily producing explicit descriptions of speech or speech acts. Authors of novels can comment directly on a spoken performance through uses of descriptive explanations like “they shouted” or “he said with a thick German accent.” By contrast, in comics, dialogue exists as part of the art on the page, often forcing authors to lean on visual or graphic techniques to define individual speech acts (McCloud, 1993, 2006; Wolk, 2007). Second, manga hold further value for linguistic study due to their status as a “critical part of the [Japanese] culture industry” (Prough, 2010, p. 56). Although comics are influential around the world, their extent of popularity in Japan far outstrips that of comics in the West. Combined sales of comics in the US and Canada reached a record high of over 870 million USD in 2013 (Lubin, 2014; Virtue, 2015). By contrast, sales of Japanese manga in 2011 were over 271 billion yen (around 2.7 billion USD) despite a long slump in sales (Oricon, 2012). Furthermore, manga are designed for a more extensive variety of readers than comics in many other nations, reaching such a high level of mainstream acceptance that even official government proclamations and communications, corporate histories, classical works of literature, and educational texts can be found in manga form (Brasor, 2015; Kinsella, 1996; Schwartz  & Rubinstein-­Avila, 2006). As a result, manga in Japan are quite linguistically influential, serving as a major format for the circulation of social voices in Japanese media (see Dahlberg-­Dodd, 2018; Endo, 2001; Kinsui, 2003, 2014; Nakamura, 2007; Ueno, 2006; Unser-­Schutz, 2010, 2013). Ultimately, these two arguments should not be taken to say that manga are the only or even “best” location for examining katakana marking; we have already seen that the phenomenon is not restricted to any single genre. Rather, they show that manga produce multiple benefits for the study at hand, increasing both the potential extent and importance of the data observed.

Yawara! Moving now to analysis of individual manga, I  will begin as stated with an examination of katakana use throughout representations of non-­native speech in Yawara! Non-­native speakers in this comic are rarer than in the other two series but still appear regularly in individual stories as the titular Yawara’s friends, judo rivals, or teachers. The most prominent recurring non-­native Japanese speaker in

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 65 the manga is Jody, a Canadian judo champion introduced in the fourth volume. Initially, Jody is shown talking in English with other Canadians. While these conversations are also written in Japanese, none of the speakers have any Japanese background at this point. Furthermore, the representation of the language differs from that of Jody’s speech once she reaches Japan, indicating an effort to mark the language as not Japanese. No locally irregular uses of katakana appear, and the dialogue is dotted with English words written in all caps (e.g., “JUDO” or “JAPAN”), which are absent from depictions of Japanese speech. Katakana marking of Jody’s dialogue first appears once she reaches Japan and begins using Japanese. Initially, Jody’s Japanese utterances are simplistic and represented entirely through the katakana script. This marking often creates direct visual contrasts with the speech of Japanese characters around Jody. For example, one of the first depictions of Jody in Japan is a scene where she orders five bowls of ramen at a restaurant. Across the dialogue in these panels, both Jody and the chef use the phrase goninmae (five servings) multiple times. Jody produces the term as “ゴニンマーエ (goninmāe)” and “ゴニンマエーッ1 (goninmaē).” Both productions are written entirely in katakana and include one irregular vowel extension. The Japanese chef instead produces a shocked “五人前ーっ !? (goninmaē!?)” in kanji. This statement matches the overall phonetic content of Jody’s second utterance, including the same vowel extension of the ending e as ē, but creates a direct orthographic contrast by rendering all elements but the vowel-­extending chōonpu (ー) in the kanji script. Jody’s speech begins to contain standard orthographic elements a few stories later, after she starts formal Japanese study. The author first changes Jody’s dialogue to include strict orthographic “rules,” such as the use of hiragana for grammatical particles and function words (Backhouse, 1984; Rowe, 1981). Examples include ネルコはソダーツ (neru ko wa sodātsu, children who sleep growww2 strong), which uses hiragana only for the topic marker wa (は), and ネナイのイ ケナイ (nenai no ikenai, not sleeping is bad), which uses hiragana only for the nominalizer no (の). Jody’s first uses of kanji for Sino-­Japanese nouns appear later in the same conversation. An illustrative example is “ワタシ、磁悟郎先生の弟 子にナッタデース (watashi, jigorō sensei no deshi ni natta dēsu, I  isss became Master Jigoro’s pupil).” In this sentence, irregular katakana representation is used for the items watashi (ワタシ, I), natta (ナッタ, became), and dēsu (デース, to be/is). While grammatical inaccuracies (specifically natta dēsu, “I isss became”) and irregular vowel extension (dēsu is normally desu, reflected in the use of “isss”) exist along with the katakana in this particular utterance, later grammatically unremarkable sentences in the same conversation contain multiple irregular uses of katakana. Without the katakana marking, these sentences out of context could easily pass for instances of Japanese speech. As a result, while the katakana marking often co-­occurs with stilted or incorrect Japanese production, even at this point erroneous production is not a condition for the marked katakana use. After these initial scenes, Jody mostly disappears from the story until Volume 5. When Jody reappears, her Japanese has greatly improved, and the orthographic makeup of her dialogue begins to closely mirror that of Japanese characters. In

66  Scripted speech and scripted speakers her conversations with Yawara and other Japanese natives in Volume 5, Jody’s Japanese is now consistently orthographically marked in only two areas: katakana is used in her speech for (1) all proper nouns and (2) her production of the first-­ person pronoun watashi. This new local standard creates numerous inconsistencies with prior representations of Jody’s speech, as although the overall amount of katakana has decreased, formerly unmarked elements are now in katakana. For instance, representations of “Master Jigoro (jigorō sensei)” now appear asジゴ ロー先生 despite the fact that the otherwise locally normative 磁悟郎先生 was applied when Jody’s Japanese was weaker. Still, at least initially the gradual removal of katakana from Jody’s speech appears linked to Jody’s improved Japanese. That said, the reduction or removal of katakana marking from Jody’s speech does not coincide with a total removal of marked grammatical or lexical elements. While Jody’s Japanese is now often orthographically indistinguishable from that of native speakers, the same is not true for its lexical or grammatical context. Jody’s statements during Volume 5 continue to frequently include grammatically non-­standard elements, as exemplified by statements like “必ず勝つだわ (kanarazu katsu da wa, I will it is win for sure)” and “頼むだわよ (tanomu da wa yo, I request it is).” In both these sentences, the copula da (is/are だ) is inappropriately attached directly to verbs, reflected in the verb + “it is” forms in my English translations. Likewise, Jody’s uses of sentence-­final particle strings like だわよ (dawayo) are locally marked in terms of the number and combination of their constituent elements. Furthermore, when Jody returns to Japan for a third time in Volume 8, her orthographic marking is reduced even more, but Japanese errors still appear. In this latter volume, Jody is now able to produce watashi in kanji consistently, and she inconsistently uses kanji for some Japanese names. The near removal of katakana marking does not coincide with perfect Japanese, though, as her misuse of particles is still common, and malapropisms like “oppai (breasts)” for “shippai (worry)” or “shukuben (feces)” for “shukumei (fated)” regularly appear for an ostensibly humorous effect. As a result, while reduced katakana marking certainly correlates with improved Japanese ability in a broad sense throughout Jody’s speech, erroneous Japanese production and marked script use are not perfectly entwined. This complexity is not limited to Jody’s speech either, as the use of grammatically or lexically marked but orthographically standard non-­native Japanese appears in other non-­native Japanese production throughout Yawara! as well. For instance, a Russian judo champion named Anna Teleshikova speaks Japanese in a manner that regularly drops grammatical particles and involves broken phrasing. Statements like “私、 ビデオ観た (watashi, bideo mita, I, watched video)” and “私、勝つため研究し た！一年間！(watashi, katsu tame kenky kenkyūshita! ichinenkan! I, researched to win. For one year!) are certainly not incomprehensible. But they are still grammatically marked and use choppy, stilted phrasing in a manner I  have tried to reflect in the English translations. Despite Anna’s linguistic limitations, there are no marked uses of katakana anywhere in her dialogue. Even Anna’s uses of the pronoun watashi (two appear in the prior excerpts) are rendered as 私 in kanji,

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 67 which matches the norm for the pronoun in the manga’s representations of native speech. Japanese ability is therefore ultimately just one consideration behind marked katakana use in Yawara! It cannot stand alone as a complete explanation for the script’s locally marked application in representations of non-­native speech. Dialogue without locally marked katakana use can contain grammatically unmarked Japanese production, and grammatically standard Japanese can feature orthographic marking. Accent likewise fails to completely explain katakana marking, as the inconsistencies regarding when and where katakana is employed do not mirror inconsistencies that would exist in the sounds of characters’ Japanese speech. If katakana simply represents audibly marked Japanese production, it is strange that often only one word (particularly watashi) is marked as “accented.” Jody is certainly not struggling to produce or pronounce a common pronoun while fluently utilizing complex grammar and vocabulary. Likewise, choppy Japanese produced by a Russian should not avoid orthographic marking entirely. In short, treating katakana as exclusively or directly marking traits like pronunciation or linguistic ability fails to explain the reality of the script’s use in Yawara!, as neither explanation can attend to the inconsistencies that appear in the script’s application throughout the series. Given that commonly asserted language-­related concerns alone do not explain the marking of non-­native speech in Yawara!, it is now worth considering the potential influence of other factors on the author’s script use. Particularly, while Jody’s Japanese improvement represents an obvious character change between volumes, we cannot ignore simultaneous fluctuations in how the author represents Jody between these same stories. Jody is initially presented not just as a non-­native speaker but as someone who is somewhat silly and out of place. She is foreign in the literal sense of being a foreigner but also in relation to Japan, Japanese, and the other characters. Jody’s initial poor language skills co-­occur with an inability to read a room or attend to local social/interactional norms, and Japanese reactions to her well-­meaning but culturally insensitive behavior are a source of humor and conflict in early stories. The aforementioned chef’s shock at Jody ordering five servings of ramen for herself, for instance, is a typical example of these early interactions. Later, however, Jody’s character is more developed. Her kind-­hearted nature is made clear, and by the time she returns to Japan in Volume 8, she and Yawara are close friends. If katakana marking indeed has an air of mocking or discrimination, as some comments I presented earlier suggested, this raises the possibility that Jody’s changed role to a sympathetic protagonist caused the author to no longer feel that katakana was appropriate for Jody’s speech despite her continued linguistic limitations. This possibility is especially relevant in later scenes where Jody and Yawara compete in judo tournaments together, as Jody’s Japanese becomes completely orthographically unmarked once her status as an Olympic-­level competitor is relevant to her identity in the text. Furthermore, this idea that katakana marking is partially contingent on a speaker’s identity is also productive in unraveling many of the inconsistencies in katakana use throughout Yawara! thus far. Consider the earlier issue

68  Scripted speech and scripted speakers regarding representation of watashi wherein Jody’s use of the pronoun continued to receive katakana marking after the script’s marked use disappeared from all other elements of her speech. This targeted marking is confusing when katakana is treated as a direct marker of audible elements of a speech act. If katakana directly represents poor pronunciation, we would not see only one word being “accented.” The choice of an item that is subject to frequent dropping in Japanese also seems bizarre, as it results in the so-­called “accent marker” being absent from the vast majority of dialogue (Cognola & Casalicchio, 2018; Lee & Yonezawa, 2008). However, a focus on marked pronouns makes sense if katakana marking is instead indexing (the performance of) a specific character type. Pronoun use is already established as an important channel through which identities are established/contrasted in both conversation and fictional texts in Japanese (Kinsui, 2003; Miyazaki, 2002; Ono & Thompson, 2003; Suzuki, 2017). Establishing a character’s normative pronoun in a Japanese text therefore serves to index a baseline identity relevant to all otherwise locally regular speech acts (Hiramoto, 2013). While the author of Yawara! is specifically using a pronoun-­script combination rather than just a pronoun,3 the consistent katakana marking nevertheless separates Jody into a specific category: users of a katakana-­represented watashi. Assumptions of accent may then arise from readers’ beliefs that characters in this group are typically poor language users, with weak Japanese ability generally treated as an aspect of the entire indexed identity. This allows features like accent to be relevant even when not explicitly marked within individual speech acts and explains why the marked item can appear even in grammatical non-­native speech. Viewing the katakana marking in Yawara! as an index of an ideologically defined non-­native speaker identity also helps tackle the lack of orthographic marking in the dialogue of Anna. Given that Anna fails to perform the bumbling-­ yet-­friendly non-­native speaker identity embodied by Jody, of which linguistic ability is again just one part, it makes sense that her speech is orthographically unmarked. Katakana marking is not treated as appropriate for non-­native speakers whom the author wishes to present as competent, serious, or intimidating. That is, the non-­native identity we are discussing is an ideologically defined one, as literal non-­native status itself only serves as a condition of the marking rather than a guarantee. While Anna and Jody are both first shown as literal non-­native speakers with limited Japanese abilities, Anna remains orthographically unmarked, as she fails to perform a prototypical gaijin or “non-­native speaker” identity as it is understood by the author or commonly proliferated images in Japanese media (see Fukuda, 2017; Hambleton, 2011; Suzuki, 2017, 2018). The katakana marking thereby drives a wedge between the various identities non-­native speakers perform across the text, serving as an index of a specific character type rather than any static demographic or linguistic trait. That said, although viewing katakana marking as an index of an ideologically defined identity type is productive for understanding the katakana use in Yawara!, I do need to recognize here that my conclusions are thus far supported only by data from one manga. What we have seen in Yawara! alone is not enough

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 69 to confidently reject other explanations. I still need to attend to the possibility that the lack of marking in the speech of Anna and other “non-­friendly” non-­ native Japanese speakers is all a result of author oversight, or that the author of Yawara! is engaging in somewhat arbitrary or minute distinctions between characters’ Japanese accents or abilities. Furthermore, other elements of Jody’s personality may be relevant here in ways we cannot understand due to the lack of another major friendly non-­native speaking character in this text. In my analysis of the other manga, I will therefore specifically establish that the same trends we see in Yawara! appear in the other titles as well, with the idea that katakana is indexing an ideologically defined identity assisting the understanding of katakana marking in more than just one comic.

Chūgokujin Yome Nikki As in Yawara!, the manga CYN makes common use of marked applications of katakana throughout depictions of non-­native Japanese speech. The majority of this dialogue involves the author’s wife, Yue, a Chinese non-­native speaker who serves as the main focus of the manga’s stories. Non-­standard applications of katakana are a consistent presence in Yue’s dialogue, but the script’s ubiquity belies an extreme lack of consistency in its application. The closest thing to a guaranteed local standard is the use of katakana for the sentence-­final copula desu, regardless of whether the use of desu in question is grammatically correct, and Yue’s preferred pronoun watashi. In the three volumes of CYN that I coded, these two items appeared respectively in katakana in Yue’s speech 100% and 81.33% (61/75 instances) of the time. The rest of Yue’s speech is further marked through regular uses of katakana that depart from the norms of native speakers in CYN, but there is no consistency regarding what elements will be marked at what times. The representation of any randomly selected sentence element is instead subject to what appears to be chance or whim. Even the desu ending, which, as mentioned, was consistently written in katakana when produced by Yue, can be followed by sentence-­final particles like ka, yo, or ne in both hiragana and katakana. It is also conjugated into other forms, such as the past tense deshita, that end up written using hiragana, katakana, or combinations of both. For instance, the common verb ending masu appears in Yue’s speech as its normative hiragana representation ます, in katakana alone as マス, and as a combination of the two scripts, such as まス and マす. Changes can also occur within individual words or conjugation forms. In one case, yatenaidesu (a conjugation of “isn’t doing,” including minor vowel shortening) is rendered as ヤてナ イデス, with only the sound te (て) written in the standard hiragana representation. In another, the phrase hito deshita (“was a person”) appears first as ヒトデ した and then as 人デシタ later on the same page. In the first representation, the word “hito” (person) is in katakana (ヒト), while the ending deshita (was) switches from katakana for de (デ) to hiragana for shita (した) midway through. In the second representation, hito is instead in kanji (人), while deshita is written entirely in katakana (デシタ).

70  Scripted speech and scripted speakers This same overall inconsistent katakana marking also appears in the dialogue of all characters who are at a similar level to Yue in her Japanese language school. Consequently, on initial observation, the katakana marking again seems strongly linked to Japanese learners. However, as with Yawara!, further examination shows that language ability alone cannot entirely explain where this marking method will appear. The first complication comes from developments in the character of Yue herself. A major story point in the first two volumes of CYN and its spinoff Yue to Nihongo (Yue and Japanese) is Yue’s attempts to improve her Japanese. At the end of Yue to Nihongo, her efforts finally pay off, as she passes the N2 level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). This exam is a major milestone in Japanese acquisition, as it is treated as a general requirement for working in a Japanese company (MEXT, 2012). In contrast to Yawara!, where Jody’s improved Japanese coincided with reduced katakana marking, the author of CYN consistently uses katakana marking in Yue’s speech regardless of improvements in her Japanese. Indeed, the marking style continues in representations of Yue’s speech as of 2019 despite presumable further improvements in her Japanese skills over the decade, with her dialogue in new comics still marked via the lexical, grammatical, and orthographic manipulations I noted in the manga’s initial volumes. Second, the few non-­native speakers who are able to avoid katakana marking are not the speakers with the strongest linguistic abilities in the manga. Non-­native speakers who are less capable than Yue can produce katakana-­absent speech, and speakers who are far beyond Yue’s level can produce katakana-­marked dialogue. These two phenomena are expressed most clearly in the cases of Yun and Sonhī, two classmates of Yue who both have minor roles in CYN and serve as main characters in Yue to Nihongo. In contrast to all other Japanese learners at Yue’s school, Yun uses only five non-­native restricted applications of katakana throughout sections of the manga set in the present. The copula desu appears in katakana (as デス) twice, the masu ending appears in katakana (as マス) once, and the word “watashi” appears in katakana (as ワタシ) twice. These representations are all locally marked for Yun’s dialogue, appearing less commonly than uses of desu, masu, and watashi, which match the representations used when these terms appear in native speech. Minor exceptions aside, most of Yun and Yue’s Japanese is in direct orthographic contrast. Katakana-­represented uses of watashi (as ワタ シ) by Yue, for example, frequently appear directly next to kanji-­represented uses of this pronoun (as 私) by Yun. One way to analyze the contrast between Yue and Yun’s speech is, of course, as a reflection of differences in their language abilities. Certainly, Yun is first introduced as a stronger Japanese speaker and student. Yun’s Japanese also does change to mirror Yue’s in flashbacks to Yun’s early years studying Japanese. As with Yawara!, non-­fluent Japanese production is at least a condition of marked katakana use. However, any pure attribution of language ability to katakana marking is still complicated by two factors. The first is the aforementioned development in Yue’s Japanese abilities over time. At the end of Yue to Nihongo, both characters take the N2 exam, but only Yue passes. Yue’s Japanese

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 71 nevertheless remains orthographically marked, while Yun continues to produce orthographically standard Japanese. Second, although Yun is a very skilled Japanese speaker, she is actually not the most skilled character in the class. The aforementioned character Sonhī, a Korean national studying in Japan, has stronger Japanese abilities overall. Yun even directly describes Sonhī as “the number one student in the class (kurasu de NO1)” (J. Inoue, 2013, p. 120). While we might therefore assume that Sonhī would also speak using unmarked Japanese, his Japanese instead mirrors that of Yue. For instance, before taking the N2 test, Yun produces the locally grammatically and orthographically unmarked statement “あー緊張しますわ。(ā kinchō shimasu wa, Aaa I’m nervous),” while Sonhī produces the highly orthographically marked reply “ソウ デスネ。実はボクもキンチョーしてイマス。(sōdesu ne. jitsu wa boku mo kinchō shiteimasu. Yeah. Actually, I’m nervous too)” (J. Inoue, 2013, p. 115), with the elements I  have written in bold reflecting uses of katakana that are non-­standard for the manga’s depictions of native Japanese speech. The same word even appears between the quotes in two scripts, with kinchō (nervous) written in kanji in Yun’s speech (as 緊張) and in katakana in Sonhī’s speech (as キンチョー). As a result, while Japanese ability and non-­native status are clear influences on orthographic representation throughout CYN, they are again not guarantees that a character will produce marked or unmarked speech. Given that linguistic capability fails to be a predictor or sole explanation of katakana marking, it now time to turn to the consideration of character identity that I raised during the discussion of katakana marking in Yawara! Although Yun is not intimidating in the manner of Anna or the other non-­Japanese judo champions from Yawara!, she does stand out from the other non-­native speakers in CYN. She is domineering and wealthy, dresses in designer clothes, is studying to enter a Japanese postgraduate program, and is described by the manga’s author as an “extreme socialite (chō serebu)” who “refuses to accept losses (make o mitomenai)” (J. Inoue, 2013, p. 10). That is, not only is Yun a skilled Japanese speaker, but she is also dominating, confident, and wealthy, with the latter aspect being a characteristic the author explicitly states he dislikes at multiple points in the manga. Yun therefore fails to fit within the broader “non-­native speaker” identity performed by Jody and Yue wherein characters act in a cute, bumbling, and ultimately non-­threatening manner. Instead, Yun’s primary identity performance is that of a wealthy, motivated elite. This special status is also reflected in the locally marked use of non-­ orthographic features. Yun is the only non-­native speaker in CYN to frequently utilize stereotypical indexes of “proper,” elegant, or upper-­class women’s speech in Japanese. Examples include the hyper-­polite first-­person pronoun watakushi, absent in the speech of all other characters regardless of nationality, and the “feminine” sentence-­final particles wa (visible in Yun’s earlier comment about being nervous) and noyo. Indeed, other studies have noted these features to be rare in depictions of non-­native Japanese, with their restricted use in Yun’s dialogue indicating special attention to the construction of her speech (M. Inoue, 2004a; Nakamura, 2014; Suzuki, 2018).

72  Scripted speech and scripted speakers By contrast, Sonhī is younger and more reserved, lives with his mother, and is somewhat of an introvert. The manga’s author introduces him as “reticent (mukuchi)” and “mysterious (nazo no ōi)” (J. Inoue, 2013, p.  11) and personally likes him more than Yun, as both Sonhī and the author share a common interest in comics and video games. In addition, Sonhī is kinder than Yun, going out of his way to become best friends with a struggling non-­native speaker named Nico who Yun frequently criticizes. In short, while Sonhī is a stronger Japanese user than Yun, he better manifests the friendly “non-­native” identity performed by characters like Yue. These aspects of Sonhī’s personality take precedence over his Japanese ability in determining whether the author will include local katakana marking throughout his dialogue, with Sonhī’s status as the best speaker in class not affecting the orthographic presentation of his Japanese. In CYN, we therefore once more see that the question of whether katakana will be applied to the speech of non-­native speakers is not simply a question of accent or Japanese ability. While Japanese ability is clearly a consideration for the author, and one that can influence the extent of katakana marking, elements like individual behavior and an author’s intended character image are more primary considerations. To put this another way, although high linguistic aptitude is clearly a requirement for avoiding katakana marking in CYN, strong linguistic abilities are not enough to override the marking on their own. The performance of certain traits an author ideologically associates with a particular identity again appears as the dominant motive for the orthographic contrasts in the text, as marking is not predicted by Japanese skill or a character’s literal status as a non-­ native speaker of Japanese.

Indo Meoto Jawan The final manga I  will analyze in the current chapter, IMJ, contains minimal uses of katakana in non-­native speech compared with Yawara! and CYN despite still featuring large amounts of non-­native Japanese production. The major non-­ native speaker in the comic is the author’s husband, Sasshī, an Indian chef from Kerala who now operates a restaurant in Japan. Other non-­native speakers appear inconsistently from volume to volume, usually depicted as friends of Sasshī or the author. However, none of these characters consistently feature katakana across large sections of their dialogue in a manner akin to Yue or Jody. Uses of katakana that are marked in relation to standard Japanese (i.e., what one would see in a textbook or government document) are common throughout non-­native speech, but this is true about the makeup of native speech across IMJ as well. The author of IMJ employs a very casual and flexible writing style that employs non-­standard contractions, spellings, particle dropping, and formally non-­standard katakana use throughout. Styles of written production that would be unthinkable in formal Japanese, including those that were exclusive to non-­native Japanese production in the other two manga, regularly appear across the text in the dialogue of most characters. This means that it is often impossible to establish if a given

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 73 excerpt comes from a native or non-­native speaker out of context, even when the excerpt features formally marked uses of katakana. As a result, even where use of a katakana for a particular word is exclusive to non-­native speech in IMJ, it is difficult to establish that this is actually a locally marked use of script. The temporary locally marked use of katakana can occur in any representation of speech in IMJ, with some marking of non-­native speech through katakana therefore undoubtedly occurring for purposes of emphasis, legibility, or other issues that are relevant to the orthographic makeup of any Japanese writing (Rowe, 1976, 1981). This raises an important point for future examinations, as clearly not all marked uses of katakana in depictions of non-­ native speech necessarily stem from a character’s non-­native status. As speakers in a casual medium, more generic motives must always be considered. Establishing consistent contrasts between representations of two groups’ speech before attributing motives to any specific instance of marking is vital, even in cases where the marking style mirrors well-­known orthographic trends. That said, there are three elements of Sasshī’s speech that are regularly marked via katakana in a manner absent from all depictions of native Japanese production throughout the text. These are the first-­person pronoun watashi (as in Yawara! and CYN), the sentence endings desu and masu, and sentence-­final particles. I will begin by discussing the use of katakana for watashi, as it is by far the most consistent and prominent source of orthographic contrast in IMJ. Sasshī’s uses of this pronoun are rendered in katakana 226/230 (98.26%) times across the eight volumes I analyzed. The author also confirmed during an interview with me that the four uses of kanji for watashi in Sasshī’s speech were consequences of needs related to either space or legibility, describing the locally non-­standard applications as unfortunate but unavoidable choices. Uses of watashi by other non-­native Japanese speakers in the manga are rendered only in katakana (12/12 pronouns). By contrast, uses of watashi by native speakers of Japanese are represented by kanji in 220/227 cases (96.92%). Uses of watashi by monolingual speakers of other languages (i.e., non-­Japanese characters who never learn Japanese shown speaking their native language) are produced only in kanji as well. At the most basic level, the data show a divide in the use of script for watashi between non-­native speakers of Japanese and native speakers of all languages. Given that the author is specifically marking non-­native Japanese dialogue, the most immediate interpretation is perhaps once again that katakana is intended to reflect audible or skill-­based distinctions between native and non-­native Japanese. Minimally, this explanation aligns with the author’s comments I referred to earlier in this chapter wherein she linked katakana to a “foreigner-­specific (gaikokujin tokuyū)” rhythm she associates with non-­native Japanese speech. Furthermore, in contrast to CYN and Yawara!, there are no non-­native characters/character types who are able to avoid watashi marking, so no specific identity performance presented in the comic is able to override this hypothetical accent marker. However, two pieces of evidence demonstrate that the author’s use of katakana for watashi is not entirely explainable through referencing paralinguistic elements of speech. First, while non-­Japanese who never learn Japanese produce

74  Scripted speech and scripted speakers kanji-­represented pronouns, non-­native speakers of Japanese produce katakana representations of watashi even during non-­Japanese production. For instance, in a flashback to when Sasshī was living in a share-­house with other Indians during his early 20s, Sasshī produces katakana-­represented watashi while thinking to himself about the quality of curry in his dorm. This thought is clearly a Japanese recreation of Sasshī’s native Malayalam. Not only did Sasshī not know Japanese at the time, but the dialogue also includes a Japanese transliteration of the Malayalam word for “mother” (am’ma) rather than the Japanese equivalents haha or okāsan. This term appears in no other instance of Sasshī speech. Sasshī’s use of watashi is therefore still orthographically marked even when produced during languages other than Japanese, contrasting with the aforementioned use of kanji for the pronouns produced by characters in IMJ who never learn or use Japanese. Second, uses of katakana for watashi in Rinko’s speech that refer to Sasshī also feature katakana marking. For example, in one story Sasshī becomes angry when Rinko brings home a pet turtle for their children, as Sasshī is afraid of reptiles. In response to Sasshī’s anger, Rinko becomes angry with Sasshī in turn and tells him that he should have made his views clear before she went to the pet store. In Rinko’s statement, she specifically tells Sasshī, “It would have been better if you properly said ‘I am not good with reptiles’ when we talked about [buying a pet] (sōdan shita toki chanto「watashi wa hacchūrui wa nigate da」tte ieba yokatta desho).” In this “quote,” the use of watashi in dialogue that is presented as Sasshī’s is rendered in katakana. It is important to note, though, that while Rinko is “quoting” Sasshī, the quote is something she believes Sasshī should have said rather than an actual quote. That is, the dialogue is not a reproduction of Sasshī’s speech or an attempt at mocking his Japanese or pronunciation. Despite this, the use of watashi appears in katakana, depicted exactly as if the dialogue had actually been produced by Sasshī. Regardless of what language Sasshī is speaking, and regardless of whether he is speaking at all, the word “watashi” is therefore written in katakana whenever it refers to the character in IMJ. The link between the marked representation of watashi in katakana and Sasshī’s character clearly goes beyond (but, again, also results in) the paralinguistic qualities of his speech. The use of katakana for watashi throughout Sasshī’s speech instead appears to index a status inherent in the character, with any assumptions of accent originating from this more fundamental marking. As mentioned before in the discussion of Yawara!, it is unsurprising that this identity is specifically indexed through manipulations of a pronoun given the importance of these items for establishing character types in Japanese fiction (Miyazaki, 2002; Ono & Thompson, 2003). That extremely skilled non-­native speakers in the comic are also marked the same way emphasizes this point, as even a completely grammatically unmarked character who has lived in Japan for 15 years still produces watashi in katakana. If not for this element, this character’s Japanese might actually appear even more “standard” than many instances of native dialogue throughout IMJ. The speaker’s statements include none of the katakana marking common to the general writing style in IMJ and

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 75 even feature kanji representations that do not appear in any other locations across dialogue in the series. Indeed, understanding that the regular katakana marking of watashi relates to the indexing of Sasshī’s fundamental identity type (as defined by the author) provides important insights for understanding uses of katakana-­represented watashi in native speech. During our interview, the author stated that some locally non-­ standard applications of katakana for watashi in depictions of her Japanese were intentional. They did not result from concerns of space or legibility, in contrast to the locally non-­standard uses of kanji for watashi in Sasshī’s speech, but were meant to convey a tadotadoshii (awkward, halting, or stumbling) image relevant to a particular scene. While the author also used the word “tadotadoshii” in her descriptions of the non-­native Japanese production, it is important to note that the effect of the script’s application in native speech is described in relation to behavior rather than language production. In the following quote, for instance, she attributes an entirely non-­prosaic motive to her katakana use for pronouns in her own speech. 私の[セリフの]中にあるカタカナの「ワタシ」は常にたどたどしいイメ ージです。でもこれを外国人でなく、日本人に使う場合は多少自嘲気味 や自虐的な雰囲気で使ったりします。（例えば、「私」が家族に対して 子供っぽい言い訳などを言う時など） The katakana-­represented watashi [in my dialogue] always has an awkward or stumbling image. However, when it appears in a Japanese person’s speech, rather than a foreigner’s, I use it more or less in an atmosphere of self-­derision or depreciation. (For example, when watashi is said during a childish excuse made toward family members, etc.) Although the author produces uses of katakana for watashi that could also be ascribed to emphasis (e.g., ワタシが間違い [watashi ga machigai, I was wrong]), many uses of watashi in her dialogue appear to align with her impressions. For instance, one of her uses of a katakana-­represented watashi appears in a scene where she is discussing her worries about growing senile with age. In these panels, the author uses a katakana-­represented watashi when responding to her mother’s inquiry as to why Rinko is eating breakfast a second time, incorrectly replying that “watashi (I) haven’t eaten yet.” Rinko’s dazed manner and poor recollection in the scene fit within a general description of “self-­derision or deprecation.” Similarly, another use of katakana for watashi occurs after Rinko injures herself playing on children’s playground equipment. Here she uses katakana-­represented watashi while embarrassed, stating that all the other parents’ eyes were concentrated on watashi (“me”). Both the author’s comments and the script use in her manga therefore indicate at least a subconscious awareness that the context of a language variant’s use impacts its interpretation (Eckert, 2008; Miller, 2004; Okamoto, 1995).

76  Scripted speech and scripted speakers Katakana is not simply an absolute marker of accent. Rather, Rinko knowingly uses the same script for the same lexical item to create two distinct effects, with the questions of where the variant is applied (here, native or non-­native speech) and whether it is applied as a norm (i.e., expected within the character’s speech) or a deviation (i.e., a locally non-­standard representation) affecting the information she intends the variant to convey. Sasshī’s status as an ideologically defined non-­native speaker is inherent in his character – hence the local norm of katakana-­ represented pronouns – but Rinko’s performance of an awkward or childish character is restricted to particular scenes, resulting in only temporary adoptions of the marking style. While it may seem obvious to state that the normative use of katakana within non-­native speech is itself relevant to how the script conveys features like accent, this statement is absent in prior discussions of how marked script use creates meaning. Katakana’s “image” as a foreign script has been treated as the primary factor to date, but this explanation is clearly insufficient for understanding the divergent information this single variant can index. What we see in IMJ is rather a “continual interpretation of forms in context” that utilizes “an in-­the-­moment assigning of indexical values to linguistic forms” (Eckert, 2008, p. 463). Potential interpretations of a katakana-­represented watashi as a marker of accent are not caused just by katakana being viewed as foreign, but as a consequence of the variant appearing to be a normative part of the speech of a speaker/ identity group for whom foreignness or poor Japanese production is ideologically presupposed. Furthermore, just like in the other manga, the question of if katakana is used is also not enough to understand how the script creates meaning in IMJ. To explain, I will now return to the marking of desu and sentence-­final particles throughout non-­native Japanese speech in the series. Although katakana representations of desu and sentence-­final particles are primarily restricted to the speech of non-­ native speakers in IMJ, their representation in katakana is not as consistent as the marking of watashi. The application of katakana for these elements has the same haphazard nature as the marking in CYN and is itself primarily found only in the spinoff volume Hataraku!! Indojin. The speech of non-­native Japanese speakers across all volumes of IMJ that I analyzed contained a total of 12 instances of the copula desu written in katakana, 16 instances of verb endings written in katakana, and 60 instance of sentence-­final particles written in katakana. Of these marked items, 11/12 uses of katakana for desu, 13/16 uses for verb endings, and 46/60 uses for sentence-­final particles appear in Hataraku!! Indojin. Hataraku!! Indojin also contains the only use of katakana for a grammatical particle in any manga in the series, with the particle に (ni) written once in katakana as ニ in Sasshī’s speech. As Hataraku!! Indojin focuses on Sasshī’s early life and initial years living in Japan, wherein Sasshī’s marginal Japanese abilities are relevant to the story, the increased marking appears to have some relationship with his decreased Japanese ability. As with the other manga, though, the applications of katakana that divide native and non-­native speech in Hataraku!! Indojin are not regularly linked to actual errors or predictable patterns. As an example of this inconsistency, in one

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 77 scene showing Sasshī’s early days in Japan, Sasshī produces the sentence-­final copula desu twice in a single speech bubble. The first use is grammatically correct and written in the normative hiragana representation (です), while the second, produced in the interrogative form desuka, is used in a manner that is formally grammatically incorrect and rendered in katakana for all elements accept the final ka (デスか). While this example may tempt the explanation that the grammatical inaccuracy of the second statement is stimulating the katakana use, less than ten pages later, in the same volume, Sasshī produces the simple and entirely grammatically correct statement “baikingu desuka? (the all-­you-­can-­eat buffet?)” with desuka written the same way (as デスか). While the overall increase in marking in Hataraku!! Indojin clearly coincides with scenes featuring Sasshī’s lower Japanese ability, the idea that the marking itself shows grammatical errors is therefore not tenable. Likewise, the inconsistency of the marking leads to the same concerns noted in Yawara! and CYN regarding understanding interpretation of the marking as a direct index of accent, as unmarked and marked versions of the same sentence elements appear within and across language acts. Rather than language ability or specific utterances, then, the katakana marking appears to relate to a more general question of the extent to which a character performs “non-­nativeness.” Linguistic abilities are part of this performance but not the entirety, as it also involves considerations like one’s level of familiarity with Japan. Indeed, non-­native speakers can temporarily “act” this identity, with the author increasing the marking in Sasshī’s speech when he attempts to play up his non-­native status to get out of troublesome work. That is, sudden katakana marking increases between otherwise unmarked speech appear not due to sudden decreases in linguistic ability, but rather as a result of Sasshī stressing his ideologically defined (i.e., non-­literal) non-­native identity for his own interactional needs. The clearest example of this occurs in a scene where Rinko and Sasshī are doing their taxes. Sasshī attempts to pass off all his work to Rinko, who initially rebuffs him. Sasshī then laughs and produces the terms kakutē shinkoku (final income tax deduction), uchiwakeshō (breakdown of items), and kēhi ichiran (expense list) in katakana rather than their normative kanji representations. This script use is not simply a reflection of limited literacy, as his ability to say these terms shows that he can clearly read them off the tax document he is referencing. Additionally, after producing these difficult terms in katakana, Sasshī then further flaunts his supposed lack of understanding by uttering the simple phrases “nihongo wakaranai (I don’t understand Japanese)” and “kore nandesuka? (what is this?),” with every word but nihongo (Japanese) written in katakana. While out of context this scene may appear to reflect actual linguistic difficulties, in context Sasshī is clearly dissembling to get out of work. In the very next panel he even produces a large number of hospital receipts from his pocket and refers to them using the phrase “medical deductions (iryōhi no kōjobun)” before handing them to Rinko to take care of. This tax-­specific terminology, in contrast to the others, is rendered in standard orthography as “医療費の控除分” now that Sasshī is no longer pretending to be confused, with the only marked use of script in this entire statement being Sasshī’s locally normative use of katakana for an instance of watashi.

78  Scripted speech and scripted speakers In sum, as in Yarawa! and CYN, haphazard katakana marking in IMJ serves to primarily index an ideologically defined non-­native speaker identity. Importantly, though, the extent of the katakana marking in IMJ is also important in stressing the extent to which certain features of this identity are relevant to a character or scene. While the use of katakana for watashi indexes a broad author-­ defined non-­native speaker identity, of which marked pronunciation may often be assumed, sudden increases in katakana are used to stress further distance from both native Japanese speakers and the manga’s normative non-­native speakers. In doing so, the author emphasizes the salience of the identity in a manner that causes the character to stand out from all other presented social performances, potentially including depictions of themselves in other stories or scenes. At times, this salience can relate to linguistic issues. But these depictions can just as easily be purely performative, with katakana also increasing when characters play up features attached to the ideologically defined non-­native identity when it suits their interactional needs.

Who speaks katakana? On the surface level, the comparative analysis throughout this chapter confirms that previously raised concerns of accent or Japanese ability can influence katakana marking in representations of non-­Japanese speech. Across all three manga, the authors often stress the presence of katakana in utterances that also contain high numbers of grammatical errors or in scenes that focus on issues of Japanese proficiency. Indeed, the author of IMJ even lists non-­native prosody as a motivation for utilizing locally marked katakana in her representations in non-­native speech. The authors similarly often decrease the script’s presence in utterances made by highly skilled non-­native speakers or in cases where a character’s Japanese ability improves over the course of a story, with speech orthographically mirroring depictions of native Japanese production tending to indicate higher Japanese proficiency. If we were to limit our attention to the aforementioned phenomena alone, as has often been done in past discussions of katakana marking in non-­native speech, it is easy to see how accent or Japanese ability could become the assumed motives/effects linked to this particular use of script. However, this chapter has also clearly shown that claims of katakana primarily or directly marking poor or accented Japanese performances rarely hold water once we expand our attention to the representation of non-­native speech across broader contexts. While impressions that katakana indexes accent or Japanese level may illuminate common interpretations of the marking, they fail to reflect the totality of considerations behind marked katakana use in any of the manga discussed here. In no case was katakana marking seen as an inherent part of non-­native or even grammatically marked Japanese speech. The data instead include examples of authors avoiding katakana marking within instances of poor Japanese production by non-­ natives, inserting it into the speech of highly skilled Japanese leaners, and even applying it to native production of non-­Japanese languages. Taking katakana as a direct marker of accent or Japanese ability prevents an understanding of these

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 79 complications, with the analysis of each manga making it clear that accent and linguistic ability are often best seen as influencing factors rather than a primary cause of the orthographic style. In attempting to understand the various “inconsistencies” observed in katakana marking of non-­native Japanese speech, the idea that katakana most fundamentally indexes a broad “non-­native speaker” identity proves to be the most productive for untangling issues encountered across all three texts. Although literal status as a non-­native speaker is an obvious condition of this identity, it is not a guarantee of its existence. The identity as a whole is instead shown to be ideologically defined, as the marking style that indexes it is not ascribed to all non-­ native speakers. Instead, it is found only in the speech of characters who behave in certain ways. This totalizes non-­native or non-­standard voices spread across a number of nationalities and backgrounds as though they consist of a unified group, reflecting the fact that “externally imposed identity categories generally have at least as much to do with the observer’s own identity position and power stakes as with any sort of objectively describable social reality” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 370). Interpretations of accent and linguistic ability therefore arise from their status as ideologically assumed consequences of the marked identity – rather than the katakana marking itself – and are often valorized as ideological moves due to both the locations in which the “non-­native” identity is indexed and the features/behaviors it co-­occurs with (such as grammatical errors or ignorance of Japanese customs). This causes the marking itself to in turn potentially validate the identity’s definitions and fundamental existence, producing “acceptance and reinforcement” (Coupland, 2007, p. 109)4 of certain contexts as normative for the index’s use. As for the specifics of what currently constitutes the katakana-­indexed non-­ native identity outside of limited Japanese ability, the inherently ideological nature of the identity means that there are, and always will be, differences in how it is understood. The three protagonists, Jody, Yue, and Sasshī, are certainly different characters with drastically different Japanese abilities. That said, humorous or adorable awkwardness, good-­natured ignorance of Japanese customs, and similar positive but ultimately “fish-­out-­of-­water” characteristics are highly predictive of katakana marking across all three manga. Furthermore, these traits align with those noted in other studies of stereotypes of non-­native speaker representation in Japanese media (Fukuda, 2017; Hambleton, 2011; Robertson, 2015; Suzuki, 2017). The somewhat positive image inherent in this “non-­native speaker” type was also touched upon in a comment from the author of IMJ, who noted during our interview that non-­native speakers of Japanese are often seen as “cute (kawaii),” with their attempts to produce Japanese creating “a sense of joy or relief” for native speakers: 日本語をたどたどしくしゃべっている外国人のことを日本人は「かわい らしい」と感じるようです。私の読者が皆サッシーのことを「かわい い」と感じているようなのも、これが原因かもしれません。日本人には 外国人コンプレックスのようなものがありますので、一生懸命日本語を

80  Scripted speech and scripted speakers しゃべってくれている外国人に対してなんだかホッとするような嬉しい ような、そんなところがあるのかもしれません。 It seems that Japanese people feel that foreigners who have difficulty speaking Japanese are cute. This is probably also the reason why my readers think Sasshī is cute. Japanese people have something like a foreigner complex, and so when they encounter a foreigner trying their hardest to speak Japanese, they might feel something like a sense of joy or relief. Due to this general positive evaluation of the katakana-­indexed identity, literal non-­native speaking characters who are intimidating, bossy, erudite, or pretentious rather than “cute” can avoid katakana marking. Though they may also be “trying their hardest to speak Japanese,” they do so without producing a “sense of joy or relief.” Consequently, while still literally non-­native speakers – at times extremely poor ones – their behavior is incongruous with the non-­native identity the three authors treat as necessitating or deserving orthographic attention. This insight that katakana marking specifically indexes an ideologically defined non-­native speaker identity perhaps helps us understand the native speaker uproar regarding the representation of Naomi Osaka’s speech I mentioned at the beginning of the current chapter. This is especially true when we consider it in contrast to the lack of any similar Japanese protest against the use of katakana for more explicitly “foreign” characters like McDonald’s mascot Mr. James (Arudo, 2009). For Japanese who wish to see Osaka as Japanese, and specifically as a Japanese tennis champion, the bumbling non-­native speaker identity marked through katakana is incongruous with this desire. By extension, the marking of her speech becomes seen as inappropriate regardless of any actual faults in Osaka’s linguistic performance. The use of katakana specifically during representations of Osaka’s Japanese turns the inclusion of the script into something undesirable rather than appropriate or humorous, as it orthographically indexes Osaka as more akin to Jody, Yue, or Sasshī than the social groups whose speech is depicted in Japanese media via the orthographic norms of standard Japanese. In closing, I should make it clear that I am not arguing that Japanese authors never treat all non-­native speakers as appropriate for katakana marking, or that they never use Japanese proficiency as the primary or sole attribute of the identity. I would also not be surprised if a manga exists wherein the dialogue of a cruel or terrifying non-­native speaker is marked with katakana. This chapter’s data in no way account (or are intended to account) for every individual interpretation/use of a language variant, and the established interpretation of katakana marking as a direct index of accent or literal non-­native status may in turn motivate its (future) use as such. By contrast, I  am also not arguing that the use of katakana-­marked non-­native speech inherently indexes a “gaijin clown” personality, as Arudo (2009) argued regarding the McDonald’s character Mr.

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 81 James (although he may well be correct in that specific case). Certainly, the marking itself does, use of a specific script aside, “other” the characters in a manner that emphasizes them as distinct from native speakers (the local “norm”) in the texts. The marking is therefore fundamentally “a process of representing an individual or a social group to render them distant, alien or deviant” (Coupland, 1999, p.  5) in many ways. However, othering is not necessarily synonymous with negative or judgmental attitudes toward the othered (Joseph, 2013). The data I reviewed here contain no evidence that Sasshī, Yue, and other non-­native speakers are marked because the author views them as “out-­group members who are seen to ‘encroach’ on ‘our’ territory and compete for resources” (Jaworski & Coupland, 2005, p. 688). In fact, the characters I’ve discussed in this chapter are often presented as friends, partners, and even (co-­)protagonists of the texts. In IMJ and CYN, the authors even expressly detail struggles of immigrants to Japan in a sympathetic manner, providing lengthy discussions of legal and social difficulties that many Japanese readers might not otherwise be aware of. Consequently, while we cannot ignore these manga’s problematic participation in stressing stereotypes, treating diverse nationalities and backgrounds as a single group, or assuming that certain identity performances serve as a default non-­ native speaker “norm,” we must also recognize the potential for these comics to modify the ideologies they perpetuate. Minimally, the use of script in manga like IMJ and CYN is not intended simply to amuse or mock, as suggested by Takemura over 50 years ago, even if all three authors’ script use shows recognition or reflection of potentially harmful ideologies regarding non-­native Japanese speakers and their behavior and speech. Ultimately, then, the analysis in this chapter does not reject the position that authors or readers may associate marked katakana use with a non-­fluent voice when presented with individual examples. However, this interpretation is clearly due to stereotypes, ideologies, and experiences with specific marking styles, linguistic norms, or Japanese speakers rather than an inherent or fossilized ability of katakana to signify elements of an extant speech style/register (Miethaner, 2000; Rubin, 1995). Katakana’s links to non-­Japanese words or images perhaps explain why it was chosen over kanji or hiragana to mark the specific social voice identified in this chapter, but they do not allow the script to inherently or unquestionably represent a specific trait, nor do they explain the fundamental question of where and why orthographic marking is seen as necessary in the first place. Each author’s script use is instead best understood as participation in a socially recognized linguistic practice, with the marking style conveying contextually negotiated information about speakers/speech acts and reifying beliefs about why specific types of speakers or voices require (specific types of) linguistic attention (Agha, 2005; Christie, 2013). In the next chapter, I will expand upon this finding by moving beyond the limited interest in katakana and non-­native speakers, looking at how interplay between all three Japanese scripts similarly allows authors to reflect, divide, and (re)establish understandings of social voices and language ideologies that currently exist throughout Japan.

82  Scripted speech and scripted speakers

Notes 1 The small ッ and っ at the end of these excerpts are common in manga dialogue and appear to indicate a pause or jump. They cannot be accurately reflected in the romanization. 2 All irregular sound extensions in English attempt to reflect irregular extensions in Japanese. 3 See Chapter 5 for analysis of this specific phenomenon. 4 I should note that Coupland is talking here about identity creation by individuals rather than the top-­down ascription of identity we see here, but the process we are discussing is the same.

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Scripted speech and scripted speakers 83 Eckert, P. (2008). Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 12(4), 453–476. Elbra, T. (2019, January 30). World reaction: Japan’s Naomi Osaka race debate after Australian open win. 9 News. Retrieved from https://wwos.nine.com.au/tennis/ naomi-­osaka-­news-­australian-­open-­champion-­biracial-­reaction-­in-­japan/96bfb73f-­ ac54-­4d74-­8640-­12481313c28c Endo, O. (2001). Onna no ko no “boku/ore” wa okashikunai. In O. Endo (Ed.), Onna to kotoba: Onna wa kawatta ka, nihongo wa kawatta ka (pp. 30–39). Tokyo: Meiji Shoten. Fukuda, C. (2017). Gaijin performing gaijin (“a foreigner performing a foreigner”): Co-­construction of foreigner stereotypes in a Japanese talk show as a multimodal phenomenon. Journal of Pragmatics, 109, 12–28. Gagné, I. (2008). Urban princesses: Performance and “women’s language” in Japan’s gothic/Lolita subculture. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 18(1), 130–150. Girls Channel. (2018, September  24). Ōsaka Naomi senshu no “katakana” teroppu ni hihan satō “muishiki teki na sabetsu” “kibun warui”. Retrieved from https:// girlschannel.net/topics/1793567/ Gottlieb, N. (2005). Language and society in Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hambleton, A. (2011). Reinforcing identities? Non-­Japanese residents, television and cultural nationalism in Japan. Contemporary Japan, 23(1), 27–47. Hiramoto, M. (2013). Hey, you’re a girl? Gendered expressions in the popular anime, Cowboy Bebob. Multilingua, 32(1), 51–78. https://doi.org/10.1515/ multi-­2013-­0003 Hiramoto, M. (2019). “Her soul is Japanese”: Naomi Osaka, mediatization, and intersectionality. Discourse, Context & Media, 32, 1–4. Inoue, J. (2013). Yue to Nihongo. Tokyo: ASCII Media Works. Inoue, M. (2004a). Gender, language, and modernity: Toward an effective history of “Japanese women’s language”. In S. Okamoto & J. S. Shibamoto Smith (Eds.), Japanese language, gender, and ideology: Cultural models and real people (pp. 57–75). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Inoue, M. (2004b). What does language remember? Indexical inversion and the naturalized history of Japanese women. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 14(1), 39–56. The Japan Times. (2020, January 14). Deputy prime minister Taro Aso again courts controversy with remarks about Japan’s ethnic identity. The Japan Times. Retrieved from www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/14/national/politics-­diplomacy/ taro-­aso-­again-­controversy-­remarks-­japan-­ethnic-­identity/?fbclid=IwAR0-­4hXcTn b7js39cGeSCiQ0u4vMY6WYSRH3Raj-­aCIyuwyEoBcZXq6unfM Jaworski, A.,  & Coupland, J. (2005). Othering in gossip: “You go out you have a laugh and you can pull yeah okay but like . . .” Language in Society, 34, 667–694. https://doi.org/10.10170S0047404505050256 Joseph, J. H. (2013). Alien species: The discursive othering of grey squirrels, Glasgow Gaelic, Shetland Scots and the gay guys in the shag pad. Language and International Communication, 13(2), 182–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2 013.770866 Kimura, K. (2020, January 14). Aso shi izen ni mo “hitsotsu no minzoku” shitsugen to owabi kurikaesu. Asahi Shimbun. Retrieved from www.asahi.com/articles/ ASN1G777TN1GULFA012.html

84  Scripted speech and scripted speakers Kinsella, S. (1996). Change in the social status, form and content of adult manga, 1986–1996. Japan Forum, 8(1), 103–112. Kinsui, S. (2003). Vācharu nihongo yakuwarigo no nazo. Tokyo: Iwanami. Kinsui, S. (2014). Kore mo nihongo aru ka? Ijin no kotoba ga umareru toki. Tokyo: Iwanami. Kowner, R., & Befu, H. (2015). Ethnic nationalism in postwar Japan: Nihonjinron and its racial facets. In R. Kowner & W. Demel (Eds.), Race and racism in modern East Asia: Interactions, nationalism, gender and lineage (pp. 389–412). Leiden: Brill. Lee, D.-­Y., & Yonezawa, Y. (2008). The role of the overt expression of first and second person subject in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(4), 733–767. Livedoor. (2018, September 11). “Katakana hyōki yamete” ōsaka naomi he no teroppu ni SNS dewa kugen mo. Livedoor News. Retrieved from http://news.live door.com/article/detail/15285534/ Lubin, G. (2014, August 27). The comic book industry is on fire, and it’s about more than just the movies. Business Insider. Retrieved from www.businessinsider.com. au/the-­comic-­book-­industry-­is-­on-­fire-­2014-­8 Maree, C. (2015). Telop and titles on the Japanese small screen. In E. Perego  & S. Bruti (Eds.), Subtitling today: Shapes and their meanings (pp. 171–188). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding comics: The invisible art. New York: HarperCollins. McCloud, S. (2006). Making comics. New York: HarperCollins. MEXT. (2012). Heisei 24 nendo jukugau gimu yūyo menjosha tō no chūgakkō sotsugyō teido nintei shiken (chūsotsunintei) juken annai. Retrieved from www.mext. go.jp/a_menu/shotou/sotugyo/1322849.htm Miethaner, U. (2000). Orthographic transcriptions of non-­standard varieties: The case of earlier African-­American English. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 4(4), 534–560. Miller, L. (2004). You are doing burikko! Censoring/scrutinizing artificers of cute femininity in Japanese. In S. Okamoto & J. S. Shibamoto Smith (Eds.), Japanese language, gender, and ideology: Cultural models and real people (pp.  148–165). Oxford University Press. Miyazaki, A. (2002). Relational shift: Japanese girls’ nontraditional first person pronouns. In S. Benor, M. Rose, D. Sharma, J. Sweetland, & Q. Zhang (Eds.), Gendered practices in language (pp. 355–374). CSLI Publications. Nakamura, M. (2007). “Sei” to nihongo: Kotoba ga tsukuru onna to otoko. Tokyo: Nihon Hōsou Shuppan Kyōkai. Nakamura, M. (2014). Gender, language and ideology: A genealogy of Japanese women’s language. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Okamoto, S. (1995). “Tasteless” Japanese: Less “feminine” speech among young Japanese women. In M. Bucholtz & K. Hall (Eds.), Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self (pp. 297–328). New York: Routledge. Ono, T., & Thompson, S. A. (2003). Japanese (w)atashi/ore/boku “I”: They’re not just pronouns. Cognitive Linguistics, 14(4), 321–347. Oricon. (2012). 2011nen shoseki shibai. Retrieved from www.oricon.co.jp/ news/2006093/full/ Prough, J. (2010). Marketing Japan: Manga as Japan’s new ambassador. ASIA Network Exchange, 12(2), 54–68. Rich, M. (2018, September 9). In U.S. open victory, Naomi Osaka pushes Japan to redefine Japanese. New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/ world/asia/japan-­naomi-­osaka-­us-­open.html

Scripted speech and scripted speakers 85 Robertson, W. (2015). Orthography, foreigners, and fluency: Indexicality and script selection in Japanese manga. Japanese Studies, 35(2), 205–222. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/10371397.2015.1080594 Rowe, H. M. (1976). A study of the use of katakana for non-­foreign words in some contemporary Japanese newspapers and magazines (Master’s thesis). Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Rowe, H. M. (1981). Variations in Japanese newspaper spelling. In H. Bolitho & A. Rix (Eds.), A Northern prospect: Australian papers on Japan (pp. 107–122). Canberra: Australian National University Press. Rubin, D. L. (1995). Introduction: Composing social identity. In D. L. Rubin (Ed.), Composing social identity in written language (pp. 1–30). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sarkar, P. (2016, May  28). Tennis-­ Osaka falls short of acing Japanese test. Reuters. Retrieved from www.reuters.com/article/us-­tennis-­open-­osaka/ tennis-­osaka-­falls-­short-­of-­acing-­japanese-­test-­idUSKCN0YI1Q8 Schwartz, A.,  & Rubinstein-­ Avila, E. (2006). Understanding the manga hype: Uncovering the multimodality of comic book literacies. Journal of Adolescent  & Adult Literacy, 50(1), 40–49. Shirabē. (2018, September 11). Ōsaka Naomi senshu no “katakana” teroppu ni hihan satō “muishiki teki na sabetu” “kibun warui”. Shirabē. Retrieved from https:// sirabee.com/2018/09/11/20161787957/ Suzuki, S. (2017). Nationalism lite? The commodification of non-­Japanese speech in Japanese media. Japanese Language and Literature, 49, 509–529. Suzuki, S. (2018). Nationalism and gender in the representation of non-­Japanese characters’ speech in contemporary Japanese novels. Pragmatics, 28(2), 271–302. Takemura, K. (1955). Shi to moji. Gengo Seikatsu, 45, 28–30. Ueno, J. (2006). Shojo and adult women: A linguistic analysis of gender identity in manga (Japanese comics). Women & Language, 29(1), 16–25. Unser-­Schutz, G. (2010). Exploring the role of language in manga: Text types, their usages, and their distributions. International Journal of Comic Art, 12(2–3), 25–43. Unser-­Schutz, G. (2013). The role of language in manga: From the point of view of structure, vocabulary, and characters (PhD thesis). Hitotsubashi University, Kunitachi, Japan. Virtue, G. (2015, January 15). Marvel and DC comics dominate sales helped along by big-­ screen boost. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/ books/2015/jan/14/marvel-­dc-­spiderman-­guardians-­of-­the-­galazy Vosters, R., Gijsbert, R., van der Wal, M.,  & Vandenbussche, W. (2012). Spelling and identity in the Southern Netherlands (1750–1830). In M. Sebba, A. Jaffe, J. Androutsopoulos, & S. Johnson (Eds.), Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power (pp. 135–159). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Wolk, D. (2007). Reading comics: How graphic novels work and what they mean. Cambridge, MA: DeCapo Press. Yamashiro, J. H. (2017). Redefining Japaneseness: Japanese Americans in the ancestral homeland. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

4 Scripted voices Contrasted identities and contrasting standards

In the current chapter, I will build directly on the findings of Chapter 3, moving beyond katakana to examine the motives behind contrasting applications of all three Japanese scripts. The data I discuss here come from three corpora I created via coding the representations of each lexeme across three manga titles. While the data collection methodology therefore mirrors Chapter 3, the styles of script use I analyze in the current chapter were not similarly established in advance. The orthographic phenomena I discuss here instead come from holistic examination of the entirety of the script use across the three series, with my analysis focusing on two sets of text-­wide orthographic contrasts that I found consistently divided speakers or speech acts across the manga series during this process. While my breakdown of these marking styles will note some fundamental similarities to the katakana marking discussed in Chapter 3, as the styles are both ultimately linked to ideologically defined identity performances, it will also unveil new complexities behind how authors index identities via variant script use. Most importantly, the data here show authors utilizing entire sets of orthographic standards to define and differentiate language actors and acts in their works, with identity performances separated via complex contrasts that involve far more than just the locally marked use of a single Japanese script. The three manga series this chapter draws its data from are Indo Meoto Jawan (Indian Couple’s Wedding Cups) by Rinko Nagami, Usagi Doroppu (Bunny Drop) by Yumi Unita, and Chokotan! (Chokotan!) by Kozue Takeuchi. Indo Meoto Jawan (hereafter IMJ), which I also discussed in Chapter 3, is an autobiographical comic discussing the author’s marriage to an Indian chef. My analysis of IMJ in the current chapter covers the same eight total volumes as Chapter 3 but expands to include depictions of native Japanese speech. Usagi Doroppu (hereafter UD) is a “josei (women’s) manga,” which refers to comics aimed at an 18-­to 30-­year-­old female audience (Ueno, 2006). The story of this manga focuses on the life of a Japanese man named Daikichi and his adopted daughter, Rin, beginning when Rin is about four and ending once Rin graduates from high school. My analysis of UD includes the script use across all nine volumes of the manga’s serialized run. Finally, Chokotan! is a shojo (young girls’) manga that was serialized from 2010 to 2017 in the long-­running manga magazine Ribon (Ribbon). The plot of Chokotan! focuses on a junior high school girl named Nao and her talking miniature

Scripted voices 87 dachshund, Chokotan. All of the first six published volumes of Chokotan! were used in data collection. As discussed in more detail in Chapter 3, I used manga as a data source due to the specific benefits the medium provides for studying language representation in Japan and graphic styles of language variation. Individual titles were then selected over other options based on popularity, setting within contemporary Japan, and sole authorship, as these three traits helped ensure that one person’s understanding of current language use(rs) resulted in script changes intended to be accessible to a general audience (Robertson, 2017). Before moving to an analysis of styles of contrasting script use in these three manga, however, I need to note a few complexities that occurred during my data collection and analysis process. I am discussing these issues here not only to provide greater background into how I discovered the orthographic phenomenon in the current chapter but also because the complexities themselves raise issues important for future study of variant script use in Japan. Initially, my plan for the analysis of script variation in the three manga was to examine the locations where the authors engaged in locally non-­standard use of each individual script. My use of “non-­standard” was originally quite broad and simply referred to any representation of a word that was not its most common representation within a given text. At the time, I hoped that this style of investigation would create bottom-­up evidence that specific expressions of emotion or local stance-­taking acts could be consistently connected to utterance-­level orthographic manipulations. This first method of data analysis was not entirely unproductive (see Robertson, 2019a). Across the three manga, locally marked uses of certain scripts repeatedly occurred in definable contexts where locally marked uses of other scripts did not. For instance, all three authors employed locally marked uses of hiragana to indicate incomprehension, and individual authors used locally marked katakana representations to index temporary expressions of shock, distaste, embarrassment, and awkward self-­presentation. However, one of the major findings of this first analysis attempt was simply that the orthographic flexibility of each author’s writing style was much greater than initially assumed. In the vast majority of cases, locally non-­standard script use did not appear related to a given context. Rather, even highly marked representations, such as those that appeared less than 10% of the time, often seemed to be just uncommon yet acceptable representations in each author’s overarching writing style. Authors even appeared to adjust their preferred representations between volumes or stories, with the overall extent of orthographic variation making motives other than whim impossible to evidence or define through analysis of individual speech acts alone. For some clear examples of the overarching orographic inconsistency throughout the three manga, consider the following three cases from IMJ. In this manga, the word “kutsu” (shoe) is written only in kanji (as 靴) in the fourth volume but appears only in hiragana (as くつ) in the second, fifth, and sixth volumes.1 No specific interactive context related to these contrasts, with the change appearing to result from either error or a temporary shift in taste during the production of Volume 4. Similarly, the adjective samui (cold) is written exclusively in hiragana in Volume 1 (as さむい), but it is written with only its stem in kanji in Volume

88  Scripted voices 4, Volume 6, and Hataraku!! Indojin (as 寒い). The stem of samui varies in its representation throughout Volume 2, however, as it is written in hiragana in Chapter 10 and kanji in Chapter 12. Again, these inconsistencies are not linked to a single speaker or a single definable type of speech act, but instead appear to indicate that the author’s local style does not possess a sole standard representation for the word. Finally, although kanji is non-­standard for the word hodo (about) in IMJ, as it appears in hiragana (as ほど) on nine of ten occasions, the sudden and singular change to a kanji representation of hodo (程) in the manga shows no difference in meaning, speaker, or context compared with the hiragana uses. The author produces 程 immediately after using the hiragana representation in the same context, referring to a distance of “5mm ほど (about 5 millimeters)” and then “5cm 程 (about 5 centimeters).” These complications stress the importance of a key argument I made in the first chapter of this book. The lack of clear contextual motivation for many instances of locally non-­standard script use across the three manga shows clearly that markedness itself is not evidence of author intent. Especially within less formal writing, variant script use that is quite marked “on paper” often seems to be a simple consequence of a casual writing style. Top-­down determination of what is “non-­ standard” script use, and specifically non-­standard script use intended to alter the meaning of a language act, therefore always risks treating locally acceptable variants as intentional selections. Accordingly, any study of script selection requires great caution and, hopefully, triangulation via multiple sources and examples before asserting that any given representation arises from something other than whim, chance, or just a writing style that revels in the flexibility for script use that written Japanese provides. Consequently, due to the various limitations of looking at marked script use only in the limited context of individual utterances, I decided to change the way I approached the coded data. Inspired by the links between script use and social actors noted in Chapter  3, I  revisited the data to see if certain variants were restricted to certain speakers rather than specific emotions or speech acts. This angle proved more productive, identifying the variation styles that make up the two major sections of this current chapter. The first identified orthographic practice is a kanji-­absent style restricted to the speech of certain character groups in all three manga. My analysis of this style looks at the specific character identities and local performances that stimulate both the application and removal of the style, identifying and contrasting each author’s understanding of this orthographic act. When relevant, this analysis will also include data from interviews with the authors of IMJ and UD regarding the use of kanji-­absent writing in Japan. The second style I  discuss is a more subtle form of character-­based variation that appears in UD. Rather than dividing characters through locally contrastive uses of a specific script, the second style involves changes that move all depictions of certain characters’ speech away from the manga’s local norms toward those of script use in standard written Japanese. As I  will show, this creates a situation where even a lack of locally marked script use becomes a potential index, with the author’s local writing style itself serving as much more than just the baseline

Scripted voices 89 against which other variation is understood. In closing the chapter, I summarize the major findings and implications of these two analysis sections. I  also note certain limitations in the data and discuss how Chapter 5 will specifically attend to these issues by changing its focus and analytical methodologies.

When can someone speak in kanji? I will begin my discussion of the kanji-­absent orthographic style noted in all three manga by examining its design and application throughout UD. Afterward, I will move to examine the style’s respective use in IMJ and Chokotan! Taken jointly, these discussions will show that although this style was first noted in the speech of children in each manga, further examination found that its use hinges on the authors’ conception of a broad “normative childishness” rather than any biological traits (see also Robertson, 2019b). Consequently, differences between where the style is applied reflect differences in how each author understands this identity, as characters who fail to perform the author’s conception of “childishness” produce speech which is represented via the same orthographic norms used for the speech of adults in the same text. The use of kanji-­absent writing in UD initially appears as the norm for children throughout the manga’s three initial volumes. In these volumes, the child characters are between the ages of four and six and produce Japanese written almost entirely in hiragana and katakana. Hiragana is the most prominent script, as it replaces almost all words that would be represented in kanji in adult speech. This causes the hiragana to often be the only script appearing in individual instances of children’s speech. Katakana still appears at times, though, as it maintains its standard role as a marker of loan words and slang. Some further uses of the script also result when children use native Japanese words normatively written in katakana in the manga’s depictions of adult language, produce names written in kanji in adult speech, or utilize a smattering of apparently random vocabulary like atama (head) and taiho (arrest). These child-­restricted uses of katakana are rare, with hiragana usually dominating children’s speech. Finally, only four kanji appear in children’s speech in the first three volumes. The script is used once for the stems of the verbs miru (i.e., as 見る) and iku (i.e., as 行く) and twice across one use of the pronoun daikichi (大吉). While certainly locally non-­standard given the complete absence of kanji elsewhere in these characters’ speech, the kanji seem to be editorial oversights rather than intentional selections. The selections are split between speakers and do not appear in definable contexts. The author also implied during our interview that these selections were accidental, explicitly stating that she intended to use no kanji in child speech in the manga’s first three volumes. In short, even if we treat the exceptions as intentional, the first three volumes of UD show a clear intent for children’s speech to have a direct orthographic contrast with the speech of adults. That said, the data so far makes it difficult to confirm or deny any specific motive for kanji removal. Many characteristics potentially separate children from adults – or how children and adults produce

90  Scripted voices speech. In the interview, the author mentioned only that she felt hiragana-­only dialogue is better at making “childishness come out (kodomo rashisa ga deru).” This quote implies that age is not the sole factor behind the kanji-­absent style, as the author links hiragana to a quality (childishness) rather than the literal state of being a child. Still, the specific definition of “childishness” remains unclear, as her statement allows for interpretation of the term as relating to biological, audible, or behavioral features. In the manga’s fourth volume, however, the representation of children’s speech changes in ways that allow us to better understand the motivations for the kanji removal. Volume 4 details the child characters’ collective entrance into elementary school. This change immediately brings about an increase in the use of kanji in representations of these characters’ speech. Specifically, child characters produce the constructions 月よう (getsuyō, Monday), 今日 (kyō, today), 出して (dashite, take out), 見えん (mien, can’t see [it]), 火 (hi, fire), 男子 (danshi, boys), 入れる (ireru, to put in), 下 (shita, below), 金 (kane, money), 円玉 (endama, yen coin), 見て (mite, look), and 本 (hon, long and thin object)2 for the first time. Furthermore, in contrast to the four kanji that appeared in the three earlier volumes, the author confirmed during our interview that the uses of kanji in Volume 4 were intentional. Specifically, she described the kanji reintroduction as a plan to convey the children’s “growth process (seichō katei).” While “growth (seichō)” can be taken several ways, including as literal physical growth, further examination of both data sources indicates that the growth motivating the introduction of the kanji script in Volume 4 is primarily intellectual. First, as mentioned, the kanji introduction coincides with entry into elementary school rather than any major biological developments. Elementary school is not the period where children’s audible language production deepens to resemble that of adults. Second, all but one of the specific kanji used in children’s dialogue in Volume 4 are from the Japanese government’s official list of kanji taught in the first grade (MEXT, 2014). The sole exception is 今, which is introduced in the second grade. The author also confirmed that she referenced these lists when constructing the dialogue, specifically designing the children’s speech to change in a manner that reflects the increases that would occur in their literacy at this time. Finally, in our interview, the author also linked kanji-­present depictions of speech to intelligence and academic ability. When asked how she felt about children’s dialogue written in accordance with the orthographic conventions of standard Japanese, the author noted that although she did not feel kanji-­absent dialogue was a requirement, dialogue featuring difficult kanji could create the image of a “child genius (tensai shōnen)”: 子供の台詞をそのまま漢字で書いてある作品も多くあるので、それはそ れとしてその世界で統一されていればすんなり受け入れられると思いま す。フキダシの中は視覚的なことは関係なくあくまで文字情報というこ とで。あまりにも難しい漢字が並んでいたら「天才少年？」って思って しまうかもしれませんが . . .

Scripted voices 91 There are a lot of works that write children’s dialogue with kanji, so as long the use of script is consistent within that world I think I’d be fine with it. What is inside a speech bubble is ultimately letter-­based communication regardless of its visuals. However, if many difficult kanji appeared together I might wonder “is this a child genius?” It is important to stress here that the author specifically wrote that difficult kanji (難しい漢字), rather than difficult vocabulary, create the impression of a “child genius.” Difficult vocabulary can often require difficult kanji. Terms like yūutsu (憂鬱, depression) and kaigishugi (懐疑主義, scepticism) are outside of normative conceptions of children’s speech and are represented through dense kanji compounds. But this possibility is not an absolute. Simple terms like tokage (lizard, 蜥蜴 in kanji), ringo (apple, 林檎 in kanji), and bara (rose, 薔薇 in kanji) are all generally written in hiragana or katakana because their kanji representations include “difficult” kanji absent from the jōyō kanji list (MEXT, 1981). While it is likely that some vocabulary is similarly incongruous with “childishness” in the author’s mind, what is important for our discussion here is that complex representations of language, regardless of the vocabulary they represent, are similarly treated as inappropriate for indexing “childishness.” To be clear, I  am not arguing that a single factor completely explains the removal or reintroduction of kanji in children’s speech in UD. Academic growth obviously co-­occurs with other types of growth. Furthermore, I  cannot state that academic growth alone is important. While the data do not allow me to pinpoint the exact moment that characters “acquire” the manga’s broader orthographic standard, as the story jumps ten years into the future after Volume 4, flashbacks show characters in middle school speaking in a manner that is not orthographically different from the speech of adults. As these speakers would still be learning kanji as part of their curriculum, the acquisition of the manga’s overarching standard orthographic style therefore eventually outstrips literacy. I also, of course, cannot evidence that the use of a given kanji by an adult in the manga is proof that they can read or write it. What the data show is rather that academic development stands as a primary and initial (in contrast to exclusive or absolute) motivator for the child/adult orthographic divide(s) that we see in UD. Consequently, the question of how a child’s speech is represented does not hinge on direct concerns of character demographics or audible speech performance, as we might assume on initial observation of the marking or reliance on discussion of it out of context. The removal of kanji from depictions of a child character’s speech instead depends on whether the speaker performs “childishness” or a “childish identity” as envisioned by the author. Academic development, then, is a major factor commonly treated as incongruous with the identity indexed via the kanji-­absent style, as the extent of a character’s academic development influences how many and/or which kanji are avoided when representing their speech. That is, just as has been noted in discussions of variation in spoken language or spelling, the extent of distance from a perceived standard is influencing the strength or properties of an indexed

92  Scripted voices effect (Jaffe  & Walton, 2000; Miethaner, 2000; Miller, 2004; Preston, 1985). These multiple contrasts ultimately cause the kanji use throughout UD to divide speakers into three categories, with the author using multiple local norms to delineate identities she treats as distinct within her text. That said, as with the initial findings of Chapter 3, my conclusion that kanji-­ absent marking is related to ideologies regarding normative behavior is currently restricted to a single data source. To further evidence that social understandings of childishness can influence kanji removal, I will therefore now turn to a discussion of the kanji-­absent speech style in the manga IMJ to evidence that these same concerns of ideologically defined “childish” identity performances affect its design and application. On the surface level, the use of kanji-­absent dialogue in IMJ and UD contains many similarities. Children in IMJ also initially speak using a kanji-­absent style that utilizes hiragana as the base “replacement” script. This causes most children’s speech to be initially written in hiragana alone, excepting uses of katakana to represent loan words, slang, and terms that are normatively written in the script throughout the manga. As the children age, the presence of kanji slowly increases, further mirroring what occurred in UD. Finally, the author of IMJ uses the same terminology during our interview as the author of UD when discussing her motives for kanji reintroduction, stating that the changes were a consequence of the children’s “growth process (seichō katei).” Despite these many similarities, though, the nuances of kanji introduction differ in important ways between IMJ and UD. In IMJ, children’s speech starts to feature kanji earlier than in UD. The rate of introduction is also much faster, and only cursory concern appears to have been given to the difficulty of the kanji that appear. For instance, Rinko’s son, Ashita, starts speaking Japanese written in hiragana and katakana only. However, by the end of the second volume, at which time Ashita is about three years old, the representation of his dialogue changes to contain the basic kanji 子 (child), 女 (woman), and 食 (eat). These three kanji are all rather simple and taught in either the first or second grade. However, Ashita is still shown as illiterate in all Japanese scripts and is not yet receiving formal education. Unlike in UD, the kanji therefore do not reflect an actual development in reading ability. By the third volume, 14 distinct kanji (先, 生, 子, 赤, 何, 死, 立, 時, 絵, 紙, 気, 壁, 硬, and 水) are used inconsistently in Ashita’s speech. Kanji from this list like 何 (what), 立 (stand), and 水 (water) are still quite simple, but characters like 壁 (wall) are not even taught until after elementary school (MEXT, 2014). By the end of the fourth volume, when Ashita is still explicitly described as illiterate in all scripts, the use of kanji increases to an extent where individual excerpts of Ashita’s speech are regularly orthographically indistinguishable from the speech of adults. The use of kanji in representations of dialogue produced by Ashita’s younger sister Aruna develops similarly. Basic kanji are first introduced when she turns two years old in the fourth volume, and she is shown to produce the non-­jōyō kanji 苺 (ichigo, strawberry) at the age of three (MEXT, 1981). As a result, while the authors of UD and IMJ both treat kanji reintroduction as a method of expressing “growth,” the specifics of this growth are quite

Scripted voices 93 different. Children who would still have their dialogue written without kanji in UD are almost orthographically indistinguishable from adults in IMJ, and variants the author of UD considers potential indexes of child geniuses appear in the dialogue of normative three-­or four-­year-­old speakers in IMJ. The information provided by the presence of the kanji script in representations of children’s speech is therefore distinct in each manga, with each author modifying the orthographic makeup of children’s speech to index different definitions/aspects of, or changes to, what they consider normative child(-­like) identities. In the case of IMJ, the specific change has nothing to do with formal schooling or intelligence, instead beginning around the age of three or four. Importantly, though, while Rinko Nagami, in our interview, directly attributed “the slow rhythm of children talking” to kanji-­absent speech, variation within the orthographic norms used throughout IMJ shows that vocal performances do not guarantee a specific orthographic style in this manga either. Rather, while age and any consequent assumptions of certain audible features are a major predictor of kanji-­absent dialogue, contextual self-­(or author-­)presentation is more primary. Characters who temporarily fail to manifest behaviors, rather than spoken rhythms, considered normative to their peer group similarly fail to manifest the orthographic norms of their peers. For instance, while kanji-­heavy infant speech is a hypothetical in relation to UD, IMJ contains three scenes where otherwise hiragana-­only children’s dialogue is suddenly changed to a kanji-­heavy style. The most extensive case occurs in the second volume, during a scene in which Ashita and three other infants are fighting over a toy car. The infants are not literally able to do more than babble at the time of this scene. However, throughout the quarrel the author gives each character dialogue that contains multiple uses of kanji, difficult or archaic vocabulary, and grammatical variants that would not be out of place in a samurai-­period drama (Hiramoto, 2009; Kinsui, 2003). For instance, the children produce the terms bureimono (無礼者, a rude person), ryogaimonome (慮外者め, an insolent rogue), sukedachi (助太刀, to lend assistance in a fight), and tenchū (天誅, divine punishment) in kanji across the scene. All these terms are old-­fashioned at best and would certainly be marked even in contemporary conversation between adults. The use of older vocabulary items and difficult kanji coincides with semi-­archaic grammar forms, such as the use of kureru (currently “receive”) to mean “to do to someone” or the marked negative ending form -­san (in yurusan, “do not forgive”). The dialogue across the children’s argument is obviously presented for humorous effect. The interaction uses the various obscure vocabulary and grammar terms to depict the fight over a toy truck as though it was a battle between samurai warriors, with the author creating an amusing contrast between the speakers’ physical states and their performed social voice. Importantly, though, while the indexing of the samurai voice involves multiple elements, grammar and vocabulary being the most conspicuous, we cannot overlook the role of kanji. The humor is created due to all potential linguistic indexes of “samurai-­ness” occurring without their generally assumed co-­occurring signs and within a context considered incongruous with their indexical field (Hill, 2005; Sadanobu, 2005;

94  Scripted voices Silverstein, 2003; Tetreault, 2002). That is, while the various indexes are used parodically, they are nevertheless “authentic” indexes of a stereotyped samurai identity in every element except the location of their employ. Hiragana-­only dialogue would fail to create the same effect, as only through using kanji does the dialogue fully mirror how “real” samurai speech would appear in a manga. This same consideration of authenticity also appears in two later scenes in which the infant Ashita ends a chapter by looking directly at the reader and commenting on what is going on behind him. These short but kanji-­present statements break the fourth wall, employing idioms and marked conjugation forms like “sasete yattorunja (I’ll make you do),” which are associated with a fictionalized “professorial” speech style (Kinsui, 2003). While therefore also drawing on marked speech items, the author again, in no small part, relies on script to temporarily ascribe a “non-­childish” identity to Ashita in these scenes, with his kanji-­inclusive comments coinciding with a humorous performance of an adult (or non-­child) identity rather than a sudden change in the rhythm of his speech. Additionally, the manga contains an inversion of the prior examples. Temporary adult performances of childishness can also result in the removal of kanji from depictions of adult dialogue. In a scene at the end of the first volume, Rinko and her husband, Sasshī, are arguing when Ashita suddenly stands up for the first time. This causes the argument to stop, as Rinko and Sasshī begin dancing together with joy. Throughout these scenes, Rinko and Sasshī use variations of the word “tatsu” (to stand) three times. The first use, which occurs when Rinko and Sasshī both notice Ashita stand up but before they start dancing, produces a form of tatsu, with kanji representing the stem ta (as 立). This representation is in accordance with the manga’s local orthographic norms for the lexeme. Rinko and Sasshī then begin dancing together and produce two past tense forms of tatsu (tatta) entirely in hiragana (as たった). This is the only time any conjugation of tatsu is written in the manga without a kanji stem. These marked forms are then followed by “tacchi shita,” also written in hiragana, which the author described as a “baby talk (akachan kotoba)” form of tatsu resulting from the parents being “so filled with joy that they are talking like children and dancing.” Taken as a whole, then, the scene mirrors what we saw with the temporary indexing of “samurai” or “adult” voices earlier. The script change is not influenced by a sudden “audible” change in speech rhythm or pronunciation, but rather the temporary manifestation of a behavioral norm treated as incongruous with the normatively performed identity of a speaker group. Ultimately, the examination of IMJ produces two important findings. First, while the author employs the same general orthographic technique seen in UD, the motives behind her script use differ in important ways. These differences importantly do not relate to contrasting views of each script, as both authors referred to kanji and hiragana in their interviews using the same adjectives. Rather, the contrasts stem from distinct local conceptions of the defining features of certain social identities or traits. The differences in script use are not due to only one author viewing kanji as a potential marker of intelligence, but rather both authors possessing slight disagreements in their conceptions of which identities

Scripted voices 95 are indexed by (or require) which styles of kanji use. Second, as with UD, the identities indexed through each standard in IMJ are inherently ideological. Script use is not the result of demographic-­based categories, as orthographic contrasts are not restricted to differences in speaker age. While many members of a given identity share certain demographic traits, with literal adults and children respectively likely to perform “adult” and “childish” identities, characters can produce the orthographic norms of another group when they act in ways incongruous with their normatively associated identity. This last point is especially important for understanding the kanji-­absent style in the final manga, Chokotan!, as consistent failure to perform childishness denies the manga’s youngest character access to local indexes of childishness across the totality of her speech. In contrast to the other texts, there is only one recurring character in Chokotan! who normatively produces kanji-­absent speech. The manga’s titular protagonist, a miniature dachshund puppy, speaks in both Japanese and what the manga calls “inu-­go (Doglish).” As with initial depictions of children’s speech in UD and IMJ, Chokotan’s dialogue is represented via only hiragana and katakana. However, important differences exist between the design of Chokotan’s dialogue and the kanji-­absent styles seen in the other manga. First, the orthographic content of Chokotan’s speech is static, and Chokotan does not age between volumes. More crucially, though, the kanji-­absent writing style applied to Chokotan’s speech is not simply a kanji-­absent reflection of the author’s normative writing style. Rather, it is an entirely novel orthographic norm that can potentially represent almost any word class (e.g., verbs, nouns, adjectives) in hiragana or katakana. Etymology is also not important, as native Japanese vocabulary (wago), Chinese-­ based vocabulary (kango), and loan words (gairaigo) appear in both scripts. The only official “role” is hiragana’s exclusive use for grammatical particles and most conjugations. That said, the overall use of hiragana greatly outstrips that of katakana. Hiragana-­only Japanese is common in representations of Chokotan’s speech, but outside of single-­word statements there is no instance of a katakana-­ only utterance. While the orthographic content of Chokotan’s dialogue is unpredictable in its design, it shows remarkable consistency in its application. If a word appears in a particular script the first time Chokotan produces it, it will generally always appear in that script in future volumes. The author therefore does not appear to be using script haphazardly, selecting anything so long as it isn’t kanji, but rather employing a pre-­designed style with determined local standards for each word. For example, Chokotan uses the words “hana” (flower) and “ohana” (flower + the honorific prefix o) three times each across the six volumes I analyzed. While hana is always written in katakana, ohana is instead written solely in hiragana. Table 4.1 shows a similar consistency between the word “suki” (like/love) and its emphasized version “daisuki” (like/love very much). While suki is almost always in katakana, daisuki, a term made by adding the prefix dai-­(a lot) to suki, is instead written entirely in hiragana. A small amount of hiragana is used to write suki, showing that some variation can occur. From my investigation, these two uses of hiragana appear to be due to editorial oversight, although the contexts of

96  Scripted voices Table 4.1  Script used for forms of suki across Chokotan’s speech. Word

English meaning

Appearances in hiragana

Appearances in katakana

suki daisuki

like/love like very much/love

2 40

35 0

their employment do not allow me to establish any motive as absolute. Regardless of why they occur, the exceptions are minimal, with the overall divide indicating a strong effort to maintain orthographic consistency among even minute vocabulary distinctions throughout Chokotan’s dialogue. So what is it that motivates the use of such a consistent, intricate, and hiragana-­ heavy style across Chokotan’s dialogue? When we zoom out to examine the orthographic trends throughout the entire manga, two possibilities are simple to eliminate. First, the Japanese does not relate to Chokotan’s status as a dog. Coding of the script use throughout the text shows that representations of other dogs’ uses of inu-­go are orthographically identical to the speech of teenage and adult humans in the manga. Second, the use of hiragana does not directly reflect any audible issues that would be created by a dog’s production of Japanese. Chokotan’s speech uses the localized kanji-­absent style regardless of whether she is speaking Japanese to humans or inu-­go to other dogs. Furthermore, when characters successfully imitate Chokotan’s speech to cover for her on occasions where she accidentally speaks Japanese in public, these replications contain kanji. Rather than change the script use during successful imitations of Chokotan’s voice, the author changes the shape of the speech bubbles and the font used for the imitators’ dialogue instead. These changes are also commonly supported by styles of irregular vowel lengthening, such as the addition of extra hiragana in a word or the use of ～ as a non-­standard vowel lengthening marker. Both of these features are often used to reflect cute/casual prosody in Japanese (Miyake, 2007). As with the other manga, audible particularities fail to account for the removal of kanji from Chokotan’s dialogue. Consequently, it is again worth considering whether the hiragana-­heavy/kanji-­absent method of writing dialogue relates to character-­based differences between the users of this style and the users of the manga’s overarching orthographic norms. Age is, of course, the most obvious potential motivator given Chokotan’s status as a puppy. There is some evidence to support this idea as well, as the youngest human character in the manga speaks using what appears to be the same standards as Chokotan. While the character’s exact age is unknown, he seems to be around five to six years old. There is some indication that his dialogue is slightly distinct from Chokotan’s, as he can produce his own name in kanji. However, because the character appears in only one story and thus produces few total utterances, the question of whether further differences exist cannot be answered. For example, although Mirai, in contrast to

Scripted voices 97 Chokotan, produces only loan words in katakana, the loan words he uses happen to all be ones that Chokotan produces exclusively via katakana. Ultimately, while it is possibly hasty to argue that Mirai and Chokotan speak in the same exact style, we can minimally state that the author treats kanji-­heavy orthographic norms as inappropriate for two characters who are below a certain age. Nevertheless, while youth is clearly a potential factor in the author’s orthographic choices, age alone does not guarantee the removal of kanji from dialogue across Chokotan!. Early in the series, Chokotan meets a puppy named Martine (maruchīnu), who gradually becomes a major character in the manga. While Martine is actually younger than Chokotan, and indeed the youngest speaking character (dog or human) in the manga, depictions of her dialogue contains both kanji and manga-­normative katakana use. Furthermore, the presence of kanji in Martine’s dialogue actually exceeds the standard kanji preferences of the manga despite Martine’s age. In cases where a word appears in multiple scripts across the author’s local writing style, the author always selects kanji in Martine’s speech. For instance, the lexemes nani (what) and hontō (really) appear only in kanji in Martine’s speech despite appearing most commonly in hiragana (54.2% and 66.6% of the time, respectively) throughout adult dialogue elsewhere in the manga. Similarly, the lexemes tasukeru (to help), itai (hurts), hajimete (for the first time), hazukashii (embarrassing), and iya (no/bad) have a kanji norm in adult speech in the manga but are each represented by other scripts between 17% and 45% of the time. Martine’s speech shows none of this variation, however, and always uses kanji for these items. The author even adds kanji variants to Martine’s speech that are otherwise absent in the manga. Martine is the only character to utilize the script for any form of the verb kudasaru (to give/confer) or the connected request form kudasai (please) – respectively くださる and ください in hiragana and 下さる and 下さい in kanji – and the only character to produce the verb dekiru (able to) in kanji as 出来る instead of the normative hiragana representation of できる. Contrasts in kanji selection are present as well, with Martine utilizing the variant 仔犬 for the word “koinu” (puppy) instead of the otherwise normative子犬. Dictionaries indicate no clear difference between the meaning of koinu in either representation, and both representations in context refer simply to puppies. Although 子 and 仔 may seem similar, the latter is absent from the jōyō kanji list, so its use in a comic aimed at a preliterate audience is therefore quite salient (A. Nakamura, 2010). Taken alone, each of the three phenomena I have described could be dismissed as mistakes. When examined together, though, they appear as a conspicuous effort to accentuate the kanji content of Martine’s speech. The locally marked kanji use in Martine’s speech also co-­occurs with locally marked lexical and grammatical items, further indicating that the author is paying particular attention to Martine’s utterances. Martine speaks in a highly formalized style that differs from the registers employed by all the other characters in Chokotan! She consistently uses polite desu/masu forms as the base norm for her dialogue, rather than the casual registers enjoyed by others, and regularly employs locally marked grammatical indexes (collectively known as keigo) of politeness, distance, and self-­presentation

98  Scripted voices as well-­mannered or cultivated (Cook, 1996a, 1996b, 1998). The kudasaru form mentioned earlier stands as one example, with other characters normatively avoiding these marked elements. Finally, even locally marked polite vocabulary appears in Martine’s speech. She refers to her master as goshujinsama (literally: honored master) rather than the less formal kainushi (pet owner) used by all other dogs and is the only speaker to utilize the hyper-­polite or even aristocratic first-­person pronoun wataskushi as her norm (Ide, 1979; Kinsui, 2012). So why is Martine marked with multiple indexes of formality despite being the youngest character in the manga? While not a genius  – as suggested as a potential motivation for marked kanji use by the author of UD – Martine aggressively fails to perform childishness despite her literal state as a child/puppy. The other child characters in Chokotan! are cute, innocent, and naïve. Chokotan is happy, friendly, prone to crying, and vastly ignorant about the world, with her misunderstandings often fueling the manga’s plot. Mirai is similarly shown as both kind and unaware of the “real world” and is introduced innocently trying to pay for a stray puppy’s surgery with his pocket change. Martine, by contrast, is aloof and arrogant and regularly lords her purebred status over the other dogs. While literally a child, Martine attempts to appear aristocratic, worldly, and intelligent, refusing to be called “Marty” and negatively comparing other dog owners to her own. This “non-­childish” behavior is reflected in multiple indexes of formality from a variety of channels (orthographic, lexical, and grammatical) and made locally important through her explicit contrast with the normative speech styles of both the other children and the adults in the manga. Of course, like the kanji of the infants’ “samurai” or fourth-­wall–breaking “adult” speech in IMJ, the content of Martine’s speech fails to actually index the aristocratic identity Martine desires. The character engages in orthographic parallel of hypercorrection (as per Labov (1972)), over-­employing multiple perceived indexes of a “prestigious” social voice without the necessary co-­occurring signs (e.g., actual wealth, worldly knowledge, or prestige). The result is therefore an inverted effect (Agha, 1998; M. Nakamura, 2001). Still, while Martine’s performance may be ultimately unconvincing, it importantly allows us to see another case in which the contents of characters’ dialogue are based on their social performances rather than vocal performances or literal biological states, with the combined use of specific grammar, vocabulary, and kanji characters linked to an ideologically defined identity type in the author’s mind. In the end, analysis of all three manga has shown that the normative removal of kanji from various characters’ speech often relates primarily to ideological conceptions of “childish” and “adult” or “non-­childish” identities. While common dialogues may describe the use of kanji-­absent dialogue as a way of directly reflecting prosody or age, these are better understood as common features associated with the more fundamental identity indexed through different levels of kanji use across these comics. Throughout all three manga, the kanji-­absent style arose first and foremost from social divides the authors treated as relevant within their text. Certainly, the images of hiragana as a childish script and kanji as an adult script help clarify the designs of each noted divide. There is a reason why each

Scripted voices 99 author replaced kanji with hiragana instead of katakana when indexing a “childish” voice and added kanji to speech instead of katakana when a character moved closer to or performed an “adult” or “non-­childish” voice. But the ultimate identities, stances, or traits indexed by a kanji-­absent standard in each text cannot be ascertained just by understanding how individual scripts are perceived. The script use seen here relates not just to beliefs about scripts but also to language use and language users. The three authors clearly differ in the identities they felt certain script balances were appropriate to, and the exact definitions of the “childish” or “adult” identities they used script to index, with the orthographic variation across each text therefore in part reflecting conflicting understandings of what identity performances are (in)appropriate to kanji-­present script use in Japan.

Standard script use and politeness For the second half of this chapter, I will now step back to address an implication of the findings of both Chapter 3 and the prior section that I have left to the side so far. Given that different orthographic standards are playing off each other across the analyzed texts, dividing characters across multiple identity performances, we must consider the possibility that each manga’s locally unmarked “standard” script norm is also functioning as an index of a distinct  – if comparatively broad – social identity; that is, the possibility the authors are ascribing a certain identity (or set of identities) as locally “normative” and therefore in alignment with the manga’s overarching orthographic style, causing adherence to the style to become “no less a practice than pointedly deviating from it” (Sebba, 2009, p. 37). If this is true, then by extension the highly flexible orthographic norms of each manga are in constant conflict with the more overarching concept of script use in Japan, just as locally normative but nationally subcultural styles of speech are often in implicit conflict with national standards of “proper” language use (Blommaert, 2010; Coupland, 2010; Fuller, 2009; Matsuda & Tardy, 2007; Sebba, 2012). This would mean that ideological connections between complete standards of script use (as defined in relation to uses of all three scripts) and certain social actors are also influencing the orthographic choices throughout a text, with the decision to welcome any variant script use therefore a socially meaningful act in and of itself. This potential remained theoretical during my analysis of IMJ and Chokotan! Outside of the variation I have discussed so far, the dialogue of all characters in these two manga broadly follows the manga’s local norms. Potential instances of authors switching to formal styles of script use do appear, but the data are too rare overall to be raised confidently as related to specific identity performances. The changes are also often limited to moves from a local norm toward kanji and are difficult to reject as simply locally marked uses of this single script for a kanji-­related effect. However, the indexical potential of standard written Japanese appears highly relevant when attempting to understand the variation throughout UD. When I examined normative representations of vocabulary across the dialogue of individual characters, the speech of the protagonist Rin and the

100  Scripted voices recurring secondary character Ms. Nitani (first name unknown) showed consistent departures from the manga’s normative use of all three scripts toward those of standard written Japanese. Importantly, the idea that the author of UD paid particular attention to the language use of Rin and Ms. Nitani is not evident in the orthographic content of their dialogue alone. Rather, as with Martine, the importance of the orthographic peculiarities in their speech is emphasized by evidence of a clear and consistent effort to distinguish these characters’ language use from their peers throughout the manga, across multiple channels. For example, Rin is the only female teenager to use the stereotypically formal first-­person pronoun watashi as her personal norm, as all her female friends, classmates, and rivals instead exclusively utilize the more casual3 atashi (Ide, 1979; Ono & Thompson, 2003). Ms. Nitani is one of the few characters in the text to consistently speak in a polite desu/masu style in most contexts. She is also the only character to consistently refer to the protagonist Daikichi as Daikichi-­san despite their close and at times semi-­romantic relationship. All other major characters in the text, including Daikichi’s work subordinates, consistently drop the polite and potentially distant -­san suffix when speaking to him. In sum, multiple locally conspicuous linguistic markers of formality, politeness, or maturity are ascribed to Rin and Ms. Nitani throughout UD. While their speech style and behavior may align with idealized norms of (feminine) behavior and language use in Japan in a broad sense, it is marked when compared with the manga’s locally normative identity performances and linguistic practices for speakers of any gender. Just as Rin and Ms. Nitani fail to adhere to many of the manga’s linguistic and behavioral norms for their peers, preferring certain variants that are broadly seen as indexing formality, the orthographic makeup of their speech also tends toward the norms of formal written Japanese rather than the manga itself. For example, consider the representations of the word “honto(ō)” across UD. This word, which is formally rendered as hontō but often written/pronounced as honto casually (Sasahara, 2014), means “real” or “true.” Throughout UD, honto(ō) is used a total of 155 times, being one of the most commonplace terms in the entire text. While the word would be written in kanji in standard Japanese (as 本当), the manga’s local preference is instead katakana (ホントー or ホント). The script is used to write honto(ō) 63.9% (99 uses) of the time. Hiragana is the second most common script used for honto(ō) in UD, accounting for 27.8% (41 uses) of the word’s representations (as ほんとう or ほんと). Finally, the “standard” norm of kanji ends up being the manga’s least common representation, as the author selects it in just under 10% (15 times) of all cases. Although kanji representations are therefore locally non-­standard within UD, analyzing the specific speech acts where honto(ō) appears in kanji does not provide consistent dialogue-­level triggers for the script’s use. For instance, while kanji is often described as formal or hard (Brown, 1985; Masuji, 2011; Sugimoto, 2009), the author uses both hiragana and katakana for honto(ō) within sincere statements and apologies that are produced via polite speech forms. The

Scripted voices 101 protagonist Daikichi, to give one case, adheres to the manga’s local norm during otherwise grammatically locally marked (for the character) polite conversations with his boss. Grammatical form or contextual meaning, which has explained some orthographic variation in previous studies (e.g., Tsuchiya, 1977), also does not appear to relate to the script honto(ō) is written in in this manga. The forms honto(ō) ni (really/honestly) and honto(ō) da (that’s true), for example, can be found in hiragana, katakana, and kanji across UD. However, an interesting picture emerges if the use of kanji for honto(ō) is discussed in relation to which characters’ speech contains which representations. The 15 instances of hontō in kanji are divided between only six characters: Daikichi’s father; Ms. Nitani; Rin’s biological mother, Masako, and her partner; Daikichi’s brother-­in-­law; and Rin. As with her pronoun choice, Rin’s use of kanji for honto(ō) is distinct among her peers. She is the only teenager who ever produces a kanji representation of the word. Ms. Nitani is even more distinct, though, as her speech accounts for just under half (7/15) the uses of kanji for honto(ō) in the manga. Additionally, honto(ō) is written in her speech only once in hiragana and only three times in the otherwise locally normative katakana script. The manga’s least common overall representation is therefore the norm for her character, representing the word seven out of the 11 times (63.63%) it appears in her speech. The importance of this contrasting preference stands out even more if Ms. Nitani’s uses of honto(ō) are contrasted with the slang-­heavy and occasionally vulgar speech of the protagonist Daikichi. Although Daikichi’s dialogue contains honto(ō) 51 times, about five times more than Ms. Nitani’s, the word is never once represented by kanji in his speech. In other words, the author never felt it preferable or appropriate to use kanji for this word in Daikichi’s speech despite the fact that he speaks in a wider number of contexts and is shown enacting a wider number of social roles (father, boss, subordinate, quarrelsome brother, etc.). Additionally, orthographic peculiarities are visible in the dialogue of the more minor characters that produce honto(ō) in kanji. Daikichi’s father, for instance, produces two of his four uses of tame (for) in kanji (as 為) and two of his three uses of mattaku (totally/completely) in kanji (as 全く) despite the fact that hiragana is locally normative in the manga for both of these words. The former appears in hiragana 76.9% (30/39 cases) of the time and the latter 66.6% (10/15 cases) of the time. Furthermore, the words “taihen” (hard), “chigau” (different), “kodomo” (child), and “muri” (impossible) appear in kanji alone in Daichiki’s father’s dialogue despite each showing a minimum of 20% representation in other scripts across adult dialogue as a whole, and he produces the only use of kanji for the stem of the word “erai” (admirable, 偉い) in the entire manga. Like Ms. Nitani and Rin, Daikichi’s father is similarly distinct in terms of behavior, as he is the only member of the family never seen screaming in anger. Rather than context of utterance, it therefore appears that, as with the katakana marking of non-­native speech from Chapter 3 or the removal of kanji discussed earlier in this chapter, questions of how an author perceives a speaker’s fundamental identity are motivating overall preferences for the normative representation of honto(ō) across characters’ speech in UD.

102  Scripted voices That said, the discussion of honto(ō) thus far may tempt one to consider that the formal images of the kanji script, rather than any ideologies about standard script/language use, are motivating the author. If the variation in Rin and Ms. Nitani’s speech was limited to honto(ō) or other instances of locally marked but national standard kanji use, this consideration would be difficult to reject. However, other orthographic contrasts that divide these characters’ dialogue from the manga’s normative representations do not involve the kanji script. First, consider the word “wake” (reason/explanation). This term is generally written in hiragana (as わけ) in standard Japanese, but the author of UD instead prefers katakana (ワケ) throughout her text. The latter script is used for the word on the 49/76 occasions (68.1%) it appears in UD. Daikichi, for instance, uses katakana for 31 of his 41 utterances (75.61%) of the word. By contrast, Rin and Ms. Nitani avoid the manga’s local preference, favoring the national standard hiragana representation instead. Rin uses hiragana for wake on six of the seven occasions (85.71%) she produces the term, and Ms. Nitani uses hiragana once and kanji once (as 訳), avoiding the locally standard katakana representation entirely. The non-­standard use of sutegana in Rin and Ms. Nitani’s speech follows a similar pattern, as their preferred use of hiragana for these items deviates from the manga’s local katakana norm. Described simply, sutegana are smaller versions of hiragana or katakana. The characters ぁ(a) and ォ(o), for example, are the respective sutegana of あ (a) and オ (o). Writing certain Japanese vocabulary necessitates the use of sutegana as part of regular spelling. I will refer to these cases, which are always written in the same script as their base word in UD, as “standard” uses. By “non-­standard applications of sutegana,” which I will hereafter simply call “sutegana” for brevity, I am instead specifically referring to two applications of sutegana absent from formal writing but common in casual representations of spoken Japanese (Miyamoto, Uryu, Suzuka, & Yamada, 2003). The first involves irregularly extending vowel sounds. For example, のぉand のォ change the pronunciation of の from no to nō.4 The second application of sutegana involves indicating phonological changes caused by slang variants. A common case in UD is 早ぇ (hayē),5 a variant pronunciation of the standard 早い (hayai, fast). As inherently non-­standard writing elements, the sutegana I  am discussing here arguably have no formally standard representation. Still, the use of sutegana after native vocabulary should theoretically be in hiragana, as hiragana is used for standard uses of sutegana when native words are spelled in hiragana instead of kanji in UD (e.g,. in locally normative representations of children’s speech). In contrast to these expectations, the author of UD prefers using katakana for non-­standard applications of sutegana. Across the manga, 250 sutegana are written in katakana (66.14% of the total), while the remaining 128 (33.86%) are in hiragana. If we ignore Daikichi’s speech due to its high volume and clear preference for katakana (see Table 4.2), katakana and hiragana each account for almost 50% of the sutegana in UD, but this balance is maintained only in the dialogue of Daikichi’s father and Masako’s boyfriend. Both these characters have minimal roles in the manga, however, and use less than five sutegana each. The dialogue of all major characters instead shows a preference for one script over the other.

Scripted voices 103 Table 4.2  Variations in the scripts used for sutegana by character. Character name

Description

Hiragana sutegana

Katakana sutegana

Preference

Daikichi Reina (Rin’s friend)

Middle-aged High school student High school student High school student Retiree Middle-aged

26 15

146 28

Katakana (84.9%) Katakana (65.1%)

14

22

Katakana (61.1%)

28

11

Hiragana (71.8%)

7 8

2 2

Hiragana (77.8%) Hiragana (80%)

7

1

Hiragana (87.5%)

Kōki (Rin’s friend) Rin Daikichi’s mother Masako (Rin’s mother) Ms. Nitani

Middle-aged

Like the general variation for lexical items in UD, the selection of orthography for sutegana cannot be explained by linking each script to certain speech acts or grammatical forms. For example, なぁ and なァ (both nā, a vowel extension of a particle used here to express admiration), ねぇ and ねェ (both nē, an irregular conjugation meaning no/not), and長ぇ and 固ェ (nagē and katē, slang or “rough” versions of the adjectives nagai [long] and katai [hard], respectively) all appear. When we examine the use of script for sutegana between characters, however, a picture similar to the one seen with honto(ō) emerges. Table  4.2 lists the manga’s major characters in an order running from high katakana preference for sutegana to high hiragana preference. Characters whose dialogue contains less than five sutegana are excluded from this table because of the minimal data regarding their speech norms or identities. While no character maintains an exclusive use of one script for their sutegana, the manga does contain a general hiragana/katakana divide between the sutegana preferences for adults and teens. Daikichi stands as the sole adult character who prefers katakana sutegana, with his dialogue again contrasting with features common to the speech of Rin and Ms. Nitani. Rin is the sole teenage character in the manga who produces more sutegana in hiragana than katakana. In fact, characters who bully Rin at school actually produce no sutegana in hiragana at all, with these especially malicious teenagers sticking strictly to the manga’s local katakana norm. Ms. Nitani’s speech is also again conspicuous, as it contains the highest preferences for hiragana sutegana in the whole manga. As a result, the sutegana marking throughout UD repeats the same phenomenon I discussed regarding honto(ō), but for a different script. In both cases, the orthographic peculiarities of Rin and Ms. Nitani’s speech move them away from the manga’s script norms for speakers their age and toward those of standard written Japanese. These changes combine with polite grammatical forms, formal lexical items, and a comparatively low use of slang to present the dialogue of Rin and Ms. Nitani in a way that is distinct for the manga across multiple channels.

104  Scripted voices Indeed, the author’s tendency to move toward national language standards to index politeness or formality is evident in more than just the character-­based divides influencing script use across the entire manga. The manga also contains instances of national script norms suddenly appearing when normatively casual speakers temporarily attempt to present themselves in a more proper or reserved manner. The clearest example appears in the speech of a gym teacher at Rin’s school. Normally, this teacher speaks in a highly casual register that is further marked by frequent use of indexes of the kansai dialect. Characteristic elements of her normative speech style include dropped grammatical particles, the use of slang forms like sundesuka to replace the standard surundesuka ([what] will you do), and lack of the honorific -­san after student’s names. This latter phenomenon (known as yobisute) is irregular for stereotypical teacher-­student conversation in Japanese schools, although its use to create solidary or closeness in these interactions has been observed (Moody, 2018; Moskowitz, 2015; Yanagisawa, 1995). As for features treated as first-­order indexes of a kansai speaker, the teacher’s uses of forms like yakedo instead of dakedo (used in the manga as a marker of hesitation) and sēhen instead of shinai (do/does not) are stereotypical examples (Ball, 2004; Kinsui, 2003). Together, these various elements minimally mark the character in terms of regional affiliation and formality and stand out considerably in relation to expectations or stereotypes regarding “proper” speech for educators in Japan (Agha, 2003; Moskowitz, 2015; Okamoto, 2002). The gym teacher’s casual and dialect-­heavy speech style is dropped during only one interaction in the manga. In this scene, the teacher is introducing guests that have come from outside the school to talk to students about potential career options. While doing so, the teacher’s speech becomes markedly polite. All grammatical and lexical markers of casual speech and dialect disappear and are replaced by otherwise absent indexes of politeness, deference, or formal self-­presentation. Examples include the verb irassharu (honorific form of “to come”), repeated use of forms involving the polite prefix o-­ (e.g., o-­tsutome [employment] or o-­shigoto [job]), use of the previously dropped honorific -­san suffix after guests’ names, and normative application of the polite -­masu end form (Agha, 1998; Cook, 1998). These temporary changes in many ways show a fictional reflection of Cook’s (1996a) findings that Japanese teachers’ use of polite forms occurs more prominently during public displays of their role as teacher than during more local interactions with students. The author’s changes to the gym teacher’s speech do not end with locally marked lexical and grammatical items, though, as the orthographic makeup of the dialogue also deviates from the manga’s standards. During the gym teacher’s speech, the word “hazu” (should) appears in her dialogue in hiragana as はず. While hiragana is the normative representation of hazu in standard Japanese and would therefore be missed as marked if we examined the text at the excerpt level, it is highly marked in the manga. Katakana is used for hazu (as ハズ) in all other cases (14/15 occasions, 93.33%) in UD. Reliance on script images to understand this change is limiting. The transition involves switching to a script seen as “cute” or “gentle” rather than a change to kanji (where hazu would appear as 筈), which is instead stereotyped as the “polite” or “formal”

Scripted voices 105 script (Iwahara, Hatta, & Maehara, 2003). The teacher’s character-­irregular formal self-­presentation in this scene is therefore best understood as evidence of the author changing her dialogue to align with formal Japanese language use across lexical, grammatical, and orthographic channels rather than a local choice of script based on abstract images of that item, with the purpose of hiragana in this interaction appearing as a local manifestation of a more overarching trend. Ultimately, then, UD contains evidence that entire script standards can themselves serve as indexes of broad social identities and local stance-­taking acts. This finding is arguably also evident in my prior discussions of marking within non-­ native speech and children’s speech, as these styles obviously create competing orthographic standards. That said, the variation I have discussed in the current section differs from these prior examples in important ways. First, the marking here evidences two collections of rules or norms for the use of all three scripts being put into contrast. The marking itself also operates at a more subtle level. The changes are easily missed, as they do not stand out as much as haphazard introductions of katakana or the complete removal of kanji, and local norms are potentially misread as local uses of script for effect. Finally, the contrast of marking styles shows that the manga’s local norms do not necessarily serve as simply a baseline of an “unmarked” identity; they can also themselves index a locally relevant identity. The depiction of relaxed, rough, or casual identities in UD, and indeed potentially all the analyzed manga, involves not only lexical and grammatical indexes of informality but also the script norms of the manga itself. Consequently, the flexible orthography inherent in all three manga does not show a lack of care regarding script use, but rather evidence that increased orthographic flexibility is itself an index of more casual language users or language use. Standard script norms, like standard language norms, contrastively play a role in indexing propriety, formality, or even social distance, with orthographic inflexibility minimally something all three authors treat as inappropriate for the casual interactions that are normative to their texts (Blommaert, 2010; Coupland, 2007; Eckert, 2008; Kinsui, 2003; M. Nakamura, 2014).

Orthographic interactions and identity contrasts This chapter’s examination of orthographic variation across three manga has identified multiple situations wherein authors utilize divergent script norms to define and divide ideologically defined identity performances and character groups. The results therefore contrast with commonplace descriptions of marked Japanese script use in prior research wherein script selection is explained as a method of altering the feel of specific words or individual language acts. Script use is instead produced from local ideological evaluations of characters themselves or contrasts between them, arising from local understandings of major social identities and stance performances rather than a more in-­the-­moment appraisal of whether the images of a given script match the feel of a single language act. Consequently, the variation manifests as contrasting norms that affect script use across entire manga, producing contextual and text-­wide definitions of normative and marked script use across speech acts.

106  Scripted voices The analysis in this chapter therefore shows that understanding the meaning behind individual instances of locally marked script use often requires attention to interactions between entire script practices and their internal norms. Meaningful variation risks being lost or misinterpreted when individual instances of speech are examined out of context or through methods of analysis that define markedness via references to the norms of standard written Japanese alone. For instance, an utterance like “わたしこれに入れる (watashi kore ni ireru, I’ll put it in this)” from Rin’s speech in UD is orthographically unremarkable as a generic excerpt. Without any surrounding contexts, it is simply a sentence that matches the local script norms of the manga. The importance of the orthographic content of this sentence is only clear when we establish that the dialogue comes from a child character who has heretofore spoken without any kanji,. That is, the total meaning of the utterance is produced not simply by the script within but also through its contrasts with other script use and local orthographic norms throughout the text. Interactions of this type are lost if we look at the orthographic makeup of dialogue in a vacuum, as the script changes cannot be understood without reference to the very contrasts they create. We learn more about Martine, for example, through understanding that her dialogue is in direct orthographic opposition to that of both Chokotan and the norms of the manga (as well as the norms of script use in Japan!) than through abstract discussions of how an author views any given script. That said, in closing the current chapter it is important that I  address one major limitation in the scope of its discussion. By describing ways ideologies about character identities motivate the use of competing local standards across entire texts, I may have implied that the words that are subject to orthographic variation during this indexing are of no concern. After all, while the speech of characters throughout the three manga departs from the manga’s local standards in a variety of ways, at no point is this variation restricted to specific lexical items in a manner that evidences word-­level attention. Ascribed identities affect the overall norms for script use across characters’ speech as a whole. However, the fact that script use targeted at individual words is not involved (or at least not visible) in the indexing discussed in this chapter is not evidence that this type of orthographic variation does not occur in a manner attended to as a social act. In the next chapter, I will therefore address the possibility that the representation of specific words can also be important in how script variation indexes meaning, expanding upon the social importance of script variation in Japanese through narrowing my analytical scope. Specifically, in Chapter 5 I will look at how linguistic ideologies about language use(rs) affect the selection and interpretation of script variation applied to first-­person pronouns. The first half of the chapter will finish my discussion of top-­down indexing of speaker identities in manga, using a final subset of data from UD. The second half of the chapter will then consider how readers understand script/pronoun combinations, beginning the interpretation-­ focused interest of the latter half of Scripting Japan. Taken together, the studies across the chapter will show that script-­pronoun combinations are attended to by readers and authors in ways that cannot be predicted through attention to either

Scripted voices 107 item alone, or even other orthographic contrasts in a text. The combinations of the two variants instead see targeted attention as an index of distinct identities, drawing upon interactions particular to overlap between their indexical fields.

Notes 1 The word is rendered in hiragana in all compounds that have kutsu as a part of them, specifically kutsushita (socks) and kutsubako (shoebox). 2 The translations for these kanji are based on the context they were used in. 3 For a deeper discussion of Japanese pronoun selection, see Chapter 5. 4 Sutegana are only one of the items the author uses to extend vowel sounds. Standard size hiragana or the use of the macron ー, known as a chōonpu and normally used to extend vowel sounds in words written in katakana, is also applied to extend vowel sounds that would not be changed in standard Japanese writing. Occasionally, multiple extension techniques even appear together, such as with ばぁーか, with the proper romanization (arguably bāaka) unclear. The non-­standard application of sutegana can be considered to fit into Satake’s definition (1982, 1989) of shin-­genbunitchi writing wherein non-­standard features are used to imitate the prosody of speech. 5 Although the orthographic makeup of this word technically indicates that the variant should be pronounced as hayae, its correct reading is hayē. Hayae is not an extant variant.

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Scripted voices 109 Ono, T., & Thompson, S. A. (2003). Japanese (w)atashi/ore/boku “I”: They’re not just pronouns. Cognitive Linguistics, 14(4), 321–347. Preston, D. R. (1985). The Li’l Abner syndrome: Written representations of speech. American Speech, 60(4), 328–336. Robertson, W. (2017). He’s more katakana than kanji: Indexing identity and self-­ presentation through script in Japanese manga. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 21(4), 497–520. Robertson, W. (2019a). Scripted voices: Script’s role in creating Japanese manga dialogue. Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics, 10(1), 87–105. https://doi.org/10.1 080/21504857.2018.1431799 Robertson, W. (2019b). Why can’t I speak in kanji? Indexing social identities through marked script use in Japanese manga. Discourse, Context & Media, 30, 1–9. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.04.00 Sadanobu, T. (2005). Manga/zasshi no kotoba. In T. Ueno, T. Sadanobu, K. Satou, & H. Noda (Eds.), Keisu sutadi: Nihongo no baraetei (pp. 108–113). Tokyo: Fuji Repro. Sasahara, H. (2014). Kunyomi no hanashi: Kanjibunka to nihongo. Tokyo: Kadokawa. Satake, H. (1982). Wakai sedai no bunshō. Gobun, 40, 36–43. Satake, H. (1989). Wakamono no bunshō to katakana kōka. Nihongogaku, 8(1), 60–67. Sebba, M. (2009). Sociolinguistic approaches to writing systems research. Writing Systems Research, 1(1), 35–49. https://doi.org/10.1093/wsr/wsp002 Sebba, M. (2012). Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power. In M. Sebba, A. Jaffe, J. Androutsopoulos,  & S. Johnson (Eds.), Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power (pp.  1–20). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Silverstein, M. (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication, 23(3–4), 193–229. Sugimoto, T. (2009). Nichieigo no henisei: Eigo henshu no tsuzuri jihyōki to nihongo katakana hyōki no hikaku bunseki. Seijo Bungei, 208, 83–117. Tetreault, C. (2002). “You call that a girl?” Borderwork in a French cite. In S. Benor, M. Rose, D. Sharma, J. Sweetland, & Q. Zhang (Eds.), Gendered practices in language (pp. 237–254). Stanford: CSLI Publications. Tsuchiya, S. (1977). Gendai shinbun no katakana hyōki. Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo Hōkoku, 59(8), 140–159. Ueno, J. (2006). Shojo and adult women: A linguistic analysis of gender identity in manga (Japanese comics). Women & Language, 29(1), 16–25. Yanagisawa, M. (1995). Address forms in Japanese: A means of keeping social distance. Georgetown Journal of Language and Linguistics, 3(2–3), 227–233.

5 Script choice and pronoun choice Indexical fields in interaction

In Chapters 3 and 4, I examined how ideologies about language use(rs) influenced Japanese script use on text-­wide scales. This focus was productive for identifying and understanding major causes of orthographic variation in written Japanese. However, the attention to contrasting speaker-­based script norms prevented me from addressing the possibility that more targeted word-­level variation is also of social importance in Japan. This oversight is in part due to the nature of the orthographic phenomena discussed so far. In many cases, the data from prior chapters actively reject the possibility of word-­level focus. Inconsistent application across sentence elements is a primary feature of the katakana marking discussed in Chapter 3, and the dialogue-­wide removal of kanji noted in Chapter 4 obviously precludes word-­level attention to language representation. Still, the fact that specific script-­word combinations are not an important element of the Japanese script variation I have analyzed so far does not mean that they are irrelevant to our understanding of Japanese script use as a social act. My goal in Chapter 5 is therefore to attend to a style of orthographic manipulation that was mostly overlooked in prior chapters, narrowing my analytic focus to further evidence the value of attending to Japanese script variation as a potential index. My discussions in the current chapter will specifically examine variant representation of a single lexical item: Japanese first-­person pronouns. As I will describe further in the following section, I am beginning this initial sociolinguistic investigation of targeted script use with these items because pronouns are already established as important indexes in Japan (Dahlberg-­Dodd, 2018; Ono & Thompson, 2003). Their variant representation consequently places two indexes into direct contact, creating the potential for meaningful interactions between both lexical and “graphic ideologies” (Spitzmüller, 2012, p. 256) about language use in Japan. The current chapter therefore specifically departs from the script-­ image based discussions of Japanese word representation I surveyed in Chapter 1 wherein marked script use was argued to slightly adjust the meaning or “feel” of generic vocabulary like megane (glasses) or kōhī (coffee). Instead, the studies here will look at how two language variants function together to index an identity specific to commonalities between their indexical fields. My discussion of script-­pronoun combinations across the current chapter is separated between two distinct studies. The first concerns the top-­down use

Script choice and pronoun choice 111 of script-­pronoun combinations to index identities. This study draws on a subset of data from one of the manga-­based corpora I introduced in Chapter 4, showing how the author of Usagi Doroppu utilizes distinct script-­pronoun combinations to divide speaker identities throughout her comic. Importantly, these identities are not the same as those indexed through the manga’s competing dialogue-­wide script norms identified in Chapter 4. The author instead treats her locally marked uses of script for pronouns as distinct, resulting in multiple meaningful orthographic divides across the manga’s dialogue. In the second study, I turn to the question of how readers engage with and interpret Japanese script-­pronoun combinations. In examining the identities that Japanese native speakers link to individual script-­pronoun combinations, this latter study will show that readers do not engage with pronoun representation in a “predictable” manner. Rather than a single script producing a consistent effect across all pronouns, each script-­pronoun combination is ascribed to identities specific to interactions between its constituent pronoun and script. Taken together, the studies will therefore show script-­pronoun combinations receiving attention as distinctly important loci for the creation of social meaning. The meanings they index do not relate to the social use of only one variant, but rather interactions among beliefs about the use of multiple language items across Japan. Before moving into the data supporting these findings, however, I  need to take a brief step back to establish the importance of first-­person pronouns in contemporary Japanese. I do this with two main goals in mind. The first is obviously to ensure the accessibility of this chapter to non-­Japanese specialists and further explain my selection of these items as a locus of study. The second is to establish that the author of Usagi Doroppu, the manga that serves as the first study’s data set, actively considers the social implications of Japanese first-­person pronouns when constructing dialogue. In completing this second goal, I  will also show the specific contexts each pronoun appears normative to in Usagi Doroppu. This allows me to later engage with the specifics of the author’s local pronoun use during analysis of pronoun representation, avoiding reliance on only assumptions of the “meaning” individual pronouns create.

An “I” by any other name Japanese is similar to many other Asian languages, including Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese, in providing its users with a range of first-­person pronouns (Le, 2011; E. Lee, Madigan,  & Park, 2016; Mathais  & Sidwell, 2015). Although each pronoun arguably translates as “I” in English, treating any two as direct synonyms overlooks major social identities, contexts, and stances that are indexed through strategic pronoun use (Matsumoto, 2002; M. Nakamura, 2007, 2013; Yoshimitsu, 2005). In fact, as explicit statement of a sentence’s subject is often optional in Japanese, the decision whether to use any pronoun is a potentially meaningful act (Cognola  & Casalicchio, 2018; D.-­Y. Lee  & Yonezawa, 2008; Ono & Thompson, 2003).

112  Script choice and pronoun choice Thorough lists of Japanese first-­person pronouns can include over 20 distinct items, with each considered more or less appropriate to specific speaker identities and interactional contexts (Miyazaki, 2016; Ono  & Thompson, 2003). However, lists of this size are only possible when dialect-­specific or antiquated variants (which may nevertheless still see use in media) are included. In contemporary interactions, less than ten pronouns see common use, with the five pronouns watakushi, watashi, boku, ore, and atashi generally treated as primary. In most general discussions of these five pronouns, especially those aimed at non-­specialist audiences, the choice between them is described as relating to considerations of gender and formality/social distance (Cook, 2011). Table 5.1, which I adapted from a frequently cited early description by Ide (1979), depicts this stereotypical division. Note that watashi is generally considered acceptable for both men and women but is often described as more polite in men’s speech. A context where a woman uses watashi to express a certain level of politeness may therefore bring about a reciprocal use of boku from a male interlocutor, with the pronoun’s user influencing its perceived effect (L. Brown & Cheek, 2017). That said, I would be remiss if I did not note that Table 5.1 is oversimplified to the point of being inaccurate in many contexts (Maree, 2013a; Moskowitz, 2014). Table 5.1 presents a very static and functionalist perspective of pronoun use, describing selections as almost inherent in a situation rather than strategic choices that can reflect and express “broader cultural images of people and activities” (Irvine & Gal, 2000, p. 37). As many researchers have noted, the selection and understanding of pronouns in Japan are under constant negotiation and are therefore in no way guaranteed to produce a given effect (see Abe, 2004; S. Brown, 1994; Dahlberg-­Dodd, 2018; Kinsui, 2010; Mackie, 2010; Maree, 2003; Miyazaki, 2002, 2016; Sturtz-­Sreetharan, 2006; Sunaoshi, 2004). By contrast, there is also no doubt that stereotypical “folk assumption[s]” (Agha, 2005, p. 47) of the meaning of each Japanese pronouns influence their contemporary use (Abe, 2004; Matsumoto, 2002). This is especially true in Japanese media wherein pronouns are frequently used in stereotypical ways to make characters immediately “identifiable with subgroups to which they belong according to certain expectations based on linguistic ideology” (Hiramoto, 2013, pp. 51–52). In short, while the use of pronouns throughout Japan is quite complex, popular depictions of Japanese language use often more closely reflect stereotypes than nuanced modern realities (Kinsui, 2003; M. Nakamura, 2013; Suzuki, 2017, 2018). Table 5.1  Generic description of FPPs in Japanese. Feminine More

Formality/Politeness Less

watakushi watashi atashi

Masculine watashi boku ore

Script choice and pronoun choice 113 The pronoun use throughout the manga Usagi Doroppu stands as an illustrative example of everything I’ve discussed so far. While the author clearly divides characters and language acts via pronoun selection, the locations where these top-­down selections appear are quite stereotypical. The author avoids wataskushi throughout the text but employs watashi, boku, ore, and atashi in a manner that shows direct consideration of speaker gender. In line with Ide’s (1979) descriptions, women in Usagi Doroppu use atashi and watashi exclusively. Males similarly utilize ore and boku in almost all cases, with the sole exception being a single selection of watashi. The question of which two primary options a character of either gender uses, then, relates to concerns of politeness. More decorous characters and formal speech acts receive the more “polite” index from each pair. For example, the protagonist Rin again (see Chapter  4) stands out from her female peers in being the only consistent teenage user of watashi. All other teenage women use atashi exclusively. However, adult women tend to prefer watashi but often utilize atashi in more casual contexts, as exemplified by a female worker who uses watashi in formal meetings but atashi when flirting with male employees. For male speakers, teenagers likewise prefer casual speech styles. Consequently, they employ the less formal ore nearly exclusively, producing boku only twice. Adult male characters, like adult female characters, use a more diverse range of pronouns that vary across character identities and interactive contexts. As an illustrative case, the manga’s rough-­speaking protagonist Daikichi uses ore as his preferred pronoun, selecting it 92.15% (352/382 cases) of the time. However, Daikichi also uses boku 29 (7.59%) times, normally switching to the pronoun when he is speaking to strangers and superiors. Daikichi also produces the sole male use of watashi in the manga during an interaction containing multiple other indexes of politeness or “other-­directed deference” (Agha, 1998, p.  185) otherwise absent from his speech. The clearest example in this dialogue, which occurs during Daikichi’s first phone call to Rin’s biological mother, is the use of kaga rin-­san (Ms. Rin Kaga) to refer to Rin. As Daikichi has not yet formally adopted Rin at this point, his language use here shows respect to his interlocuter’s status and position, departing from Daikichi’s more familiar use of rin (Rin) in all other scenes. In summation, the author of Usagi Doroppu clearly considers Japanese pronouns important to how she divides character identities and speech styles in her comic. She also utilizes them in a manner that reflects their stereotypical description as indexes of gender and politeness. However, as I  will show in the following section, this lexical variation serves as only one element of how pronouns differentiate character types and stances throughout Usagi Doroppu. Full understanding of how the author indexes identities through pronouns also requires attending to variation across the orthographic channel, with the total number of social divisions indexed via pronoun-­targeted variation lost if we fail to attend to this second mode.

More of a kanji-­boku than a katakana-­ore In examining the representations of first-­person pronouns throughout Usagi Doroppu, I  identified a number of consistent orthographic divisions between

114  Script choice and pronoun choice pronoun representations and speaker groups/stance performances throughout the text (see also Robertson, 2017). These divisions were not simply subsets of divisions visible through attention to specific pronouns. Rather, the script-­based divides frequently appeared in context and across character groups which did not stimulate changes to other items. Even more importantly, the triggers for the use of a given script were not preestablished or absolute. The motives behind the use of a given script for a given pronoun did not necessarily reflect that script’s uses as an index in Usagi Doroppu that we observed during Chapter 4, indicating that attention to pronoun representation can exist outside of concerns affecting the rest of the text. I will begin evidencing these findings by examining the most prominent orthographic divide for pronouns across Usagi Doroppu: contrasting use of script for boku and ore throughout male speech. Katakana represents 111 of the 112 (99.11%) pronouns used by teenage males in the manga. The sole exception is one representation of boku via the kanji script. However, kanji represents 414 of the 430 (96.28%) first-­person pronouns used by adult males. The 16 exceptions are divided between 15 uses (3.49%) of katakana and one use (0.23%) of hiragana. Putting aside the 17 total exceptions for now, this script use creates a situation wherein male characters in Usagi Doroppu can be consistently separated based on their lexical preferences, orthographic preferences, or preferences across both channels. For example, Daikichi and his father prefer ore and boku, respectively, as their first-­person pronouns, with the divide reflecting differences in the normative politeness of their speech style and self-­presentation. Daikichi tends to be rough in his speech and quick to anger. Daikichi’s father is instead the peacekeeper of the family, being the only member that is never shown raising his voice. However, in accordance with the manga’s norm for adult males, both speakers are united in the use of kanji to represent their respective pronouns (俺 for ore and 僕 for boku). By contrast, Daikichi and teenage males align lexically in their preference for ore, contrasting via the orthographic channel (俺 vs. オレ) instead. Finally, Daikichi’s father and teenage males are differentiated across both lexical (boku vs. ore) and orthographic (僕 vs. オレ) lines. This creates a matrix-­like system wherein different degrees of (non)alignment among two distinct channels separate certain social groups, with Daikichi’s father and teenager males showing less alignment than that found between Daikichi and either group. As for the primary factor explaining whether a male character’s pronouns will be written in katakana or hiragana, age is obviously the most immediate plausible explanation. However, as Chapters 3 and 4 clearly showed, an influence evident in the initial observation of data is not the same thing as a primary or absolute condition. Indeed, no evidence of an intended adult/teen divide appeared during my interview with the author of Usagi Doroppu. Although the author explicitly recognized that she varied her script use for male pronouns, she described these divides as based ultimately on her personal “way of feeling (kojin no kanjikata)” and as “not a strict thing (genmitsu na mono dewa arimasen).” The rather steady divide between male pronoun representation in the data therefore did not result

Script choice and pronoun choice 115 from the level of conscious planning we saw in the same author’s measured introduction of specific kanji into children’s speech in Chapter 4. So what specific “feelings,” to use the author’s term, are bringing about the overarching tendencies for pronoun use in male speech throughout Usagi Doroppu? To answer this question, I will now turn to an examination of the 17 exceptions from the generic adult/teen divide. My first area of discussion is the use of kanji for one pronoun in teenage male speech. Certainly, because this locally non-­standard application of script is restricted to a single case, raising it for analysis brings about issues of confidence. As I have mentioned in prior chapters, it is critical to remove the possibility of practical concerns, chance, and author/ editor oversight before declaring an indexical motive for any use of script. In fact, in consideration of these exact complications, I was unable to confidently analyze the sole use of hiragana for an adult pronoun in Usagi Doroppu in this chapter. The manga contains only one hiragana-­represented male pronoun, and it appears as part of a small handwritten aside, unlike the printed form of all other pronouns. The data therefore did not allow me to establish a context that consistently spawns hiragana use for male pronouns or to dismiss practical concerns like the difficulty of writing legible kanji at a small size. That said, and as I will evidence here, while the use of kanji for a pronoun in teenage speech is only a single example, it participates in a consistent orthographic trend. The sole use of kanji for a pronoun in male teenage speech comes from Volume 6 of Usagi Doroppu. During one chapter, a character named Yasuhara comes to Rin’s classroom to discuss preparations for a school event and produces boku in kanji (as 僕) during their dialogue. While this interaction is not peculiar for a high school setting, it is distinct among all other interactions between Rin and Yasuhara in the manga. The dialogue relates to official school business between two people who don’t yet know each other well, rather than casual conversation, and its peculiar status is reinforced by the inclusion of semi-­formal items like “yoroshiku onegaishimasu (I request/please)” that depart from the way Yasuhara speaks in other contexts. Once Yasuhara gets to know Rin better, for instance, his use of register, pronoun, and script all mirror the norms of teenage males. For instance, in Volume 8 Yasuhara develops a romantic interest in Rin and attempts to ask her out on a date. During this conversation, Yasuhara reverts to the katakana-­ore norm (オレ) of male teens and produces no sentences or phrases that end in the desu/masu form seen in “yoroshiku onegaishimasu.” Furthermore, the use of kanji cannot be considered simply a consequence of boku selection, as the other use of boku by a teenage male in Usagi Doroppu appears in katakana. In this context, though, the teenager is lying to Rin about why his bag smells of another woman’s perfume rather than engaging in any sort of official or formal act. The character is certainly engaging in a non-­typical self-­presentation, as he switches to boku while dissembling in a cowardly manner that does not reflect the “masculinity, arrogance and coolness” (Miyazaki, 2004, p.  269) often indexed by his normative ore use. However, he is also still engaged in locally normative teenage interaction rather than conversing about official school matters as a class representative. The interaction involves no locally marked grammatical or lexical

116  Script choice and pronoun choice items either, showing linguistic contrasts with the context in which kanji-­boku was treated as acceptable to teenage male speech. The locally marked use of script in adult male pronouns similarly appears in scenes wherein adults behave in a manor the author treats as otherwise non-­ normative for their peer group. For instance, the pronoun use by one of Daikichi’s subordinates at his place of work contrasts with other adult males in utilizing katakana-­ore for seven of the eight pronouns (87.5%) he produces. This makes the unnamed character the only adult male who has a clear local katakana norm for the pronouns in his speech. His pronoun use also represents more total katakana-­represented pronouns than any adult character, serving as almost half (7/15, or 46.67%) of the total instances of katakana-­represented pronouns in adult speech. The subordinate’s pronoun use therefore aligns more with that of teens than the character’s actual peers. The author clearly treats the subordinate as distinct from his peers in some way, and there is evidence in the manga that this relates to the character’s self-­presentation. His dress, behavior, and other traditionally non-­linguistic signs do differ from that of other depicted adults. For instance, while Daikchi and the subordinate are both “rough” characters who utilize a slang-­heavy speech style and prefer ore, their contrasting use of script for this pronoun reflects major divides between their self-­presentation and roles in the text. Neither Daikichi nor his subordinate is as polite as Daikichi’s father, but Daikichi is still ultimately more “mature,” or in line with normative depictions of “adultness,” in the manga. He is a college-­educated bilingual and usually attends work in a collared shirt and tie. The subordinate instead wears a beanie, wallet chain, and piercings to work and refers to his own lack of academic achievement in speech. Similarities between the characters aside, Daikichi therefore more closely aligns with stereotypical images of an adult Japanese white-­color worker (sararīman; see Dasgupta, 2013). This is, of course, not to say that the subordinate is a childish or villainous character. Rather, he simply fails to manifest the traits the author treats as normative to “adultness” (or at least masculine “adultness”) in the manga, resulting in his normative pronoun use aligning with that of teenage males. Furthermore, locally non-­standard pronoun representation in the subordinate’s speech also appears when the character deviates from his normal behavior to perform this “normative adultness.” The sole use of kanji in the character’s dialogue is therefore similar to the use of kanji in Yasuhara’s dialogue, as it comes from an instance of irregular self-­presentation. In the scene, the subordinate visits Daikichi’s house for the first time and is greeted at the door by Rin (i.e., his boss’s daughter). Initially, the subordinate introduces himself using his locally normative katakana-­represented ore (オレ). He then immediately corrects himself, switching to a kanji-­represented boku (僕) while simultaneously producing otherwise locally absent indexes of politeness, such as the use of the title kawachi-­san (Mr. Kawachi) to refer to Daikichi. While it is possible to examine both the use of boku and the selection of kanji as indexes of politeness, we need to attend to the entire interactive context. The subordinate is not just being polite in this scene, nor is

Script choice and pronoun choice 117 (as I will show) politeness a guaranteed predictor of kanji-­represented pronouns in Usagi Doroppu. Rather, the subordinate is actively attempting to perform a stereotypical adult sararīman (office worker) identity, of which polite speech is just one part, presenting himself in a locally non-­normative manner in reflection of the fact that he is speaking with his boss’s daughter for the first time. The link between script use and the performance of “adulthood,” rather than just politeness, in Usagi Doroppu is made even clearer in inverses of the situations described so far. That is, scenes wherein normatively kanji-­using adults produce katakana when temporarily acting in a “non-­adult” manner. Out of the remaining eight uses of katakana for adult pronouns in Usagi Doroppu, three appear in the dialogue of Daikichi’s co-­worker Tama. In his first introduction, Tama is shown angrily yelling at Daikichi (his superior at the time) for leaving their department. This dialogue represents an obvious breach of stereotypical power structures and expected office interactions, and in the scene Tama produces a katakana-­represented ore (オレ) three times. This script-­pronoun combination is also produced in a similar context by another adult male whom Daikichi formerly supervised. While this character appears in only one scene, preventing a detailed understanding of his identity or language norms, he utilizes katakana-­ ore twice while making a semi-­vulgar complaint about Daikichi to a colleague. Taken together, these two cases show that the use of angry and at times vulgar complaints about a superior by adult males can bring about the use of katakana pronouns in adult male speech. By contrast, calmer or more “normative” interactions bring about kanji representation, as seen by Tama’s exclusive use of boku in kanji (僕) during all his friendly conversations with Daikichi in later volumes. The fact that complaints and vulgarities are potentially impolite only takes us so far in understanding these changes, though. As mentioned, Daikichi frequently engages in angry outbursts when talking to his family members but produces only pronouns represented in kanji. The contrast between his outbursts and what we see here shows that Daikichi’s anger is confined to stereotypically nonformal contexts. He is never shown acting angrily with superiors at work, even in cases where he disagrees with their decisions. Rather, as mentioned, he switches to the use of kanji-­boku in these scenes. The specific “non-­adult” (as defined by the author) behavior of aggressively critiquing or insulting one’s boss therefore seems to be the specific trigger of the orthographic change. Additionally, the consideration of performed “adultness” is relevant to katakana representations of boku in adult dialogue in Usagi Doroppu. In the manga’s fourth volume, Daikichi meets another single father who works as a male model. During their initial conversation, the unnamed model finds out that he posed in his underwear for Daikichi’s company. This causes him to burst into an embarrassed and slightly flamboyant speech style atypical of other adult male interactions in the manga. Across these utterances, the model produces three katakana-­boku (ボク) combinations. However, while certainly containing locally marked elements, the speech style here is still formally polite. The model’s dialogue employs sentence forms like the desu/masu endings and the polite term osewa (indebted to), as is stereotypically appropriate to the customer/client context of the

118  Script choice and pronoun choice interaction. In contrast to prior examples, the locally marked katakana use in the model’s speech co-­occurs with lexical and grammatical indexes of polite speech. Additionally, during a more casual encounter, the model switches back to the local kanji norm for his uses of boku. His use of kanji-­boku appears when explicitly enacting his role as a father by giving parenting advice to Ms. Nitani while he, Daikichi, and another single father go as friends to the park with their children. This indicates that although indexes of impoliteness and “non-­adultness” often co-­occur, as impolite behavior is treated as “non-­adult,” the use of neither kanji nor katakana for pronouns is actually contingent on (im)politeness. The model’s dialogue is not rough or rude in either scene, hence the maintenance of boku. His mannerisms do change greatly, though, contrasting with and mirroring those of surrounding adults in the two scenes, with kanji pronouns reappearing once he is calmly discussing difficulties of parenting instead of laughing about risqué modeling work. To summarize the various representations of male pronouns in Usagi Doroppu, the use of script appears to reflect the author’s perception of “normative” behaviors for certain character identities. This understanding is also in line with the interview data, as it reflects the author’s description of katakana-­represented pronouns (in the abstract) as “naughty, youthful, and a little show-­offy (yancha wakasa sukoshi charachara shiteiru)” compared with (again, in the abstract) “old style, Japanese, and visually hard (kofū, nihonteki, shikakuteki ni katai)” kanji pronouns. In both the manga and the author’s evaluations, each item is linked to traits and behavior styles rather than politeness or static demographic divides. As normative “adult” behavior is, by definition, based on assumptions of behavior by adults, it isn’t surprising that adults are the primary group producing kanji-­ represented pronouns. It is also not surprising that the katakana-­marked pronouns that index “non-­adult” or “youthful” identities tend to be normative in the speech of teens. These trends are importantly not absolute, however. Characters who behave in ways that depart from these assumptions – be it temporarily or as part of their normative self-­presentation – produce pronoun representations that differ from others of the same age group. Interestingly, though, the matrix-­like system male script-­pronoun combinations move within throughout Usagi Doroppu is not present in the speech of the manga’s female characters. Regardless of female characters’ normative or contextual behavior, pronouns used by female speakers are almost always written in hiragana. The 81 uses of atashi in the manga are all in hiragana, and female characters’ uses of watashi are written in hiragana in 227 out of the pronoun’s 232 (97.84%) appearances. Certainly, it is possible that the divide in script use we are seeing between male and female pronoun use relates in part to word choice. Atashi is female-­exclusive in the manga. The representation of a hypothetical male-­used atashi is therefore unknown. The pronoun also does not have a standardized kanji representation, preventing hiragana-­kanji variation. However, the male use of watashi in Usagi Doroppu, while singular, is represented by kanji. Kanji is also the conventional representation of watashi in formal Japanese, and the author ascribed a “masculine impression (dansei teki na inshō)” to the

Script choice and pronoun choice 119 kanji script in our interview and stated she would therefore use it for watashi in male dialogue (apparently unaware that she did). This indicates that, at least for watashi, the use of hiragana is not simply a consequence of the script being the author’s absolute standard for the pronoun in manga dialogue. Even more noteworthy, though, is the fact that no female characters’ uses of atashi or watashi, regardless of their speech, dress, or relationship to Japanese stereotypes of proper feminine or adult behavior, are ever written in katakana. Although the author referred to katakana-­represented pronouns as having a “naughty, youthful, and a little show-­offy” image, female characters who manifest these traits never utilize katakana-­represented pronouns. The teenage character Akari, for instance, physically abuses her romantic partners, bullies and harasses Rin for years, and fakes a pregnancy to extort money from her former boyfriend. Despite being very much a young and “naughty” character, Akari’s pronouns are always written in hiragana. For the author, then, normative kanji and katakana representation of pronouns in part indexes a masculine (or even male) speaker, with polite, rude, studious, young, and old female characters all using distinct pronouns normatively written in a single script. In attending to this distinction, we therefore see that long-­r unning Japanese dialogues asserting that there is (or should be) dissimilarity between the language use of men and women also influence script use in Japanese (Inoue, 2004; M. Nakamura, 2014; Shibamoto, 1985; Yoshimitsu, 2005). For the author, female characters’ status as such is a major (if not primary) consideration for the representation of their pronouns. In fact, when presented with the cases in which kanji representations of watashi appeared in female speech in her manga during the interview, the author described them all as accidental and “something like a typo,” writing that she “fundamentally intended to use わたし [hiragana-­watashi]” in depictions of women’s speech. Furthermore, and importantly for this chapter’s discussion of pronouns as a locus for specific orthographic attention, the gender-­and identity-­based divisions in script use for pronouns throughout Usagi Doroppu contrast directly with the dialogue-­wide orthographic variation noted in Chapter 4. In this earlier investigation, analysis found that the dialogue of Ms. Nitani and Rin contained more locally marked kanji representations than that of Daikichi. However, this kanji-­ based contrast does not extend to pronouns, as Ms. Nitani and Rin produce watashi in hiragana while Daikichi uses kanji for ore, boku, and watashi. Even more obviously, the lack of access to kanji pronouns in female adult language indexes something quite different than the lack of access to all kanji across the speech of children of all genders. For an inconsistency in the other direction, bullies like Akari produce sutegana only via the katakana script, but their pronouns all appear in hiragana. The author’s comment that she intended to use “わ たし [watashi in hiragana]” for women, rather than just hiragana, is therefore important. We are not just seeing that kanji and katakana have an absolute and ever-­present masculine image, or that hiragana indexes only femininity. While the author certainly feels that it is important to lexically and orthographically differentiate male and female characters, the orthographic end of this equation

120  Script choice and pronoun choice manifests only in variant representation of one lexical item. This creates a scenario in which conspicuous kanji users, watashi users, and kanji-­watashi users (as well as conspicuous katakana-­users, ore users, and katakana-­ore users, etc.) are all distinct groups in Usagi Doroppu, with the question of which aspects of a script-­pronoun are normative to a character’s dialogue greatly changing what the combination means in a given context. Taken as a whole, this analysis of Usagi Doroppu shows that the uses of script-­ pronoun combinations across the manga receive attention as distinct markers of stance and identity. Scripts are used in combination with pronouns to index identities that differ from those their marked use indexes across “generic” elements of dialogue in the same text. Likewise, changes to script alone, pronouns alone, and both channels in tandem are all utilized to signal distinct changes in local identity performance. The meaning of a given script’s use for a pronoun in the manga is consequently not preestablished or arising from context-­independent perspectives of either variant. Rather, the author considers overlaps between the indexical fields of each item when deciding which pronoun is appropriate for a given context. For instance, while the author stated in the interview that she treats kanji as masculine, this only prevented her from using the script in combination with an index of femininity rather than reducing its presence throughout the entirety of female characters’ speech. Ultimately, then, the effect created by a specific script-­pronoun combination in Usagi Doroppu depends “on the comparability of co-­occurring signs [. . . ,] and therefore vanishes when the sign is isolated and inspected by itself” (Agha, 2007, p.  24), with lexical and orthographic moves specific to this channel playing a major role in how the author divides identities and stance performances across the text.

Who do you think uses hiragana-­ore? Now that I have established that authors can engage with script-­pronoun combinations as distinct units, it is time to switch to an interpretation-­focused discussion of if and how readers attend to these overlapping indexes in ways that consider the social use of both variants. While psycholinguistic studies have shown that script use influences reader perceptions of individual nouns, there is no prior research on whether readers engage with script-­word combinations as indexes of specific language users (Iwahara & Hatta, 2004; Kess & Miyamoto, 1999; Ukita, Sugishima, Minagawa, Inoue, & Kashu, 1996). As a result, we do not know whether readers of a manga like Usagi Doroppu interpret its script-­ pronoun combinations through attending to ideologies about both lexical and orthographic practices. It is of course possible, after all, that readers engage with script variation in a more predictable manner than authors. The author of Usagi Doroppu even raised this perspective during our interview, as she mentioned that she did not think most readers noticed all the intentional script play in her text. My goal for the rest of Scripting Japan is therefore to take the first steps in evidencing that Japanese readers engage with script variation in a way informed by linguistic ideologies. I will begin this process in the current section by continuing

Script choice and pronoun choice 121 my discussion of script-­pronoun combinations and then later expand my focus in Chapter 6 to look at how readers engage with variant script use throughout entire texts. The data I discuss in both of these chapters come from different sections of an online survey on script use that I produced and distributed in 2018. Excluding the introductory demographic questions, the survey consisted of five distinct sections. Each of these investigated either aspects of the participants’ own script use or their interpretation of certain orthographic changes. I disseminated the survey via snowball sampling utilizing my local/professional networks, online sites frequented by native Japanese speakers, and requests for further advertisement included at the end of the survey. The survey ultimately received a total of 208 responses, but only around half of the respondents (106) completed all sections. As a result, the number of total responses to individual questions/sections differs. I will therefore provide demographic breakdowns for individual areas of the survey as they become relevant rather than all at once for the survey as a whole. Initially, the survey’s overarching interest in script was not stated outright. The opening pages simply described the survey (in Japanese) as “conducted as part of research into Japanese reading and writing, specifically relating to connections between sentence construction/content and author images.” Hiding the survey’s primary intent was necessary for the goals of the survey’s first section, which I will describe more in Chapter 6. As the survey progressed, however, its interest in script use became clear. Later questions specifically asked respondents about their orthographic practices or individual examples of variant script use. The data I discuss in the current section come from one of these latter sections. Upon entering the question set the current section of this chapter draws its data from, respondents read a small introductory statement that mentioned that Japanese authors sometimes divide character types through script/pronoun combinations (Masuji, 2011; Narasaki, 2009; Robertson, 2017). The survey then presented participants with five script-­pronoun combinations out of a total of 16 total options (see Table 5.2) and asked them to briefly describe the sort of character they thought would be appropriate to each one. Age, gender, and various personality traits were keyed as potential areas for comment during the task description, but respondents ultimately entered their opinions freely into text boxes below each script-­pronoun combination. My use of a limited number of combinations combined with boxes for free description was primarily intended to avoid increasing participant fatigue. As mentioned, the current experiment was conducted toward the end of a larger survey. I consequently felt that expecting responses to all 16 potential combinations was likely to increase the risk of participants simply abandoning the survey. Demanding multiple set evaluations for each pronoun via common survey items like Likert scales similarly risked exhausting participants. The use of open-­ended responses alone was intended not only to avoid issues but also to provide benefits to data analysis. While completely open-­ended responses obviously created the potential for issues with comparability between the data, they also helped ensure that readers only entered images they felt were primary in their minds. This also allowed data analysis to recognize

122  Script choice and pronoun choice Table 5.2  Number of respondents who encountered each script-­pronoun combination. watashi

boku

ore

atashi

uchi

jibun

Kanji 私 (37) 僕 (39) 俺 (37) 自分 (38) Hiragana わたし (38) ぼく (38) おれ (37) あたし (38) うち (38) じぶん (31) Katakana ワタシ (34) ボク (38) オレ (38) アタシ (38) ウチ (39) ジブン (36)

where common demographic attributes like gender and age were not front and center during evaluations of a given script-­pronoun combination. As for the selection of the 16 specific script-­pronoun combinations, I  first included all possible representations of the pronouns seen in Usagi Doroppu. I  then supplemented this list with all possible representations of the pronouns uchi and jibun. While absent from the earlier manga, I included these two pronouns to recognize their growing use in contemporary Japan (Abe, 2004; L. Brown & Cheek, 2017; S. Brown, 1994; Moskowitz, 2014). Table 5.3 shows all these script-­pronoun combinations followed by the total number of respondents who encountered each representation during the survey. Note that the pronouns atashi and uchi do not have established kanji representations. Ultimately, 120 respondents participated in this experiment. They were divided between 88 women (73.3%) and 32 men (26.7%). Sixty-­eight (56.7%) were between 18 and 30 years old, 41 (34.2%) were between 31 and 50, and 11 (9.2%) were older than 50. While the respondent breakdown means that conclusions will be somewhat biased toward the opinions of females between 18 and 30 years old, I will not be breaking down respondent answers by demographic category in this chapter. The script-­pronoun combinations were presented via pseudo-­random distribution, and there were not enough members of certain demographic categories to produce any confident statements regarding how age or gender tends to affect understandings of script use. Attention to demographic divides and even individual experiences in interpretation of orthographic indexes is an exciting area for future study. However, I  would like to stress that this investigation was designed to answer the fundamental questions of if and how Japanese readers engage with ideologies about script use(rs) during interpretation of script-­pronoun combinations. This groundwork is necessary before any later comparative considerations can occur. My selection of snowball sampling as a recruitment methodology was therefore based on a preference for recruiting the highest number of respondents, and done with awareness that it would likely prevent analysis on demographic-­based lines. During my presentation of participants’ responses throughout this section, I will make use of both qualitative and quantitative styles of data analysis. The quantitative data come from manual extraction of evaluations of author gender, as this is the most common attribute discussed across all script-­pronoun combinations. My discussion of each pronoun will begin by detailing the numbers of respondents who linked each representation to only male speakers (via terms like

Script choice and pronoun choice 123 Table 5.3  Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for watashi.

私 [kanji] わたし [hiragana] ワタシ [katakana]

Male

Female

(N)either/Unclear

0 (0%) *(0/12, 0%) 1 (1/38, 2.63%) *(1/28, 3.57%) 1 (1/34, 2.94%) *(1/16, 6.25%)

12 (12/37, 32.43%) *(12/12, 100%) 27 (25/38, 71.05%) *(25/26, 96.43%) 15 (15/34, 44.12%) *(15/16, 93.75%)

25 (25/37, 67.57%) 10 (10/38, 26.32%) 18 (18/34, 52.94%)

otoko or dansei), only female speakers (via terms like onna or josei), or either/ neither gender. There is certainly a difference between “either” (i.e., the use of terms like danjo that explicitly include men and women) and “neither” (i.e., comments that do not mention gender), but I ultimately combined them in my data set because many responses did not (as we shall see) allow clean divides into one of these two camps. The “(N)either/Unclear” category therefore should not be taken as the number of respondents who do not associate the script-­pronoun combination with men or women alone. Rather, it should be understood as – and I will analyze it as – the number of participants who do not consider a combination as primary or exclusive to a single gender. In light of this complication, tables will break down the percentage of respondents who listed only male or female language users from two perspectives: the first presents selections of “male” or “female” as a percentage of the total number of evaluations of the script-­pronoun combination, and the second presents the choices as a percentage of just the respondents who mentioned a single gender. This second perspective is marked using * in Tables  5.3 through 5.8. After discussing assumptions of gendered use for a pronoun and its representations, I will then turn to a more qualitative analysis of respondent comments. My specific interest throughout these sections is the identities that are linked to a given combination but absent in discussions of the same script or pronoun in other configurations and that appear exclusive to a script-­pronoun combination rather than something more generally linked to the pronoun or script alone. To begin, I will first review the participants’ responses to all representations of the pronoun watashi. As Table 5.3 shows, watashi use was attributed to female speakers more than male speakers across all representations. The responses are therefore slightly different from the data seen in my analysis of Usagi Doroppu, as respondents do not treat kanji-­watashi as exclusively male-­linked. However, the hiragana-­watashi combination did cause assumptions of exclusively female use to exceed the number of comments in the “(N)either/Unclear” category, creating the only case where a majority of responses linked the script-­pronoun combination to a single gender. Given historical links and contemporary metalinguistic

124  Script choice and pronoun choice dialogues connecting hiragana and female language use(rs) (see Yoda, 2000, 2004), as well as the data from my analysis of Usagi Doroppu, it is unsurprising that hiragana representation of watashi increased assumptions that the user would be a woman over other representations. Importantly, though, and as I will later show clearly via the qualitative data, this female image is not all-­encompassing. Hiragana use for watashi increased the assumption of a specific type of female speaker rather than just female users as a whole. Moving now to the qualitative data, most respondents described the kanji-­ watashi combination as for danjo (men and women) or linked it to gender non-­ specific contexts such as an office or (semi-­)formal situation. Sixteen responses specifically used the terms ippanteki (general) or shakaijin (literally: society person, a working adult), and sentiments like the quote “anything from a young girl to a working man1” were common. For the kanji-­watashi combination, the “(N) either/Unclear” category was generally equivalent to “Either,” with over half of the respondents stating outright that they thought kanji-­watashi was appropriate to both male and female language users or language use. However, a number of respondents mentioned that although they associated kanji-­watashi with men and women, they felt that the locations where each gender would (be shown to) use the pronoun differed. One respondent stated that the combination was appropriate for men who are mid to late in their career and for women in their 20s. Another described it as acceptable for all women but only for shakaijin men. These responses also reflect data from a different section of the same survey the current study appeared in wherein respondents answered questions about the script-­pronoun combinations they used during different interactive contexts. A  total of 82.64% (100/121) of respondents listed the kanji-­watashi combination as preferred for formal contexts, but this number dropped to only 48.31% (75/118) for casual contexts. For male respondents, this change was especially drastic. While 81.25% of males (26/32) claimed to use kanji-­watashi in formal writing, only five (15.6%) listed it as their preferred option for more casual writing. This change further indicates that use of the combination in casual spaces is associated with female language use. Finally, among the 12 respondents who linked the pronoun/script combination to female speakers alone, most used only generic terms like onna no hito or josei (both meaning “woman”). Four respondents required the speaker to be an adult, though, connecting the combination to housewives or mothers. The hiragana-­watashi (わたし) combination, then, as discussed in the quantitative data, had the primary effect of increasing the use of terms like onna no hito or josei over gender-­neutral, inclusive, or gender-­absent descriptions. But this increase in assumptions of a female user was not the only change, as 12 of the 27 respondents who linked the combination to female speakers alone concurrently used terms like wakai/osanai (young) or onna no ko/joshi (young girl). One respondent even described the user as an “honors student type middle-­school or high-­school girl,” mirroring the decision of the author of Usagi Doroppu to use hiragana-­watashi for the academically skilled teenager, Rin. Furthermore, links between hiragana-­watashi and young women were also indicated by the absence

Script choice and pronoun choice 125 of words like otoshiyori (older age) in the kanji-­watashi evaluations. Even the previously common term shakaijin appeared only once, with hiragana causing older or working women to become excluded from direct mention. By contrast, evaluations of hiragana-­watashi that allowed for a male user became quite vague. Beyond the common terms dansei (male) or ippanteki (general), the only details were one description of the hypothetical male user as teinei (polite) and another as a man “at work.” More fleshed out male identities were absent, with male users of a hiragana-­watashi combination seemingly indistinct for the participants who recognized their existence. Finally, the primary feature throughout the descriptions of katakana-­watashi (ワタシ) users was the appearance of identities absent in all other watashi combinations. Compared with the hiragana and kanji representations, respondents’ impressions of who was represented via the katakana-­watashi combination were less unified but more vivid. Evaluations ranged from the vague, such as “wears glasses,” “smart,” “antisocial,” “desires attention,” and “hormonal/pubescent teen (chūnibyō),” to oddly specific, such as “a kind of old person who appeared in ancient novels,” “a feminine man,” “an alien, ghost, or old person,” “nyūhafu (literally “new half,” a word that potentially refers to transgender, transsexual, or cross-­dressing individuals),”2 “a machine,” “a person who wishes to stress their femininity,” and someone who is “poetic, strange, or interesting.” Perhaps surprisingly, given the phenomena seen in Chapter  3, only one respondent specifically linked the katakana-­watashi combination to “people studying Japanese.” Ultimately, then, while katakana seemed to be the least consistently linked to any specific identity, it was importantly not linked to the attributes and identity types seen with the other combinations. Terms like shakaijin, teinei, and osanai were completely absent from evaluations, with katakana-­watashi consistently linked to identities that are “non-­standard” in some way. Looking at the evaluations of watashi representations overall, some listed evaluations certainly align with general understandings of how Japanese people view each script in the abstract. The impression of hiragana as a youthful and feminine script, for instance, matches the common evaluation of the hiragana-­watashi combination as appropriate to young girls. While this could be taken as evidence of script manipulation having a functionalist effect, analysis of boku makes it clear that the result of any script’s application is not “predictable” across pronouns. As Table 5.4 shows, boku differs from watashi in being always primarily linked to a male speaker by my respondents. This general finding reflects the pronoun’s commonly asserted status as an index of male language or masculinity (Kinsui, 2010; Ono & Thompson, 2003). More unexpected, though, is that it is katakana, rather than hiragana, that increased assumptions of a female-­exclusive user for boku. Female-­only use of boku was mentioned in no responses to kanji-­boku and only one response to hiragana-­boku. By contrast, katakana-­boku responses contained six (15.79%) comments that mentioned only female users. The combination also received the highest number of responses in the (N)either/Unclear category, greatly reducing the male-­only primacy in evaluations of other combinations. The hiragana and kanji representations of boku are instead attributed to

126  Script choice and pronoun choice Table 5.4  Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for boku.

僕 ぼく ボク

Male

Female

(N)either/Unclear

26 (26/39, 66.66%) *(26/26, 100%) 22 (22/38, 58.89%) *(22/23, 95.65%) 15 (15/38, 39.47%) *(15/21, 71.43)

0 (0%) *(0/26, 100%) 1 (1/38, 2.63%) *(1/23, 4.355) 6 (6/38, 15.79%) *(15/21, 28.57%)

13 (13/39, 33.33%) 15 (15/38, 39.47 %) 17 (17/38, 44.74%)

only male speakers over 50% of the time, with neither script influencing assumptions of user gender to the same extent as that seen with watashi. The qualitative data similarly differ from the discussion of representations of watashi, as each script’s application to boku resulted in distinct changes from evaluations of its “unmarked” kanji interpretation. Starting with the “standard” kanji-­boku pairing (僕), while most respondents described their imagined user as male and no respondents stated that kanji-­boku was only or primarily used by women (as per Table 5.4), two respondents mentioned female use as a possibility. One simply wrote onna no ko (young girl) as part of their answer, while the other listed a potential connection to elementary school girls. While some respondents therefore rejected the male-­exclusive assumption of most participants, perhaps recognizing the growing use of boku by teenage women in Japan (see Miyazaki, 2002), associations with female language users were still restricted. In no cases were adult or even teenage women mentioned during evaluations of the combination despite kanji’s generic image as an “adult” script (Iwahara, Hatta,  & Maehara, 2003; Unger, 1984). In fact, use of a kanji-­boku combination was generally seen as an index of a younger language user. Across all evaluations, a total of 23 of the 39 responses (58.97%) explicitly referred to users as young, in high school, or in college. Only one respondent directly mentioned users of middle age or above, with the general impressions seen here diverging from the locations in which kanji-­boku appeared in Usagi Doroppu. Rather than asserting that the combination itself was primary to only one age group, though, some respondents noted that the age range of the speaker changed their impression of the combination. For instance, one respondent wrote that kanji-­boku gave a mature (seijuku) impression in the case of children and a tidy (seiso), upstanding (majime), or simple/naïve (soboku) impression in the case of adults. Finally, outside of age and gender, the kanji-­boku combination was linked to intelligence by four respondents and to gentle or kind speakers by ten. This importantly contrasts directly with kanji’s supposed “hard” image and the earlier evaluations of kanji-­watashi. The prior combination was linked

Script choice and pronoun choice 127 to intelligence only once and to soft or kind speakers on no occasions. Kanji is therefore by no means guaranteed to produce these two effects. Moving now to hiragana-­boku (ぼく), the primary effect of the script was a reduction in assumptions of age. The hiragana-­boku combination stressed the youthful links found in evaluations of kanji-­boku even further. Only one respondent explicitly stated that adult males used both kanji-­boku and hiragana-­ boku, arguing there was no difference between the two. By contrast, 16 respondents used a term meaning “child” or “infant” during their descriptions of hiragana-­boku, two imagined a middle school student, 11 specifically mentioned elementary school students, and one linked the form to preschoolers (a total of 30/38 responses, 78.95%). No respondents raised the links to users in college or high school, as seen in evaluations of kanji-­boku, and one unequivocally rejected older speakers by writing that “if the person is an adult, it is 僕 (kanji-­boku).” The two direct mentions of female use in this data set similarly linked the term to younger girls, although one response qualified this as a “boyish girl (otoko no ko ppoi onna no ko).” This youthful effect was also dominant, as further attributes were rare in the evaluations. Other descriptions consist of just one mention of intelligence, one link to homosexuality (via the term gei, from the English “gay”), one assumption of wealth, and one use of the term hetare (good-­for-­nothing). Finally, as mentioned earlier, evaluations of katakana-­boku (ボク) increased the number of participants who listed female-­only and gender-­inclusive/non-­ exclusive identities. However, the links to a female speaker were not generic, but rather a consequence of the boku-­katakana combination indexing a specific identity. Five of the six (83.33%) respondents who mentioned only a female user described a young speaker. Four of these five respondents (80%) then gave an even further specification, describing the young female speaker as some form of Japanese “geek” or “nerd” identity. Two listed the female user as a young otaku girl, referencing a Japanese subculture focused on the consumption and collection of anime, manga, and similar media (see Azuma (2005) or Okamoto (2015)). Another mentioned a young girl interested in anime, avoiding the term otaku but attributing a shared interest to the script-­pronoun combination’s user. The fourth referenced a young itai-­kei (literally “painful-­type”) girl. This slang term refers to those who ostentatiously display images of anime characters across things they own, which causes “pain” to others via secondhand embarrassment3 (NICONICOPEDIA, 2019). While one respondent who listed a female katakana-­boku user did so without mentioning youth or otaku, they also described the user in very specific terms. The respondent mentioned “bokukko” identities, using a term that refers to women who mix indexes traditionally associated with male language (especially boku) throughout their speech (Tsukamoto, 2014). Taken together, then, while the links to female uses across the katakana-­boku combination show some diversity, they still repeatedly include references to specific female-­linked identity types that are absent from evaluations of both the other script+boku combinations and the katakana-­watashi combination. The female otaku and bokukko identities that arise here instead appear particular to the combination of the two

128  Script choice and pronoun choice indexes, resulting from their overlap rather than a predictable effect of either element’s marked use. Furthermore, outside of links to specific female identities, katakana-­boku produced two sets of responses that were absent from other boku representations. First, assumptions of youth were slightly reduced – although by no means eliminated – compared with other representations. Taken together, evaluations contained 16 (42.1%) explicit mentions of a user under college age compared with 23 (58.97%) for the kanji representation and 30 (78.95%) for the hiragana representation. Second, the script produced links to a variety of non-­gendered identities absent from all other data sets, including the katakana-­watashi combination. Three users mentioned weakness or cowardice, one referred to the speaker as a (non-­gendered) otaku, one described the user as spoiled, and another linked katakana-­boku directly to “psychopaths (saikopasu).” By contrast, one respondent described the user of hiragana-­boku positively as someone “of good upbringing (sodachi ga ii)” and “not delinquent (furyō dewanai).” Finally, multiple responses attributed the combination to a specific interactional context rather than a speaker type: two assumed the speaker would be an older person who is attempting to humble themselves while talking to someone younger, and two others mentioned a man talking to a woman or a child. Moving now to the pronoun ore, the quantitative results again show differences compared with prior combinations. As with boku, hiragana representation did not increase mention of female users. Additionally, katakana representation was not linked to young or otaku women, with all representations of the pronoun linked by over 75% of respondents only to males. For the kanji/standard representation of ore (俺), there was considerable disagreement across the data regarding the age range of the (male) speaker appropriate to the combination. Terms meaning “child” appeared six times, and the word “wakai” (young) appeared twice. However, three respondents stated the user would be between 20 and 40  years old, and another specifically linked the combination to an “old person in the countryside (inaka no toshiyori).” The combination showed more consistent links to defined character types than kanji-­ boku, though, being commonly connected to descriptions that often appear in Table 5.5  Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for ore.

俺 おれ オレ

Male

Female

(N)either/Unclear

29 (29/37, 78.38%) *(29/29, 100%) 29 (29/37, 78.38%) *(29/29, 100%) 29 (29/38, 76.16%) *(29/30, 96.67%)

0 (0/37, 0%) *(0/29, 0%) 0 (0/37, 0%) *(0/29, 0%) 1 (1/38, 2.63%) *(1/30, 3.33%)

8 (8/37, 21.62%) 8 (8/37, 21.62%) 8 (8/38, 21.05%)

Script choice and pronoun choice 129 mainstream metalinguistic dialogues about ore users. Terms meaning “casual” appeared six times; terms meaning “rough,” “manly,” or “confident/assertive” appeared three times each (nine times total); and the adjectives tsuyoi (strong) and namaiki (cheeky) each appeared once. One person even explicitly connected the combination to “heterosexual (heterosekusharu)” males. While some respondents did allow for kanji-­ore use by both men and women, or did not specifically mention a gender, women users were rarely explicitly detailed. The only exception was three descriptions of the pronoun-­script combination as being acceptable for (but never exclusive to) “older (kōreisha)” women from unspecified “regions (chihō),” reflecting data showing the pronoun’s non-­gendered use in certain provincial dialects (Sunaoshi, 2004). The changes caused by using hiragana for ore (おれ) were somewhat similar to those seen for boku. Again, hiragana produced a decrease in the age of the imagined speaker. The words “wakai” (young) and “ko” (child) appeared a total of seven times, similar to the kanji representation, but 12 more respondents stated that the user could be in elementary school, middle school, or both. In total, then, 19 (compared with eight for kanji-­ore) respondents linked the combination to youth. Evaluations of the hiragana-­ore combination also showed some overlap with the adjectives that appeared across evaluations of the kanji-­ore combination, as terms meaning “rough” again appeared three times, and terms meaning “cheeky” appeared twice. While hiragana therefore did not prevent ore from being seen as rough, it did invite previously absent “softer” images. One user directly described the hypothetical user as “not very rough (amari arappokunai),” while two listed them as “kind (yasashii).” Both of these terms were absent in evaluations of other ore representations. In summation, hiragana’s softer image may be at play here for some respondents – and in a way that is perhaps surprisingly not evident for the other pronouns – but we also see that understanding of the script is not unified. The indexical field of the ore pronoun also clearly disallows certain elements of hiragana’s indexical field for many respondents, as is most evident in the absence of any images of female users. The katakana representation of ore (オレ) was also often seen as appropriate to younger speakers, with nine respondents using terms like wakai. However, the general strength of this effect was weaker. The lowest asserted age range was still higher than that seen with hiragana. Middle school and high school were each mentioned three times during katakana-­ore evaluations, while elementary school was mentioned only once. Terms meaning “rough” continued to appear, with six respondents using a Japanese equivalent like arai or arappoi, but this was supplemented by four respondents describing the user as yancha (delinquent/naughty) for the first time. That is, descriptions moved from just generic terms for roughness to include specific assertions of delinquency. Most interesting, though, was an increase in the idea that the user was somewhat pretentious and show-­offy, to borrow a term used by the author of Usagi Doroppu, as these traits were not seen in evaluations of the katakana representations of watashi or boku or the other representations of ore. Terms like chōshi mono (an easily elated person), kiza (affected, pretentious), ikiri and ikigatteiru (overly enthusiastic), charai (flashy),

130  Script choice and pronoun choice and senobi shiteiru (overextending) appeared a total of seven times across the katakana-­ore responses. Finally, unlike with boku, explicit discussion of katakana using female characters was almost totally absent. Only one respondent listed a female user in the data, evaluating them as someone who is “trying too hard (muri shite hyōki suru)” rather than as a member of an established identity type. For atashi, the last pronoun seen in Usagi Doroppu, the presented representations were restricted to hiragana and katakana. As the quantitative data in Table  5.6 show, changing the pronoun’s representations created a large difference between gender-­related evaluations. While hiragana-­atashi was linked to only female speakers by over 83% of respondents, just over half did the same for the katakana representation. Instead, over twice as many respondents (a change of six to 14, or 16.22% to 36.84%) neither listed gender nor explicitly allowed the script-­pronoun combination to be used by men and women, while four (10.53%, up from 0%) specifically connected the combination to a male speaker. The effect of katakana on evaluations of atashi is therefore almost the opposite of what occurred for boku. The qualitative data help us understand the origin of the change in assumptions of user gender reflected in Table 5.6. The “standard” hiragana representation of atashi (あたし) was described in a manner that matches the stereotypical speaker type asserted by researchers like Ide (1979). Respondents evaluated the combination as primary to representations of young female language while also regularly mentioning terms like “frank,” “uneducated,” or “assertive.” Five users also connected the combination to older women, reflecting a contrasting element of the indexical field of atashi noted in Japan by researchers like Hiramoto (2013) and also seen in Usagi Doroppu. However, descriptions of the katakana-­atashi combination (アタシ) were conspicuous, in that they contained a larger number of references to Japanese queer identities than any other combination. This resulted in much of the gender-­ related changes across representations of atashi visible in Table 5.6. Across the data, respondents produced the terms onē and okama three times each. These are both potentially pejorative terms for same-­sex attracted men in Japan (for further details, see Lunsing (2005), Maree (2003, 2013a, 2013b), and McLelland (2003)). Respondents also wrote gei (from the English word “gay”) twice, a

Table 5.6  Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for atashi.

あたし アタシ

Male

Female

(N)either/Unclear

0 (0/37, 0%) *(0/31, 0%) 4 (4/38, 10.53%) *(4/24, 16.67%)

31 (31/37, 83.78%) *(31/31, 100%) 20 (20/38, 52.63%) *(20/24, 83.33%)

6 (6/37, 16.22%) 14 (14/38, 36.84%)

Script choice and pronoun choice 131 Japanese term that primarily refers to homosexual males, and toransujendā (from “transgender”) once. One respondent also mentioned an “okama-­kyara-­gei,” utilizing a confusing phrase that literally translates as “a gei who performs an okama character.” While we should recognize the diversity of the identities represented across these terms, when taken together they all refer to queer speakers understood to perform gender transgressive subject positions or possess same-­sex attraction. Certainly, katakana marking of other pronouns was seen to index queer identities in a few earlier data sets, and at times queer identities were also linked briefly to other scripts (such as hiragana-­boku). At most, though, only a single respondent made these assertions in the prior data sets. The katakana-­atashi combination therefore appears to index queer speech/speakers to an extent that is not observable when discussing katakana, atashi, and other script-­pronoun combinations, with the specific combination attended to in ways that static understandings of its constituent indexes do not predict. That said, these links were, as always, not guaranteed. The katakana-­atashi combination shared evaluations with the hiragana representations. Both combinations included common references to youth and low education, although, as with ore, katakana representation increased the extent or detail of this latter evaluation. While hiragana-­atashi use was just linked to a lack of studiousness, specific “delinquent” Japanese identities such as burikko and yankī (see Miller, 2004a, 2004b; Sato, 1991; Tajan, 2015) appeared during descriptions of the katakana-­atashi combination. Finally, evaluations of the pronouns jibun and uchi showed much less change across representations than the other pronouns described so far. For jibun, the kanji representation (自分) was the only case wherein over 50% of descriptions exclusively mentioned male use. The drop in perceived male exclusivity across the non-­kanji versions was not due to an increase in assumptions of female-­only use, though, but rather an increase in terms referencing men and women (e.g., danjo) or non-­gendered descriptions (e.g., majime na hito “an upright person”). The hiragana-­watashi combination therefore still stands as the only hiragana-­ pronoun combination across the entire data set that increased assumptions of female-­exclusive use above all other evaluations of the pronoun. Interestingly, some speakers also actually rejected the entire possibility of all non-­kanji representations of jibun. This is reflected in Table 5.7 by the category IMPOSSIBLE. While use of scripts other than kanji slightly increased allowance of a female jibun user, the qualitative data showed little other explicit contrast between how representations of jibun were evaluated. All three combinations were associated with a similar range of ages and social actors. Mentions of people from the kansai or ōsaka region, military membership (as linked to jibun by Kanamaru (1997)), foreigners, and interest in sports were the only descriptions that were repeated in any set of evaluations. Aside from “foreigners,” though, these evaluations all appeared in fairly equal amounts across all three representations. Only the katakana representation ジブン produced any distinct responses, with assumptions of a non-­native Japanese user exclusive to this combination. Despite its absence in any of the foreigner-­focused manga studied in Chapter 3, the katakana-­jibun combination stands as the only script-­pronoun combination in this study that was

132  Script choice and pronoun choice Table 5.7  Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for jibun.

自分 じぶん ジブン

Male

Female

(N)either/Unclear

24 (24/38, 68.42%) *(24/24, 100%) 11 (11/31, 35.48%) *(11/12, 91.67%) 14 (14/36, 38.89%) *(14/14, 100%)

0 (0/38, 0%) *(0/24, 0%) 1 (1/31, 3.23%) *(1/12, 8.33%) 0 (0/36, 0%) *(0/14, 0%)

14 (14/38, 36.84%) 18 (18/31, 58.06%) 20 (20/36, 55%)

1 (3.23%) IMPOSSIBLE 2 (5.56%) IMPOSSIBLE

Table 5.8  Differences between pronoun representation and gender ascription for uchi.

うち ウチ

Male

Female

(N)either/Unclear

0 (0/38, 0%) *(0/29, 0%) 1 (1/39, 2.56%) *(1/28, 3.57%)

29 (29/38, 76.32%) *(29/29, 100%) 27 (27/39, 69.23%) *(1/39, 96.43%)

9 (9/38, 23.68%) 11 (11/39, 28.21%)

treated as appropriate to non-­Japanese speakers by more than one participant. Finally, somewhat surprisingly given the findings regarding atashi, links to queer users were not visible in the data despite the fact that the use of jibun by Japanese lesbians has been noted in prior research (e.g., Abe (2004)). Evaluations of uchi featured even less variation than jibun. As Table 5.8 shows, around 70% of respondents to both versions of uchi mentioned only female users. Similarly, 16 respondents for hiragana uchi and 15 respondents for katakana uchi specifically linked the pronoun user to the kansai area, in contrast to two to three respondents for each version of jibun, with the region standing as the most common attribute, other than gender, associated with each form of uchi. There is some question regarding whether kansai is the origin of the uchi pronoun, as Miyazaki (2004) links it to the Tokyo area. Regardless, the respondents here clearly associated the pronoun primarily with female language users from kansai. No descriptions beyond “female” and “(from) Kansai” were mentioned by more than two respondents for either uchi representation in my data. Of course, the data from the current study do not provide exact reasons for the low variety of interpretations for jibun and uchi, but I do wish to raise one possibility. Compared with watashi, boku, ore, or atashi, the use of jibun and uchi is more marked or unfamiliar for many Japanese users. The pronouns see less daily use and also, critically, appear in fewer media representations (Agha, 2003;

Script choice and pronoun choice 133 Bakhtin, 1986; Wortham & Reyes, 2015). They therefore likely contain a rather unpopulated indexical field for most speakers. As a result, it is not surprising that the links between uchi and female speakers from kansai were steadier across all representations of the pronoun than links between other pronouns and even major demographic categories like gender or age. The indexical field of a script and a pronoun cannot interact in major ways if the pronoun’s indexical field is limited to only one or two identities. This is especially true if said identities are not particularly incongruous with the indexical fields of any scripts or the pronoun does not have a strongly established standard script against which a particular variant can appear non-­standard or meaningful. Beliefs that kanji is a “male” script are well documented in Japan, but there are no similar data showing that any script is linked to a geographic area. It may require interviewing people from the kansai area to receive a more detailed understanding regarding if and how script use and uchi interact, in the same way that an understanding of a “British” accent is likely to be more complete in Britain than elsewhere (Agha, 2007; Collins & Slembrouck, 2007). Ultimately, in summarizing the data throughout this subsection as a whole, the most immediate takeaway is rather straightforward. Native Japanese speakers can associate distinct identities and traits with script-­pronoun combinations, even out of context, and ultimately produce evaluations derived from perceived commonalities in their understandings of each index. For instance, while researchers like Frank (2002), Somers (2012), and Maree (2013b, 2016) have all shown links between LGBTQ individuals and marked use of both atashi and katakana, only the katakana-­atashi combination brought these groups to the forefront for most respondents. In other words, while both variants regularly include queer identities in their indexical field, and can be found in the language use of queer individuals in Japan, these links were not activated or treated as primary for the respondents here when either variant was used independently due to the lack of any associated “ritual context” (Silverstein, 2003, p. 226). When the two variants were placed into explicit interaction, however, respondents began to attend to areas of congruity between the variants’ indexical fields, or their own experiences with uses of the katakana-­atashi by queer individuals, causing evaluations of the combination as indexing gay, transgender, or queer users (to borrow respondents’ terms) to appear. In other contexts, though, the katakana script produced different effects, as its indexical field held different areas of overlap with the indexical fields of other pronouns. The near-­exclusive links between katakana-­boku and otaku or katakana-­ore and show-­offs or braggarts stand as clear examples, but even the increase in assumptions of female language users caused by the hiragana-­watashi combination is best understood as part of this process. On its own, the increased assumption of female users noted in evaluations of the hiragana-­watashi combination could be seen as a direct effect of hiragana’s feminine script image. When looking at the data as a whole, though, it is clear that the change is restricted to a combination of two items that include female language users in their indexical fields. Evaluations of hiragana-­boku, katakana-­watashi, or other combinations that included only one of the two items did not produce a

134  Script choice and pronoun choice similar effect. As with the analysis of script-­pronoun combinations in Usagi Doroppu, the results of this second study therefore show that the ultimate identities linked to any script-­pronoun combination often result from the complex overlap of the “constellation of ideologically related meanings” (Eckert, 2008, p. 464) associated with each variant. No script produced a predictable effect based on its recognized images, with respondents’ evaluations instead resulting from complex navigations of their understandings of who uses (or is shown to use) certain pronouns and scripts. Certainly, it does appear that the indexical field of a pronoun has the dominant effect on the interpretation of a given combination. The data show cases of script changes causing minimal or no effect on responses (e.g., for uchi and jibun), but evaluations of different pronouns were always distinct. However, it is not unexpected that beliefs about who uses a particular pronoun are more vivid or primary than beliefs about who uses a particular script. This is doubly true for beliefs about who uses (or is shown to use) a particular script for their pronouns. While obviously important to Japanese language users, script variation is still an inherently writing-­restricted act. Pronouns are instead available in both speech and writing and supported by a more explicit and long-­running body of research, discussion, and explicit metalinguistic attention (Dahlberg-­Dodd, 2018; Mackie, 2010; Ono & Thompson, 2003; Sturtz-­Sreetharan, 2004). That said, as we have seen, a script’s having a potentially “secondary” effect on interpretation does not mean that its impact is minimal. The data here show that the ultimate effects created by the application of a script to a pronoun, while certainly resulting from recognized elements of each variant’s indexical field, are surprising or even impossible to predict when either item is evaluated in the abstract. Consequently, understanding how readers comprehend these combinations demands attention to ideologies about script use in Japan, as engagement with beliefs about pronoun use alone overlooks a major influence on the ultimate identity that a script-­ pronoun combination will index.

Scripts, pronouns, and identities Through examining how authors use script-­pronoun combinations to index specific identities as well as how native speakers interpret these combinations out of context, this chapter has evidenced that sociolinguistic perspectives on variant language use can also be vital for understanding targeted representation of lexical items in Japanese. Authors can use script-­pronoun combinations in ways that deviate from expectations created by the script use elsewhere in their texts. Similarly, individual script-­pronoun combinations can index identities that are not found in major descriptions of (the use of) either variant on its own. Understanding these complications is not possible when we treat script as only a static marker of known effects. This chapter has shown that a hiragana-­boku user, to give one example, is not simply a boku user who is viewed in a more “hiragana” fashion. Rather, a hiragana-­boku user – and any other script-­pronoun combination’s user  – is often a distinct identity category defined through interactions

Script choice and pronoun choice 135 between individual understandings of who uses boku and who uses hiragana (for their pronouns). The meaning of the combination is therefore not simply fixed in time, but rather created through understanding of both indexes “in relation to the context or situation at hand, including those aspects of the situation created by what has already been said or done” (Agha, 2007, p. 14). At this time, though, my finding that script-­pronoun combinations can serve as sites of ideologically negotiated interpretation obviously can only be extrapolated to representations of other items that are not also indexes. I have not shown, and do not intend to claim, that Japanese readers draw on ideologies regarding script users when evaluating targeted representations of more “generic” vocabulary. I also must admit that I have difficulty imagining a case in which Japanese authors or readers could (or would), to give some examples, associate distinct identities with two samples of written language use that are identical outside of containing a contrasting representation of a word like kuruma (car), isu (chair), or inu (dog) that is not generally associated with only specific language users. Undoubtedly, discussions at the script-­image level are often still much more productive than sociolinguistic ones for understanding how readers interact with some styles of vocabulary-­level marked representation. I therefore again wish to clearly reiterate that the goal of Scripting Japan is to show that sociolinguistic perspectives further our understanding of how Japanese script use creates meaning rather than override what has been asserted or evidenced before. However, just as it would be an exaggeration to claim all interpretation of script variation draws upon ideologies about language use(rs), the findings here show that it is also an oversight to assume that script use is sure to have a non-­ negotiated effect in a given context. And this is potentially true even when we discuss certain script-­word combinations that are not traditionally thought to be indexes. For instance, while I have presented across Scripting Japan multiple quotes from Japanese writers discussing what kind of coffee is best represented by katakana and kanji (e.g., Nakamura’s (1983) comment that kanji is not appropriate for instant coffee), the analysis in the current chapter allows us to raise the question of whether we are limiting ourselves by discussing images of only the coffee or café itself. The word “kōhī” is subject to quite frequent inconsistent representation throughout Japan, as is evident in these common discussions about the best way to write the term. It is therefore not impossible that the prevalence of coffee signage in different scripts can indicate a certain type of coffee while also, for those who attend to who uses each variant and where the variants appear, indexing café owners/consumers who use or value the kanji-­kōhī combination (Akizuki, 2005; Baudinette, 2018). Indeed, the existence of beliefs about specific script habits, rather than simply marked use of a given script, is an important area to consider. Chapters 3 and 4 showed that authors treat specific scripts as more or less appropriate to specific identities, and the current chapter evidences that script-­pronoun combinations are viewed and used in a similar manner. But we cannot assume that the data in these prior chapters allow us to fully understand how Japanese readers attend to variant script use within language acts. Certainly, a full understanding of the

136  Script choice and pronoun choice social use of script in Japan minimally demands that we attend to differences in how language is used to represent people in fiction as well as actual observations of language in use. As one clear example, Chapter  3 showed that katakana is often used to index non-­native speakers, but non-­native speakers themselves do not write in katakana alone. Early learners of Japanese instead generally default to hiragana. This contrast is reflected in the fact that non-­native identities were not commonly associated with katakana-­marked pronouns by my respondents here. Likewise, a major limitation of my reader-­focused discussion in the current chapter is that all pronouns were evaluated out of any context, demanding evaluation based on broad stereotypes rather than the more complex interactions that are involved in actual understandings of language in use. In the next chapter, I will therefore address all of these limitations, closing this first major analysis of script use as a social practice in Japan by attending to how Japanese readers engage with orthographic variation throughout actual contexts of use.

Notes As in other chapters, all translations are by the author unless otherwise noted. 1 2 See Abe (2004), McLelland (2003), or Garber (2005) for more detailed discussions of the difficulties in defining this term. 3 See also the fujoshi subculture in Japan (Galbraith, 2011).

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6 Using katakana like an oyaji Script variation and authorial identity

The second half of Chapter 5 represented a major change in the focus of Scripting Japan. While Chapters 3 and 4 concentrated on how beliefs about language users influence the top-­down indexing of identities through script, Chapter  5 switched directions to attend to how readers interpret orthographic variation. Despite the chapter’s obvious limitation of attending to one style of script variation out of context, this first analysis resulted in important original findings. Of these, the most fundamental was simply that readers engage with script use in a manner that draws upon individual ideologies about contemporary Japanese script users and script use. In the current chapter, I will expand upon this primary result by examining how variant use of Japanese script throughout entire texts influences interpretations of author identity. The current chapter therefore closes this book’s studies of Japanese script variation through engaging with interpretations of entire script practices. In doing so, it will evidence and detail the existence of complex negotiations between orthographic, lexical, and grammatical indexes that are often involved in the interpretation of orthographic acts. The data in this chapter come from a section of the same survey on Japanese script use discussed in Chapter 5. In contrast to the experiment in Chapter 5, though, participants were not yet primed to consider script use. Instead, at this point they were only informed that they were involved in research “relating to connections between sentence construction/content and author image.” Similarly, the study itself just instructed the respondents to read three posts from a Japanese website and then give their impression of the author via an open-­ended response box presented after each document. Age, gender, and personality were listed as potential areas of comment, but no specific trait was mandated, and respondents were not told to pay specific attention to any aspect of the text. As with Chapter 5, open-­ended responses were used over Likert scales and other similar data collection methods to ensure traits like age and gender were raised only if a respondent felt that they were clearly extractable from the text’s content and to mitigate issues of participant fatigue inherent in lengthy surveys (Dörnyei, 2007). However, while the participants were told only that they were evaluating three Japanese texts, they were in reality participating in a matched-­guise experiment (as per Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, & Fillenbaum (1960)) on how variant Japanese

142  Using katakana like an oyaji script use influences impressions of a text’s author. The three distinct texts shown to each participant were identical if read aloud, but their orthographic content potentially differed. For each of the three texts, the survey presented every participant with one of four versions. One was an original piece of Japanese writing, while the other three were the same document modified to stress the presence of hiragana, katakana, or kanji. During analysis, I then examined the evaluations of the 12 total versions, comparing and contrasting how each script changed understanding of each document’s author. The three initial “base” texts for the experiment came from a Japanese sōdan kōnā (consultation corner) website. This term refers to online spaces where anonymous users request and provide advice regarding family life, health, relationships, and similar topics. I selected one particular sōdan kōnā as a text source over other options after comparing the length, content, and style of user-­submitted writing on various Japanese newspapers, magazines, blogs, online forums and discussion hubs, and other sōdan kōnā sites. Simply put, compared with all other websites I surveyed, the posts on the site I selected more regularly fit the level of length, detail, and content I desired for the current experiment. Posts in print media, online forums, or more “generic” question sites like Yahoo! Answers were too short to allow for targeted or subtle script manipulation. They often consisted of only a paragraph-­long post and therefore lacked the depth of content and extent of potential co-­occurring indexes found in stimuli from prior successful matched-­guise studies discussing indexicality or Japanese language use (e.g., Campbell-­Kibler, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2011a, 2011b; Cargile, Takai,  & Rodríguez, 2008; Davila, 2012; Jaffe & Walton, 2000; Preston, 1985; Watanabe & Karasawa, 2013). Additionally, on some websites these writing samples often completely lacked pronouns, preventing participant responses from interacting with the data from Chapter 5 of the current text. By contrast, the more detailed writing from blogs or essays was often of a length that risked participant burnout (Roberts & Cimasko, 2008). Strategic cuts were theoretically possible, but I felt that doing so would risk affecting the coherence, “naturalness,” and meaning of the text in ways that could have undesirable effects on reader response (Bakhtin, 1981; Dörnyei, 2007). After deciding on the source for my initial texts, I then collected a range of user posts for potential use. Out of all the collected samples, I based my final choice on considerations of data productivity and respondent burden. First, I rejected posts that were under 300 or over 400 ji (characters)1 in length. Texts under 300 ji were generally too short to establish context and provided minimal locations for orthographic manipulation. By contrast, I felt that asking people to read three texts over 400 ji and then continue through other sections of the online survey brought a high risk of participant fatigue. After this first wave of cuts, I then rejected posts that detailed violent or traumatic events to avoid causing participants unnecessary stress. Finally, after curating a collection that matched the criteria stated so far, I selected three posts that showed major differences in terms of content, writing style, and first-­person pronoun use. This ensured that I could observe if and how distinct contexts of application influenced my participants’ understanding of styles of marked script use.

Using katakana like an oyaji 143 In the end, the length of the three texts I chose ranged from 329 to 372 ji. The first text, which I will refer to here as “Health Worries,” details the author’s recent concerns regarding their health. The text’s author uses the pronoun jibun but did not mention their gender, describing themselves only as a high school student via the phrase “kōkōsei nandesuga (I’m a high school student but).” I removed this short element from the text before presenting it to participants to allow for more open interpretation of the author’s age. The text below shows “Health Worries” after this minor modification, with an English translation added to each paragraph to assist readers of the current chapter. All other formatting, paragraph breaks, punctuation (or lack thereof), etc., are unchanged from the original Japanese. 体調が悪くて悩んでいます My physical condition is bad and I am concerned 数週間前から体調が悪くて悩んでます。 Since a few weeks ago, my physical condition has been bad and I  am concerned. 自分は最近ずっと胸周辺が息詰まるように苦しくて困ってます。他にも お腹の不調がすごいときがあったり、肩や肺の肋骨が痛むときがありま す。 Recently, my chest area has been painful as if it’s hard to breathe, and this is causing me troubles. Additionally, my stomach’s condition is sometimes incredibly poor, and my shoulders and the ribs around my lungs also sometimes hurt. 最初の症状はみぞおちらへんの不調がすごくて病院へ行き、そこで心 臓からみぞおち辺りが苦しいと先生に言った所、レントゲンと血液検 査、心電図をやりましたが、異常はありませんでした。その検査後約 ４日くらいで胃の不調がなくなり、完全に胸の辺りが息詰まるような 感じになっておも苦しいです。 The first symptom was a really bad condition of my solar plexus, so I went to the hospital, and when I told the doctor that the area around my solar plexus was painful I got an X-­ray, blood test, and an ECG, but they found nothing wrong. About four days after that test my stomach condition went away, and it started to feel like the area around my chest was completely choked, making things really hard. 精神的なのでしょうか。 Is this maybe all mental?

144  Using katakana like an oyaji 前に検査に行ったばっかりなので親は大丈夫とか言ってきます。どう すればいいでしょうか。医療に詳しい方経験者がいらっしゃいました ら、よろしくお願いしま す。 Because I  just went to have a test, my parents say everything’s fine. What should I do? If there is someone here who is knowledgeable about medical issues, please help me. The author of the second text, which I will call “Reptile Bullying,” originally introduced themselves as a female middle school student. The author uses the pronoun watashi and asks for help dealing with others who bully them for having pet lizards. As with “Health Worries,” I made slight modifications to this text to allow for more open responses regarding author age and gender. Specifically, I cut the initial introduction of “chūgaku sannensei, onna desu (I’m a third year middle school student, girl)” as well as a later sentence segment listing how old the author was when she bought her lizards. The copy below includes these modifications and a supplementary translation, with all formatting and punctuation again taken from the original post. ペットの悪口を言われ辛いです I was made fun of for my pets and it’s hard to deal with 私は喘息持ちというのもあり、昔から爬虫類が大好きでした。はじめてカ ナヘビを 飼ってから（２匹飼ってます）、今までずっと生きています。 I have asthma, and I’ve always loved reptiles. I have two Japanese grass lizards, and they’ve been with me since I first bought them. 私にとってトカゲたちは宝物のような存在なのですが、冗談のつもりだ と思うんで すけど、「ゴキブリ食うんだろ、汚ねえー」「うわ気持ち悪 い、手洗った？」とペットを笑いながら馬鹿にする人が何人かいます。 私は軽く返しますが、イライラとトカゲたちが可哀想という思いで、耐え られません。 For me, reptiles are like a treasure. But, and I think they mean this as a joke, there are people who make fun of me for owning them, laughing while saying things like “they eat cockroaches, don’t they? Filthyー” or “That’s gross, did you wash your hands?” I try to respond in good humor, but due to irritation and feeling bad for my lizards I can’t deal with it. うちの子はゴキブリを食べたことないのに、勝手な思い込みをして侮辱 されるのは相当腹が立ちます。１度「そんなこと言わないで」と怒り ましたが、逆に笑って「図星だー」と煽ってきたりします。無視すれ ばいい話かもしれませんが、大好きなペットを馬鹿にされるのは聞いて いて辛いです。

Using katakana like an oyaji 145 I get really angry at people assuming things about my babies and insulting them even though they have never eaten a cockroach. Once I angrily replied “don’t say those things!”, but the others just laughed and made fun of me more by saying “I was right!” It’s probably just something better to ignore, but it’s hard for me to hear people making fun of the pets I love. どうすればいいでしょうか？ What should I do? The final text, which I will refer to as “Alcohol Advice,” differs from the others in being a response to another post. I selected the reply as a data source due to two features absent from most other texts on the host website. The first is the inclusion of emoji and other symbols, and the second is the use of the pronoun boku (which the author originally wrote in hiragana as ぼく). In the post, the author draws upon their own experiences to offer suggestions to another user struggling with the drinking culture at their workplace. Unlike the other two texts, the author of “Alcohol Worries” did not explicitly mention their age or gender, and so I made no modifications to the text before using it in the experiment. The text below is therefore identical to the original aside from the added English translation. ずいぶんお疲れのご様子。ぼくも似たような経験があります。 It seems as if you have had quite a time of it. I’ve had similar experiences. お酒は脳に直接働きかけますから、残れば翌日の仕事はパッとせず自分 にイライラ。一緒に飲む人や環境がかわればおいしかったりするから、 完全にやめるのも違うと思えたり。 Because alcohol works directly on your brain, if it remains the following day your work won’t go well and you’ll be irritated. Because if the people or environment change alcohol can become delicious, I think stopping completely might also be wrong. あなたなりに“本日の適量”を飲む前に決めてみたり、辛い日のおつき あいは最初からウーロン茶にするとか☆　自分で自分をたいせつにする ことと、自分の限界を相手に知ってもらうことはたいせつなことだと思 います。 Before drinking, decide on your “proper amount for the day,” and on hard days start with things like oolong tea ☆ I think taking care of yourself by yourself and having people around you know your limits is important. 辛い日にがんばって笑顔で飲み続けていても、“周りは楽しんでるん だ♪”って思わないかもしれません。

146  Using katakana like an oyaji On hard days, even if you try hard and keep drinking with a smile, you might not think “people around are having fun ♪.” あとお酒が合わない体質の可能性があったり、肝臓が弱っていることも あるでしょうから、一度内科に行って肝臓とか体を少し調べてもらうこ とは、今後どうするか の判断材料になりますよ！ Also, there’s a possibility that alcohol just doesn’t suit your body, or that your liver is weakening, so if you go to the doctor and have them check your liver or body that might become a good resource for deciding on what to do after! 仕事もお酒も適量適量♪ たまにはゆっくり休んでお体たいせつに(*^O^)?☆ With both work and alcohol, balanced amounts balanced amounts ♪ Sometimes please relax and take care of your body (*^O^)?☆ After selecting these three base texts, I then created three modified versions of each one. These modified versions increased the presence of kanji, hiragana, or katakana, respectively, across the source document. The changes to script use were not based on static percentages, however, as the markedness and salience of Japanese scripts is not equal (Joyce, Hodošček, & Nishina, 2012). Katakana, for instance, has a greater visual impact than other scripts and is more intrinsically “non-­standard” when used for native vocabulary (Satake, 2005; Sugimoto, 2009). Similarly, kanji has inherent limits in the extent and location of its introduction because some items do not have widely recognized kanji representations (Sasahara, 2006; Takashima, 2001). Matching the extent of each script’s introduction would therefore limit legibility, produce too few changes to be noticeable, or create perceptions that certain texts are fabricated documents (e.g., because they match no extant writing habits), depending on which script’s introduction is used as the base for the introduction of the other two. Consequently, I  opted for a more considered approach while creating the modified version of each text. My goal was to ensure that each version ended up “marked” in relation to standard Japanese while still generally reflecting writing seen in contemporary Japan. To achieve this balance, I first modified the representation of all pronouns in each text and all vocabulary that I had seen subject to variation during other my research of script use in Japan (including the corpora used across Chapters 3–5 of this book). I then presented these first drafts to five native Japanese speakers of different ages and genders for feedback, asking each reviewer whether they felt the four versions of each text were, in their minds, something that could have been produced by a native speaker. The goal here was therefore to ensure that each version resembled writing that native Japanese speakers felt did or could occur. While not a formal data source, the initial feedback from the native speakers was valuable in its own right. Speaking in terms of overall responses, there were multiple

Using katakana like an oyaji 147 areas of inconsistency regarding the range and styles of orthographic variation the reviewers described as possible. On multiple occasions, two reviewers even disagreed on whether a specific representation was unthinkable or common. In another specific instance, a reviewer described representations common throughout the manga data discussed in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of this book as something they had never seen, and then proceeded to recommend replacement representations I had never encountered in any of my observations of script use in Japan. Even before the study began, it was therefore clear that individual conceptions of “possible” representation strongly varied. In fact, even representations that were part of the original documents were sometimes flagged as unnatural and recommended to be changed. The native speakers’ advice was therefore not used or intended to create an “ultimate consensus.” It is also unlikely that such a thing could be achieved (Konno, 2013a, 2013b, 2014). Instead, I employed both the individual feedback and the outcomes of the various debates strategically, doing my best to incorporate common areas of consensus with my prior observations from research on script use in written Japanese. I then recirculated the edited documents for one more round of feedback before entering them into the survey. This second round achieved a higher level of consensus but still resulted in a few more minor script changes and two structural changes. First, a comma was added after the word “ato” (after, 後 in kanji) in the kanji-­heavy version of “Alcohol Advice” based on feedback from multiple native speakers that the lack of this comma made the kanji-­ heavy text (and only the kanji-­heavy text) unnatural or difficult to read. Second, kanji representations like 鳩尾 (mizoochi, solar plexus, used in “Health Worries”) and 蜚蠊 (gokiburi, cockroach, used in “Reptile Bullying”), which were illegible みぞおち

ごきぶり

to many native speakers, were marked with furigana (as 鳩尾 and 蜚 蠊 , respectively) to ensure readability. An example of a paragraph from each version of “Alcohol Advice” is presented below for comparison. Differences between each version and the original text are underlined. All in all, the ultimate amount of variation across each version of each text seems to have been fairly well balanced. As we shall see, while some respondents found the script use in each version (including the unmodified texts) to simply be “odd,” the vast majority evaluated the modified texts as authentic or even well written and attributed distinct motives to any script use they found to be marked. Only one respondent stated during their evaluations that they thought the texts were an artificial construction. This comment occurred after the respondent was presented with three kanji-­heavy text versions in a row by a fluke of random chance. As the respondent repeatedly encountered marked kanji use, they understandably assumed that the survey was presenting manipulated texts to test native readers’ attitudes toward kanji-­heavy writing. Original: あなたなりに“本日の適量”を飲む前に決めてみたり、辛い日 のおつきあいは最初からウーロン茶にするとか☆　自分で自分をたいせ つにすることと、自分の限界を相手に知ってもらうことはたいせつなこ とだと思います。

148  Using katakana like an oyaji Kanji: 貴方なりに“本日の適量”を飲む前に決めてみたり、辛い日の御 付き合いは最初からウーロン茶にするとか☆　自分で自分を大切にする ことと、自分の限界を相手に知って貰うことは大切なことだと思いま す。 Hiragana: あなたなりに“本日の適量”をのむ前に決めてみたり、つら い日のおつきあいは最初からウーロン茶にするとか☆　じぶんでじぶ んをたいせつにすることと、じぶんの限界を相手にしってもらうことは たいせつなことだと思います。 Katakana: アナタなりに“本日の適量”を飲む前に決めてみたり、ツラ い日のおつきあいは最初からウーロン茶にするとか☆　ジブンでジブ ンをたいせつにするコトと、ジブンの限界を相手に知ってもらうことは たいせつなコトだと思います。 In total, 131 out of 148 respondents provided open-­ended descriptions of the author of each set of four texts (17 dropped out part way). Out of the 148 total respondents, 106 (71.62%) identified as women, 40 (27.03%) identified as men, and two (1.35%) selected “other (sono ta)” or “prefer not to answer.” Fifty of the respondents (33.78%) listed their ages as between 18 and 30 years of age, 83 (56.08%) as between 30 and 50, and 13 (8.78%) as older than 50. Two respondents also preferred not to give their age. As with the study in Chapter 5, I used a pseudo-­random distribution method to present texts to the participants rather than equalize distribution across demographic lines. While I do again recognize that demographic differences in interpretation are an interesting area for future study, they are still not possible at the current time given the study’s design, snowball-­sampling recruitment methodology, participant numbers, and goals. Simply put, the current study was intended to examine if and how ideologies about script use influence text interpretation. This first step is necessary before we can engage with questions of which social groups recognize which ideologies to which extents. When I  closed the survey, “Health Worries” had been reviewed by 148 respondents, with 35 evaluating the original text and the kanji-­heavy versions, 41 evaluating the hiragana-­heavy version, and 37 evaluating the katakana-­heavy version. The text “Reptile Bullying” saw 137 responses, with 35 participants evaluating the original and hiragana-­heavy versions, 33 evaluating the kanji-­heavy version, and 34 evaluating the katakana-­heavy version. Finally, the response post “Alcohol Advice” was reviewed by 131 respondents, with 35 reading the original and 32 reading each modified version. In the following sections, I will compare and contrast the responses to each set of texts across a regular structure. For each set, I first detail the responses to the set’s unmodified source text. At this time I  will principally attend to evaluations that also appear throughout each text’s three modified versions, creating a sort of “control” set of impressions that appear independent of (or unaffected by) script use. Afterward, I will compare evaluations of author age and gender across the four versions of the text under

Using katakana like an oyaji 149 discussion, as these traits were the most common across all evaluations of all texts, and then conclude each section by looking at broader descriptions of author identity specific to each modified text. Finally, after completing this process for all three sets, I will close the chapter by holistically reviewing the study’s contributions to our understanding of how script manipulation influences understanding of author identity in Japan.

“Health Worries” The first set of responses I will analyze in the current chapter come from participants’ evaluations of the four versions of “Health Worries.” Three major similarities appeared across all descriptions of the author of this text, regardless of the orthographic makeup. The first was the consistent comment (appearing ten to 15 times per version) that the author was unmarried, a worrier, and lived at home. Respondents justified these impressions via referencing the author’s use of the internet to ask for help after seeing a doctor or the fact that they consulted their parents about their health. A prototypical example of this latter consideration is a response to the original text, stating that “from the point of their parents talking to them [about their health problems], I thought the author was living at home and unmarried.” The second major evaluation found across all responses was that the author was a poor writer. Nine readers of the original text criticized the author’s writing skills, as did five readers of the hiragana version and three readers of both the kanji and katakana versions. While marked script use therefore correlates with a decrease in the number of comments explicitly stating the author was a bad writer, this should not be taken to indicate that script manipulation improved impressions of writing quality. As I will discuss in more detail later, all forms of script manipulation increased the number of respondents who assumed that the author of “Health Worries” was an unskilled learner of Japanese. In other words, script modification simply caused criticism of writing composition skills to change to criticism of Japanese proficiency. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, respondents to all versions of “Health Worries” explicitly referenced script use during their evaluations of author identity. The original version received four comments referencing script use, the kanji-­heavy version received 13, the hiragana-­heavy version received 19, and the katakana version received 24. That script manipulation increased mentions of script use is not surprising, but it is worth noting that some participants felt that the orthographic content of the unmodified version provided insight into the author’s identity. While script manipulation therefore did not affect all impressions of the text’s author, many other areas of evaluation changed drastically across each version. Beginning with assumptions of author gender, exactly two thirds of readers of the original text who mentioned an author gender assumed the author was a man. Furthermore, as Figure  6.1 shows (note that 人 is the kanji for “person”), no orthographic modifications created a situation where most respondents assumed the author was a woman. However, increases in kanji and katakana use did cause around a 10% decrease in the number of assumptions of male

150  Using katakana like an oyaji Text 1 - Health Worries (FPP = jibun) 80 70

58.1%, 18人

56.7%, 17人

60 50 40

67.9%, 19人

66.6%, 20人

33%, 10人

38.7%, 12人

38.7%, 11人 25%, 7人

30 20

6.6%, 2人

10 0

Unmodified

Kanji-heavy Male

7.1%, 2人

Hiragana-heavy Female

3.2%, 1人 Katakana-heavy

Unsure

Figure 6.1  Assumptions of author gender for “Health Worries.”

authorship and a slight increase of around 5.7% in the number of assumptions of female authorship. In terms of overall participant numbers though these changes are not large. This represents a difference of only two to three responses in either direction and is somewhat explained by increases in the number of respondents who explicitly stated that they were unsure of the author’s gender. It would therefore be hasty to argue that the data show kanji or katakana serving as indexes of femininity. Indeed, comments like “I imagine a male because there are lots of kanji” are in direct alignment with the idea that these scripts can index masculinity noted in the discussion of Usagi Doroppu in Chapter 5, and no respondents explicitly linked kanji or katakana use to women or described them as having a feminine effect. The reasons given by respondents for assuming a male author for “Health Worries” were varied, but two consistently appeared across all four versions of the text. The first was the use of the pronoun jibun. Multiple respondents treated this pronoun as exclusive to male language users, at least in the context of this text, as exemplified by the comment, “[I]f the author was a woman, I think they would say ‘watashi wa [instead].’ ” The data here therefore indicate jibun to be somewhat masculine-­coded. However, female authorship was still asserted by at least 25% of responses to each version of “Health Worries.” The pronoun therefore does not appear as strongly linked to male language use in this context, as when it was discussed in the abstract in Chapter 5, nor is its link to males as robust as that of boku (see evaluations of “Alcohol Advice” in the current section) or ore (see Chapter 5). The second common explanation provided by respondents who felt the author of “Health Worries” was male related to ideologies that treated “logical” or “unemotional” language as an index of masculine writing. For instance, one respondent argued that the author was a man because a woman would write using “a few more emotional (kanjōteki) words” than found in the text’s “plain (tantan to shiteiru)” style, while another listed the text’s “logical chronological

Using katakana like an oyaji 151 ordering (ronri teki na jikeirestu)” as evidence of a male author. Interestingly, this belief that male writing is more “logical” was also relevant during evaluations of the text’s author as female. One respondent described the original text as “not written logically (ronri tatete kakareteinai)” when explaining their assumption that the writer was a woman. That is, the participant disagreed with the prior comments regarding the text’s quality but still linked “logical” text construction to male authors. This style of evaluation was not specific to a single participant gender either, with all three of the comments I presented coming from female respondents. However, while changes to the orthographic content of “Health Worries” were not able to produce cases where a majority of respondents imagined a female author, the fact that increases in the “masculine” kanji and katakana script did not increase or maintain assumptions of male authorship over that of the original text is worth noting. This is especially true when contrasted with the finding that increasing the presence of hiragana maintained the ~66% assumption of male authorship of the original text and also produced the lowest assumptions of female authorship for any version of the text. This finding stands in contrast to both generic descriptions of hiragana as a “feminine” script and the results of prior chapters of the current book (Hiraga, 2006; Iwahara, Hatta,  & Maehara, 2003; Tsuboi, 2003). For example, in Chapter 5 the hiragana-­jibun combination received lower assumptions of male-­exclusive use than the kanji-­jibun and katakana-­jibun combinations, and in Usagi Doroppu hiragana-­represented pronouns were nearly exclusive to female speech. Certainly, some readers’ comments did align with these prior findings, directly linking hiragana-­heavy text to female authorship. The most straightforward comment simply stated, “[W]oman → because lots of hiragana in the sentence.” That said, we cannot ignore the fact that these responses represent a minority opinion, with the hiragana-­heavy version of “Health Worries” predominantly seen as written by a male. To be clear, I am not arguing here that hiragana is in fact commonly viewed in Japan as a “male script,” just as I was not arguing earlier that kanji or katakana are in fact seen as “feminine.” Throughout the respondents’ justifications for their gendered evaluations, there were no statements asserting that marked hiragana use is a writing practice linked to men or script-­image style assertions that hiragana has a masculine impression. Therefore, the ability of hiragana-­heavy marking to retain assumptions of male authorship and decrease assumptions of female authorship in “Health Worries” cannot be understood through evaluations of script use out of context. The evaluation of marked hiragana use here as indexing a male author arises from interactions specific to respondents’ attempts to navigate the lexical (e.g., the jibun pronoun, references to worrying about illness), structural (e.g., assumed poor language use), and orthographic content of the hiragana-­heavy version of “Health Worries.” As mentioned, respondents across all four versions of “Health Worries” felt that the author was unmarried and still lived at home. However, evaluations exclusive to the hiragana-­heavy version of the text repeatedly expanded this image to that of a 20-­something male living at home due specifically to minimal work

152  Using katakana like an oyaji or educational prospects. Comment 6.1 stands as a representative example of how respondents constructed this version-­specific “prospectless male” identity via attending to the lexical and orthographic content of the hiragana-­heavy text. (6.1) 男性。 フリーターで実家暮らし。 20代後半で友達はあまりいな く、両親に依存して生活している。 精神的に弱く、悪いことの責任は 自分でとらない。漢字をあまり使わないので若い人のイメージもありま すが、レントゲン・血液検査・心電図と詳しく書いているので年齢は上 に感じた。 Male. Part-­timer (furītā) and lives at home. In his late 20’s, few friends, lifestyle is dependent on parents. Emotionally weak, doesn’t take responsibility for bad things. They don’t use much kanji so there is also a young image, but they write in detail about “X-­rays,” “blood tests,” and “ECGs” so I felt their age was older. In the statement, the respondent recognizes a link between low kanji use and younger (teenage) authors, engaging directly with the text’s orthographic makeup. However, they immediately reconsider this potential youth identity due to the presence of medical terminology. This is treated as indicating a somewhat older author. The respondent’s understandings of who employs marked hiragana use and who employs difficult vocabulary then combine to result in the conclusion that the author is in their 20s, allowing for the possibility of an irresponsible and “emotionally weak” author who is “living dependent on their parents.” This evaluation and its reasoning were also echoed in responses like: “[P]art-­timer (furītā), lives at home, introverted and has few friends, seems like they play video games all night.” “[D]ue to the punctuation and on-­off use of kanji, I feel like they have a high school education and they do a job that doesn’t really require office work.” “[A]n unmarried man in their forties, kind of a pain in the ass (mendōkusagari), only thinks of themselves. I got this feeling because they wrote things in hiragana that would be easier to read in kanji.” Taken together, these responses explain the drop in assumed female authorship caused by hiragana marking. The hiragana use in the context of “Health Worries” fails to index femininity for many respondents. It instead combines with other features of the text to produce an image of an undependable and potentially unemployable male. Again, this sort of identity is importantly absent from the evaluations of other versions of “Health Worries” wherein living at home was seen more neutrally (e.g., as a simple consequence of being a certain age), as well as the responses to the hiragana-­heavy versions of the other two texts. Moving now to differences in assumed author age for “Health Worries,” Figure 6.2 shows the evaluations of the text’s four versions. Figure 6.2 was built by

Using katakana like an oyaji 153

80 70 Percentage

60 50 40 30 20 10 0

10s Original

20s

30s

Kanji Heavy

40s

50s

Hiragana Heavy

60s

70s

Katakana Heavy

Figure 6.2  Evaluations of author age for “Health Worries.”

coding age ranges rather than specific ages, and the total percentages in each category therefore add up to over 100%. While some respondents to the survey provided specific ages (e.g., “36”) for their imagined authors, most instead provided broader ranges via phrases like “nijūdai kara sanjūdai (between their 20s and 40s).” To convert these qualitative comments into quantitative data, I coded each response across all decades it referenced. To give a practical example, the prior “between their 20s and 40s” comment was coded to the categories 20s, 30s, and 40s, increasing the number of respondents in each respective category by one. Consequently, Figure 6.2 and all other figures comparing assumed author age in this chapter are best understood as showing the percentage of participants who, out of participants who mentioned age, would agree that the author could be within the given decade category. As Figure 6.2 shows, the 20–30 decade range was the only age category mentioned by 50% of respondents to the unmodified version of “Health Worries.” This is despite the author’s ostensibly being a high school student, as asserted in the introduction I deleted from the text. The possibility of a teenage author was seen as the second most probable, though, appearing in just under 45% of comments. An author in their 30s was accepted by slightly less than 40% of respondents, and references to any ages between 40 and 60 appeared in less than 10% of comments. No evaluations of the unmodified version claimed the author was over 60. The author therefore produced writing that seemed to most respondents to be somewhat “older” than how they felt a teenage author would write, but the respondents felt the article was still more likely to be written by a teenager than by anyone over the age of 30. These common evaluations of a younger

154  Using katakana like an oyaji author were highly linked to word choice, as reflected by comments like “[T]he way of connecting sentences is on the whole how a young person would do it” and the general assumption that the author still lived at home. The primary effect of increased kanji use on assumptions of age was a large decrease in the number of participants who mentioned possible teenage authorship. While 40% of respondents allowed for teenage authorship of the original text, this dropped to less than 20% for the kanji-­heavy version. The kanji increase did not bring about a simultaneous increase in assumed author age, though, as we might expect based on its “old” image or the script’s effects on pronoun evaluation seen in Chapter 5. The majority of respondents still assumed the author was in their 20s, around 40% of respondents allowed for an author in their 30s, and less than 15% allowed for an author in their 40s or above. While a 5–15% allowance for authors above 40 is slightly higher than that seen for the original text, the increase is not restricted to the marked kanji version. In fact, it mirrors the evaluations of the hiragana version (the “young” script) almost exactly and the katakana version for the categories of 40s and 60s. As a result, it is risky to assume that kanji caused increased assumptions of a 50-­to 60-­year-­old author for “Health Worries.” It instead simply seems that around 10% of respondents view “Health Worries” as potentially written by someone over 40 years of age. Indeed, references to ages over 50 in evaluations of the katakana-­heavy version all listed the author’s medical issues rather than script choices as the reasons for their choice. In contrast to kanji, hiragana-­heavy representation caused a rise in assertions that the author of “Health Worries” was a teenager. Hiragana marking increased mentions of possible teenage authorship to above 50%, higher than for any other version, and reduced references to an author over 30 to just over 10%. The general trend for age evaluations of the unmodified text was therefore moved one category left for the hiragana-­heavy version. The normative assumption of an author in their 20s was changed to that of an author in their 10s, and the general rejection of an author over 40 was changed to a general rejection of an author over 30. Finally, the effect of katakana on age evaluation initially mirrors that of kanji in some respects, as we see decreased allowance of a teenage author compared with the original and similar numbers of references to authors in their 30s and above. The script is the only one to increase assumptions of an author in their 20s to over 70%, though, showing by far the highest number of participants who included this age range in their evaluations. Although some of these age-­related trends fit within general understandings of each script’s image, such as the “young” hiragana script increasing assumptions of a teenage author, it is also important to note that conflicting responses were always present. No script produced an incontrovertible effect on assumptions of author age, and some respondents always interpreted marked script use in ways that were absent from or even directly contradicted static descriptions of scripts. For instance, although kanji use generally reduced allowance of younger authorship, Comment 6.2 shows a respondent engaging with the idea that older writers utilize kanji but then ultimately rejecting this possibility due to the lack of

Using katakana like an oyaji 155 co-­occurring indexes in “Health Worries” that they associate with older writers’ language use. Consequently, the respondent begins to look for another possible motive for the high presence of kanji, eventually attributing it to a lack of care for script editing. This behavior itself is seen as a habit of younger women, resulting in the final evaluation of a female author between 20 and 40 years of age. We therefore see the respondent link the same variant to two distinct orthographic practices, each attributed to distinct causes and practitioners. (6.2) 鳩尾を漢字で表記したり、「遣る」と書いているところから最初 は年配の女性を想像しました。しかし、理論的に繋がりが悪い文章がみ られる [. . .] 不完全とも思える表現がある [. . .] 会話調の表現が突然入 り込むこと、「親は」という記載があることから、比較的若い女性（２ ０〜４０代）が、携帯電話等の自動変換を使ってあまり推敲せずに書い た文章なのではないか、と感じました。 Because they used kanji like 鳩尾 and 遣る, I at first thought they were an older woman. However, because there are sentences with poor logical connection . . . expressions that can be thought of as incomplete . . . sudden jumps into casual phrasing, and a use of “my parents,” I felt it might be a comparatively (20s to 40s) young woman who uses the automatic script conversion on their phone or similar device without editing. A similar situation also appeared in evaluations of the hiragana-­heavy version of “Health Worries.” Although Figure 6.2 showed that increasing hiragana use caused most readers to imagine a younger author, one respondent instead believed that the lack of kanji evidenced a 50-­something author who had poor understanding of script-­conversion technology. That is, the script use reflected inability to use the technology properly, rather than the understanding but lack of care described in Comment 6.2. Even for the katakana version, wherein a 20-­something author achieved the highest mention for any text-­age combination, some respondents rejected this age range due to the extent or location of the katakana application. One respondent even explicitly described the “unnecessary (fuyō)” katakana use they felt existed in the modified text as an orthographic habit of middle-­aged authors. Consequently, the lack of agreement above 75% for any author age across all versions of “Health Worries” is an important finding in and of itself. The respondents’ conflicting comments do not reflect contrasting understandings of script images, but rather individual beliefs regarding age-­linked script practices. These beliefs are clearly not static or based only on historical practices either, as evidenced by participants’ attention to novel orthographic trends brought about by contemporary technology. Contextual engagement with individual ideologies about orthographic practices was similarly noted across the evaluations of author personality or behavior specific to individual versions of “Health Worries.” For instance, the kanji-­heavy version of “Health Worries” was distinct from the other three in being the only document wherein the author was explicitly described as intelligent. For three

156  Using katakana like an oyaji respondents, the kanji use in the text had a rather straightforward connection to an educated author. This opinion was reflected in responses like “there are a lot of young expressions, but on the other hand kanji like 鳩尾 (mizoochi, solar plexus) aren’t jōyō kanji . . . so I imagined someone who is young but has intelligence.” This statement rejects kanji’s “aged” image due to the conflicting co-­ occurring indexes but directly references the “educated” image the script is often asserted to possess (Gottlieb, 2005; Unger, 1984). However, the same number of participants also cited the marked kanji use in “Health Worries” as evidence of an uneducated writer, despite also recognizing the script’s potential to index erudition. One respondent felt that the author’s use of kanji arose due to an interest in older writers like Natsumei Sōseki, but that this was merely an affectation, as the text ultimately showed the author to be “not very skilled when it comes to academics (gakumon wa amari tokui de nai).” Another linked the text’s “strange (okashii)” kanji use to both poor education and a reliance on the internet over books and newspapers for reading material. In other words, while multiple respondents treated the use of high amounts of sometimes obscure kanji as a potential index of intellectualism, for many the combination of difficult kanji with what they saw as poorly constructed writing by a worrier living at home ultimately produced an opposing identity. For these latter respondents, the kanji use reflects Gottlieb’s (1993) story of a Japanese academic “snorting with derision” (p. 126) upon seeing a rare kanji used on a bookstore flyer, or even the character of Martine discussed in Chapter  4. It appears as a sort of hypercorrection (as per Labov (1972)), or perhaps hyper-­performance of erudition, that ultimately appears inauthentic or resulting from a lack of socialization, with a potential index of intelligence thereby producing an opposing effect due to the location of its use. A similar set of disagreements appeared in the evaluations of the katakana-­ heavy version of “Health Worries.” Compared with other scripts, the marked use of katakana across “Health Worries” was difficult for many participants to connect to a specific author type. Many simply wrote that the katakana use made them feel the author was young or male, providing no other details. Others stated outright that they felt the katakana use itself was unnatural and therefore difficult to ascribe to a particular identity, these respondents often defaulting to an author who is just “strange (hen),” as exemplified by Comment 6.3. Furthermore, while seven respondents (more than for any other version of “Health Worries”) also linked the katakana use to a lack of education or intelligence, in some cases this was meant to imply mental handicaps rather than the lifestyle-­based lack of education seen earlier in the negative evaluations of heavy kanji use. A quote by one respondent, to give an extreme example, even mentioned that the “unnatural (fushizen)” katakana use indicated that the author had a “developmental disability (hattatsu shōgai).” Importantly, these sorts of evaluations of marked katakana use appear specific to the context of “Health Worries,” as they were absent in evaluations of the katakana-­marked versions of the other texts. (6.3) 正直、コンテキストとカタカナの使い方があまりにも違和感があ りすぎるので、イメージしにくいかもしれません。

Using katakana like an oyaji 157 Honestly, from the context and use of katakana I have too much of an odd feeling and it is maybe hard for me to imagine the author. By contrast, for many respondents the “odd” script use in the katakana-­heavy version of “Health Worries” was not “odd” in the sense of being incomprehensible or unseen in contemporary written Japanese. Rather, “odd” use of katakana was itself recognized as a style employed for specific purposes or enjoyed by select groups of language users. For instance, while Comment 6.3 refers to an “odd feeling (違和感, iwakan)” that prevented any distinct author image, Comment 6.4 shows a participant instead connecting the “unnaturalness (不自然さ, fushizensa)” of the katakana use to a failed attempt at creating a particular effect. Here the respondent raises a belief that katakana is used in non-­standard ways to create a softer feeling by some authors but feels that this particular writer is not skilled at using katakana for this purpose. (6.4) カタカナ使いの不自然さから、重い投稿になりすぎないように配 慮して失敗した印象を受けました。 Due to the unnaturalness of the katakana use, I get the impression that they tried to ensure their post wasn’t too heavy and failed. Similarly, Comment 6.5 shows a respondent describing the marked katakana use as “meaningless (無意味, muimi)” but using the term to refer to practices they view as unnecessary or excessive rather than literally having no meaning. Specifically, the author connects the style of katakana use in the modified text to young language users and the gyaru subculture. This latter term refers to a young female subculture/identity that rose to prominence in Japan in the 1990s to 2000s and was associated with particular fashions, the use of “masculine” language, and often formally “improper” or delinquent behavior (Miller, 2004a). (6.5) 学歴はあまり高くなく、成人・社会人であれば社会に対する責任 感が低く感じます。どちらかといえば、自己中心的性格だと感じます。 理由は、カタカナが多いためです。私にとっては、無意味にカタカナを 使うのは、ギャルや若者文化の象徴だと感じるからです。 Educational background is not high, and I feel that if they are an adult they do not have much of a sense of responsibility to society. If I had to say, I feel they have a self-­centered personality. The reason is the large amount of katakana. For me, it is because I feel that meaningless katakana use is a symbol of youth or gyaru culture. A link between katakana and gyaru was also repeated by another commenter, whose evaluation is reproduced in Comment 6.6. Here, though, two possibilities of authorship are linked to katakana use for “places that should be changed to kanji (漢字変換すべき箇所, kanji henkō subeki kasho).” The respondent first writes that marked katakana use is common in “rough (荒れていた, areteita)”

158  Using katakana like an oyaji identities, and that the script’s use here therefore potentially indexes gyaru and other various juvenile delinquent cliques in Japan. However, they then consider the possibility of non-­native status bringing about the katakana use, positing that the writing could come from a Japanese learner whose language skills do not involve any formal instruction. This possibility stimulates a potential re-­evaluation of the entire text as “perfect (pāfekuto).” Comment 6.6 shows the same katakana use some respondents felt was simply strange linked directly to two fleshed out orthographic practices, with each interpretation influencing assessment of the ultimate quality of the text. (6.6) 学生時代は荒れていた又は悪い意味で遊んでいたかと思われる。 理由:漢字変換すべき箇所がカタカナ表記になっている。(平仮名なら金 銭的理由で高校へ行けず必要な知識が身に付かなかったとも考えられる が、カタカナになっているところを見ると、昔のギャルや暴走族などあ えて勉強をせず遊んでいた人達を連想する)　[. . .] 仮に、この文章の書き 手の母語が日本語ではないならば、学校等で勉強せず直接生活の中で日 本語を身につけたのかと想像する。 ただその場合、母語ではない点を鑑 みて、この文章はパーフェクトだと個人的には思う。 I think they were rough in their student years or, in a bad meaning, played around. The reason: things that should be changed to kanji are in katakana. (If this was hiragana, it would be thinkable that they couldn’t go to school for financial reasons and therefore did not acquire knowledge, but when I  see katakana, I  imagine the old gyaru or bōsōzoku [juvenile biker gang] people who played around without studying). [. . .] [P]ossibly, if the author is not a native speaker of Japanese, though, I think they might have learned Japanese directly through living in Japan rather than studying at school. In that case, reflecting about non-­native status, I personally think the document is perfect. Interestingly, despite the general “foreign” image of katakana and my findings in Chapter 3 of this book, the link in Comment 6.6 between script use and a non-­native speaker identity was not restricted to the katakana-­heavy version of “Health Worries.” In fact, while eight respondents to the katakana-­heavy version of “Health Worries” explained the text’s orthographic composition by referencing a non-­native writer, marked hiragana use actually caused the highest overall number of assumptions (ten) of non-­native authorship. Although this contrasts with many discussions of marked katakana use to date, including those in the findings of this book thus far, it makes sense given that the respondents here are not discussing media representations. The text here is not engaged with as a representation of an “othered” voice, but rather as an individual’s writing habits. While non-­native speech is often represented via katakana in Japanese media, non-­native speakers are in reality most likely to produce hiragana-­heavy writing, as the hiragana script is generally the first learned in Japanese courses.

Using katakana like an oyaji 159 That said, even the original and kanji-­heavy versions of “Health Worries” were associated with non-­native authors at times, with comments of this type appearing three and four times each across the two documents. Perhaps most surprisingly, the kanji-­heavy text was specifically associated with a non-­native speaker from “outside kanji-­using areas (kanjiken dewanai tokoro)” by a respondent who ultimately tied the marked kanji to poor linguistic ability rather than a background knowledge of the script. While these responses therefore show that all forms of potentially “unnatural” (again, as evaluated by an individual) Japanese script use can index a non-­native speaker, we need to be careful in jumping to the conclusion that all marked script use often results in these assumptions. For “Health Worries,” marked script use was able to, like marked forms of spelling or grammar in any language, index “othered” identities or low education (Davila, 2012; Preston, 1985; Roberts & Cimasko, 2008; Sebba, 2009). As we shall see, though, this same finding did not appear in responses to the other texts. The common assumption that “Health Worries” (even when unmodified) was poorly written appears to have a large influence on how the marked script use within it was perceived.

“Reptile Bullying” To further evidence the importance of text context on what marked script use indexes, I will now turn to the responses to “Reptile Bullying.” While the original version of “Health Worries” brought about nine comments stating that the writing was poor and three comments describing the author as a non-­native Japanese user, the unmodified version of “Reptile Bullying” was viewed quite differently. Only two respondents felt that the original document had compositional flaws. One wrote that the document contained some unnatural language use but strong kanji use, in their mind indicating a skilled non-­native Japanese user who has lived in Japan for some time. The other wrote only that the composition was “a little difficult to understand (sukoshi wakarinikui).” By contrast, four commenters explicitly praised the writing in the document, and responses like Comment 6.7 show outright assertion of native authorship. Furthermore, in one last contrast to “Health Worries,” no respondents mentioned the script use in the unmodified text. “Reptile Bullying” therefore seems to have been treated as more “natural” or unmarked writing than “Health Worries.” Script manipulation did, unsurprisingly, result in comments on the text’s orthographic content, though. Fourteen respondents to the kanji-­heavy version, 15 respondents to the hiragana-­heavy version, and 16 respondents to the katakana-­heavy version explicitly mentioned script use during their evaluations of the author, again evidencing that readers attend to script during identity evaluations. (6.7) 女性、十代。日本人。口語的な表現に終始しており、日本語の文 法が守られていないが、会話としてとらえると、自然な日本語に感じ る。若者の会話としては自然な表現であると思う。特にうちの子、とい う表現は日本人らしいと感じる。

160  Using katakana like an oyaji Woman. 10–19. Japanese. There are spoken phrases throughout, and Japanese grammar isn’t maintained, but if I take this as a conversation I feel it is natural Japanese. I think they are natural phrases for a young person’s conversation. I feel that “uchi no ko (my child[ren])” is especially a very Japanese phrase. Beyond approving of the general quality of writing, responses to the unmodified version of “Reptile Bullying” were also fairly unified in assuming a 20-­something female author (see Figures 6.3 and 6.4). The reasons given for assumptions of female authorship during evaluations of the unmodified version were at times connected to the pronoun watashi, reflecting broad dialogues about the pronoun as an index of female language use(rs) (Ide, 1979; Yoshimitsu, 2005; see also Chapter 5). That said, respondents also referred to specific phrases like uchi no ko (“my child[ren],” mentioned in Comment 6.7) and sono koto iwanaide (“don’t say that!”) as evidence of female authorship. Assumptions of a younger author were at times linked to these phrases as well, though more commonly to broader elements of the text’s content. Worrying about what others think of your pet interests, for instance, was regularly described as something older people would not do. Finally, outside of gender and age, evaluations of the original text repeatedly described the author via terms meaning “shy” (13 times), “kind” (5 times), or “smart” (3 times). As Figure  6.3 shows, the effect of script variation on the interpretation of author gender for “Reptile Bullying” was more stereotypical or “predictable” than that seen for “Health Worries.” The kanji-­heavy representation of “Reptile Bullying” produced the highest number of statements asserting a male author, doubling the number found in responses to the unmodified text. Assumptions of female authorship also decreased for the kanji-­heavy version to just under 20% (9 respondents). Hiragana also acted as a foil, increasing assumptions of female authorship slightly, and produced the lowest number of assertions of male authorship out of all versions. In some cases, mirroring the findings of Chapter 5, the Text 2 - R eptile Bullying (FPP = watashi) 100 92.9%, 26人 76.9%, 20人 83.2%, 25人 90 64%, 16人 80 70 60 50 32%, 8人 40 23.1%, 6人 7.1,% 2人 30 13.3%, 4人 3.4%, 1人 20 4%, 1人 10 0 Unmodified Kanji-heavy Hiragana-heavy Katakana-heavy Male

Female

Unsure

Figure 6.3  Assumptions of author gender for “Reptile Bullying.”

Percentage

Using katakana like an oyaji 161

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

10s Original

20s

30s

Kanji Heavy

40s

50s

Hiragana Heavy

60s

70s

Katakana Heavy

Figure 6.4  Evaluations of author age for “Reptile Bullying.”

assumption of female authorship for this version was even linked by respondents directly to the use of the hiragana-­watashi combination. The interaction between two potential indexes of female language use(rs) again appears to have reinforced or accentuated the gendered interpretations of each. Finally, katakana produced evaluations of author gender that sat between those of kanji and the unmodified representation. Like kanji, the script increased assumptions of male authorship and decreased assumptions of female authorship compared with the original, but both changes occurred to a lesser degree. As for assumed author age, although the actual author of “Reptile Bullying” was ostensibly a teenager, the unmodified version was primarily (about 70%) associated with an author in their 20s. That said, as is clear from Figure 6.4, teenage authorship was still considered the second most likely possibility. Similar to “Health Worries,” then, the author was seen as a bit older than their asserted age, but an author older than 30 were treated as less likely than a teenage author, and few respondents mentioned ages over 40. The kanji-­heavy version of “Reptile Bullying,” however, produced an effect that was slightly different from what occurred with “Health Worries.” For the current text, kanji did not reduce perceptions of possible teen authorship compared with the unmodified text. Mentions of the 20-­something age range did decrease by around 20%, but the category remains the most cited. Again, qualitative analysis showed that the use of phrases like “uchi no ko” and the general topic of being bullied about your pets created the impression for many respondents that the author was under 30 even when kanji was increased. As one response to the kanji-­heavy text put it, “[C]aring about things like comments about your pets indicates a young person.”

162  Using katakana like an oyaji That said, increasing the amount of kanji in the text also created otherwise absent mentions of an older author. The kanji version of “Reptile Bullying” is the only version wherein around 20% of age classifications included the 40–60 range, and more than 10% of evaluations included ages above 60. Responses showed this increase to be directly related to orthographic content as well, as reflected in comments like “[B]ecause they wrote kanji that are not normally used I thought they were older at first glance” and “[B]ecause they are writing animal names in kanji they are not young.” While links to older language users and kanji appear in evaluations of both “Health Worries” and “Reptile Bullying,” readers of “Reptile Bullying” more commonly accepted the local applicability of these links due to fewer elements throughout the text that were regularly perceived as indexes of contradictory identities. That said, as with “Health Worries,” no script changes to “Reptile Bullying” produced a guaranteed effect. Some respondents wrote that they were unable to engage with links between kanji and older writers due to indexes of youth language use they felt existed throughout “Reptile Bullying.” This conflict resulted in either a negotiated interpretation, placing the author between 30 and 50, or, as shown in Comment 6.8, confusion. (6.8) 常用でない漢字が多いため高齢者の印象もあるが、加害者の口調 が若い印象(敬語でない)ため、若年・中年なのか、高齢なのかはわから ない。 Because there are lots of non-­jōyō kanji I  assumed an older author, but the assailants’ [=those insulting the author’s pets] speech style has a young impression, so I don’t really know if the author is young, middle-­aged, or old. Increased hiragana use across “Reptile Bullying” produced a similarly “straightforward” effect, greatly increasing assertions of teenage authorship. The script raised inclusions of this age range to over 80% and decreased the possibility of all other author ages. The hiragana-­marked version of “Reptile Bullying” also stands alone in evaluations of age, including a 20-­something author appearing less than 50% of the time. Finally, katakana slightly increased allowance of teenage authorship over the original document, with this age range becoming the most accepted possibility. Over half of respondents still allowed for a 20-­something author, though, with the 10–30 range accepted by around 55% of respondents. Mentions of the 30–40 age range were about 10% less common than those seen for the original text, and almost no responses mentioned ages over 40. In short, most respondents who mentioned age treated heavy katakana use as an orthographic practice that indexes individuals under 30 years old. Among the broader personality-­related evaluations of versions of “Reptile Bullying,” certain discussions mirrored those seen in “Health Worries.” In responses to the kanji version of “Reptile Bullying,” for instance, kanji use was associated with high intelligence or education by five respondents. Comments of this type appeared only three times in the unmarked text and were completely

Using katakana like an oyaji 163 absent in the hiragana-­and katakana-­heavy versions. By contrast, and once more reflecting the data from “Health Worries,” others linked increased kanji use to people who were bookish but ultimately unsocial rather than intelligent. One respondent even argued that the kanji use indicated “mild nationalism (maiduro na nashonarizumu),” engaging with links between the script’s conspicuous use and Japanese traditionalists or right-­wing groups (Gottlieb, 2010b). Furthermore, the same number of respondents that treated the author as intelligent also asserted that the kanji reflected a strong (often negatively valued) need for self-­assertion. This need, expressed via terms like koseiteki (individualistic) or jikokenjiyoku (a desire to be conspicuous), was entirely absent from responses to the original and hiragana-­heavy texts and found only twice in the katakana-­heavy text. In a somewhat surprising turn, however, desire to use script to stand out was itself often associated with younger writers, at times causing conflict with the links between kanji and older writers reflected in Figure 6.4. Comments 6.9–11 show the intermixture and contrast of these various and at times “on-­paper” contradictory connections. The responses both align and clash as their authors navigate multiple elements of the text, drawing upon their own experiences with language use(rs) to identify what the marked kanji use in “Reptile Bullying” specifically reflects. (6.9) 難しい漢字を多用しているので、受けた教育のレベルは高そうで す。ただ、普段使わない漢字を多用しているところから、個性的な性格 を持っているような印象を受けます 。 Because they are using lots of difficult kanji, their level of education seems quite high. However, because they are using many kanji that are not normally used, I get the impression that they have a very individualistic personality. (6.10) 難しい漢字を使用することに優越感を抱く、40歳から50歳代の女 性だと感じました。理由は、台詞の言葉と使用している漢字のギャップ が1960〜70年代生まれに特徴的であり、かつ実体験としてこのような 方がいたためです In the use of difficult kanji, I felt a woman in their 40s to 50s with a superiority complex. The reason is that the gap between the word selection and use of kanji in the text is a characteristic of people born between 1960 and 1970. Moreover, because I’ve encountered these people in real life. (6.11) 10代〜20代女性 あまり社交的ではなく、インドア派。 他人との 交流は薄い。理由:日常的には使わない漢字を使っている事から、平均以 上の読書量があると推測し、インドア派かと考えた。 A woman in their 10s–20s. Not very social, indoor type. Contact with others is weak. Reason: from the use of kanji not normally used, I guessed that they read more than average, and thought they were an indoor type.

164  Using katakana like an oyaji Hiragana, then, produced the opposite effect of kanji on assumptions of author intelligence. Mentions of education disappeared completely, and three responses instead described the author as uneducated or unintelligent. At times, these assertions of lower education (also absent from responses to the original text) were directly tied by respondents to assumptions of youth; that is, as a practical result of having not yet graduated high school. However, as Comment 6.12 shows, the overall perceived strength of the writing itself (especially compared with “Health Worries”) was also able to interact directly with understanding of hiragana use. For the current respondent, this caused the script use to ultimately index an uneducated author between 20 and 40 years old. (6.12) 20代、30代の大人、恐らく女性ではないかと感じました。平仮名 が多く、漢字が少ないですが、文章の内容や言い回しが子どもが話す、 または書く表現ではないと思います。丁寧語を使っていますが、あまり 上品な言葉を選んでいない点も踏まえると、勉強が苦手、または十分な 教育を受けられなかったのかな、と思ってしまいました。 An adult in their 20s or 30s. I feel like they are probably a woman. There are lots of hiragana and little kanji, but I think the sentences, content, and phrasing are not how children would talk or write. Considering that the writer is using polite terms but isn’t selecting many elegant terms, I thought the author was bad at studying, or had not received enough education. Even more importantly, some respondents explicitly decoupled impressions of hiragana in the abstract from beliefs about who uses the script for a given effect. These cases, exemplified by Comment 6.13, contain recognition of hiragana as possessing its stereotyped youthful, feminine, or cute images but do not treat the hiragana in “Reptile Bullying” as direct evidence of a young, feminine, or cute author. Rather, the reviewers reference language users who employ hiragana for these perceived effects, with the author of Comment 6.13 specifically viewing these people as “a pain (面倒くさそう, mendōkusasō).” (6.13) ひらがなが多く使われいる。簡単な言葉がひらがなだったりする。 何か意図があるのか、変な人なのか。。。ひらがなで書くのを可愛いと 思ってる女性？関わるのが面倒くさそうな人。 Lots of hiragana are used. Simple vocabulary are in hiragana. Is there some kind of motive? Are they a strange person? Maybe a woman who thinks that writing in hiragana is cute? Seems like someone who would be a pain to deal with. Responses to the katakana-­heavy version of “Reptile Bullying” showed this same disconnect between images of a script in the abstract and ideologies regarding who uses a script for their interactive needs. While many respondents connected katakana directly to the writing practices of SMS-­ fluent

Using katakana like an oyaji 165 20-­ somethings, as reflected earlier by the commonly assumed age range depicted in Figure  6.4, others sensed inauthenticity in the specifics of how katakana was employed across the document. For these respondents, the katakana use in “Reptile Bullying” therefore did not accurately reflect how young Japanese writers use katakana. This resulted in assertions that the modified version of “Reptile Bullying” was actually written by an older person who “wants to jump in on a trend (hayari ni noritai),” trying and failing to imitate youth katakana use. The ability of some participants to differentiate between identities and distinct styles of katakana use is important to note. For our local discussion here, it further evidences that attending only to questions of which scripts are selected cannot access the totality of how marked Japanese script use creates meaning. More broadly, though, evidence of readers engaging with entire styles of script use as indexes of distinct identities both reflects and helps us understand other orthographic phenomena in contemporary Japan. For instance, around 2017 young Japanese women began engaging in a form of katakana-­heavy online language play called ojisangokko. This phrase literally translates as “pretending to be a middle-­aged man” but specifically refers to a practice of imitating the texting habits of old and lecherous Japanese males (Erinaccha, 2018; Fujino, 2017; Girls Channel, 2017). During ojisangokko, the woman (or women) taking an ojisan role in the conversation generally makes joking attempts to set up dates, sexual encounters, or enjo kōsai (“transactional dating”; see Miller (2004a), Nakano (2010), or Reisel (2017)) style partnerships with their friend. Marked katakana use plays a major role in how the authors index the ojisan voice during these interactions, with particular applications of the script specifically mentioned/ shown in online guides on how to participate in the practice (Bujisama, 2018; CanCam, 2017; cst_mgn, 2017). However, the marked katakana use employed during ojisangokko is not the same as the styles researchers have shown younger Japanese writers employing to index their own identities as “cool” or tech-­savvy youth (Norimatsu & Horio, 2006; Sakai, 2011; Satake, 1989; Tochihara, 2010). Rather, the practitioners of ojisangokko draw upon perceived divides between how younger and older writers use katakana, especially when the latter group is (poorly) copying youth writing styles to connect with young women. The katakana use during ojisangokko is therefore a sort of mockery of an imitation. It is designed to be deliberately “unnatural” and “uncool” in order to inversely produce and index “cool,” evoking identities, group boundaries, and socially valued effects in a “nonlinear” (Blommaert, 2016, p. 24) process. Certainly, this sort of awareness that different groups use a single script in different ways is restricted. Expanding the presence of katakana throughout “Reptile Bullying” generally produced uncritical increases in assumptions of a teenage or 20-­something cellphone-­using author. By contrast, these divides are salient enough to repeatedly appear in the current study’s data. Comment 6.14 stands as a particularly vivid example, with the author explicitly linking the katakana use in “Reptile Bullying” to the aforementioned ojisan who employ features traditionally associated with women’s language use.

166  Using katakana like an oyaji (6.14) 中年以上の男性が想起されました。理由はカタカナの多用です。 （タカラモノ、キモチワルイ、など。） 個人的な印象で恐縮ですが、個 人的にはこのようなスタイルの文章は５０代のオジサンが書く気がしま す。ただ、「ウチのコ」の「コ」という呼びかけや、「そんなコト言わ ないで」の２箇所だけは、ひょっとして女性かな、という印象も受けま した。ただ、一定年齢以上の男性（特に中高年以上）は書き言葉で女性 的な表現を織り交ぜることがあると思うので、やはり男性かなと思い ます。 I imagined a man of middle age or above. The reason is the heavy use of katakana (e.g., for takaramono [タカラモノ, treasure], kimochiwarui [キモ チワルイ, gross]). This is just my impression but I feel this is a style written by 50-­something ojisan. However, the ko in uchi no ko and the phrase sono koto iwanaide are two phrases that gave me a possible impression of a female author. However, I think men above a certain age (especially middle age and above) mix in feminine expressions so in the end I think this is maybe indeed a man. Furthermore, even a sense of “inauthenticity” was not required for katakana marking to produce diverse effects across participant responses. Participants who did not show recognition of multiple styles of katakana use did not necessarily agree that the script’s use in “Reptile Bullying” indexed a “20-­something cellphone user.” For instance, the katakana-­marked version of “Reptile Bullying” was also the only one repeatedly linked to “reclusive individuals” (Gottlieb, 2010a, p. 400) in Japan. Four respondents described the author of the katakana-­heavy “Reptile Bullying” using terms like otaku (“fans of manga, anime and computer games” (T. Okamoto, 2015, p.  13)) and hikikkomori (those who engage in “social withdrawal” (Overell, 2018, p. 207)). Two others argued that the writing showed an interest in J-­Pop, as marked katakana use often appears in lyric books, and one participant even linked the katakana use to a “sense of companionship (nakama ishiki)” with reptiles. These links between katakana marking and various geek or otaku identities are especially important with regard to an argument I made in Chapter 5. When looking at evaluations of script-­pronoun combinations in that chapter, katakana-­boku was the only one repeatedly linked to an otaku user. At the time, I contended that this was because the constituent variants of the katakana-­boku combination are both weakly associated with the identity. That is, although boku and katakana are potentially able to index otaku on their own, these links are not primary in either variant’s indexical field. Interaction between the two variants is therefore required for an otaku image to come to the forefront in the absence of “ritual context” (Silverstein, 2003, p. 226) or associated “co-­ occurring signs” (Agha, 2007, p. 24). The current chapter supports this earlier argument, as we directly observe katakana indexing an otaku identity without boku in only one of the katakana-­modified texts. Due to appearing specifically in a discussion of reptiles by a “shy” author, the links between katakana and otaku

Using katakana like an oyaji 167 are activated on their own, producing understandings of a katakana-­watashi user that were completely absent from the more abstract discussions of this combination during Chapter 5. Finally, as with “Health Worries,” non-­native authorship was posited for each version of “Reptile Bullying.” However, the commonality of these assertions differed extensively between the texts. While 25 comments across versions of “Health Worries” argued that the author was not Japanese, only seven comparable assertions appeared across evaluations of “Reptile Bullying.” Broadly speaking, this substantial reduction in links between marked script use and non-­native authorship appears to result from different perceptions of writing quality between the two texts. As mentioned earlier, evaluations of “Reptile Bullying” contrasted with “Health Worries” in containing mostly positive descriptions of the author’s writing skills. Some respondents even specifically stated that the “natural (shizen)” language use in “Reptile Bullying” caused them to reject non-­native authorship and therefore reconsider the motives behind marked script use. Consequently, the perceived quality of writing throughout a text appears to influence how readers will engage with the script use within, with “natural” or skilled language use increasing the likelihood that marked selections will be interpreted as reflecting the intent of a Japanese author. Furthermore, evaluations of “Reptile Bullying” show that strong writing skills can influence how marked script use treated as an index of non-­native identities is perceived. For “Health Worries,” assertions that script use evidenced a non-­ Japanese author were always justified by linking certain orthographic selections to low Japanese ability. That is, the marked script use was seen to reflect a lack of understanding of proper script use in Japan. This interpretation also appeared in evaluations that linked the hiragana-­and katakana-­heavy versions of “Reptile Bullying” to non-­native authors, as the three total comments of this type all described the scripts’ use in the text as “wrong (tadashikunai or machigatteiru).” By contrast, the two respondents who ascribed a non-­native author to the kanji-­ heavy version of “Reptile Bullying” instead specifically imagined a writer with a background in Chinese. Their comments treated the text as utilizing natural phrasing but unnatural selections of kanji, with the combination of these elements showing a specific style of marked script use to index a skilled non-­native Japanese user for the first time in Scripting Japan.

“Alcohol Advice” Interpretations of the last text, “Alcohol Advice,” contained three major similarities across all modified version. The first was that users engaged heavily with the presence of the emoji and graphic symbols throughout the text. Going forward, I will to refer to all these items as “emoji” for convenience. Across all versions of “Alcohol Advice,” respondents regularly considered emoji use as giving insight into the author’s identity. For the unmodified version, only one respondent commented on the script use, but 14 mentioned emoji. For each modified version, 11–15 respondents commented on script use, while 15–16 commented on emoji,

168  Using katakana like an oyaji with the total number of comments touching on the use of emoji always exceeding the number referring to marked script use. That said, users were not in full agreement about what emoji use implied. Across all versions of “Alcohol Advice,” comments linked emoji use to two conflicting user types. The first was authors in their 20s–30s, especially but not exclusively women. The second was writers older than 40 years of age. The question of which interpretation a respondent engaged with did not result from disagreements regarding whether young people used emoji, but rather whether a respondent viewed the specific emoji use in “Alcohol Advice” as contemporary or dated. While some respondents felt that the emoji evidenced an author who was “comfortable with cellphones (keitai ni nareshitashinda),” others instead saw the selections in “Alcohol Advice” as emoji from the “early days of the internet (intānetto shoki).” Comment 6.15 presents an illustrative case of this dichotomy. The respondent notes that younger writers use emoji but treats their specific use in “Alcohol Advice” as not reflective of youth practices. (6.15) 絵文字を多用しているが、決して若者が多用する絵文字ではない ので、年齢は40代から50代くらいと考えられる。 They are using lots of emoji, but these aren’t the emoji young people use, so I think the author is in their 40s or 50s. The second common feature across all evaluations of “Alcohol Advice” was disagreement regarding whether the author was kind or manipulative. Many respondents to each version, with a low of seven for the hiragana version and a high of 14 for the unmodified text, directly referred to the author as kind or caring. However, three to five respondents to each version instead felt the advice given by the author was underhanded or insincere. In one direct instance of this contrast, the evaluations of the unmodified version of “Alcohol Advice” contained one comment asserting that the author would be an excellent boss and another describing the author as a manager who is “not well loved (amari shitawarenai)” by their employees. This latter style of comment always appeared when the script or emoji use in an evaluated version of “Alcohol Advice” was itself seen as unnatural or forced. Comment 6.16 shows a common phrasing of these combined concerns, as the respondent links perceived inauthenticity in language use to an ultimately negative evaluation. (6.16) 記号や絵文字の多用: 明るく楽しい感じを無理に作ってそう。実 際は暗い人だったり、30代後半以上の年齢で、無理に若い人に印象を良 くしようとしている？ Symbols and emoji: they seem to be trying too hard to make a light and fun feeling. Probably a dark person in real life, over mid-­30s in age, trying too hard to make a good impression for young people?

Using katakana like an oyaji 169 The last similarity across “Alcohol Advice” evaluations was the assumption of male authorship. This result is in part due to the use of boku. Forty-­four total respondents mentioned that the pronoun’s appearance played a direct role in their assumption that the author was male, with some even simply stating some variant of the sentence “[B]ecause they are writing boku, it’s a man.” That said, as Figure 6.6 shows, boku use did not completely prevent assumptions of a female author. In the unmodified version, two respondents felt the author was female, with one noting that women who use boku “aren’t rare (sukunaku arimasen).” Comments to this same effect appeared in evaluations of the katakana version as well, with the potential of female authorship only completely disappearing once boku was written in kanji and included with other marked kanji use (note again that the original document used the hiragana representation ぼく). The hiragana-­ heavy text was able to increase assumptions of female authorship somewhat. Two respondents in fact directly attributed assumptions of female authorship to the hiragana use in the text, both writing that although they initially imagined a male author due to the use of boku, the combination of marked hiragana and emoji use led them to ultimately decide that the author was a woman. This “stereotypical” result mirrors the findings from Chapter  5 and “Reptile Bullying” but departs from the effect created by increasing the hiragana use throughout “Health Worries.” Elements of “Alcohol Advice” other than pronoun use also influenced assumptions of gender, though, as some thought the style of advice-­ giving in the document was rather “masculine.” This style of comment was basically assured when the author was evaluated to be manipulative rather than kind, as is most overtly visible in a comment stating that “in addition to the use of boku, the whole ‘pretending to care about someone’s situation so you can give long, seemingly useless advice and talk about your own life’ aspect gave me a strong masculine impression.” Although the effect of script on assumed gender for “Alcohol Advice” therefore mirrors some prior data, the effect of script on evaluations of age Text 3 - Alcohol Advice (FPP = boku) 120 100

100, 24人

90, 27人

92, 22人

84.6, 23人

80 60 40 20 0

6.7, 2人

15.4, 4人

3.3, 1人 Unmodified

Kanji-heavy Male

Hiragana-heavy Female

Unsure

Figure 6.5  Assumptions of author gender for “Alcohol Advice.”

8, 2人 Katakana-heavy

170  Using katakana like an oyaji

80 70 Percentage

60 50 40 30 20 10 0

10s Original

20s

30s

Kanji Heavy

40s

50s

Hiragana Heavy

60s

70s

Katakana Heavy

Figure 6.6  Evaluations of author age for “Alcohol Advice.”

differs from all the other studies across this book. As reflected in Figure 6.6, the unmodified version of “Alcohol Advice” was primarily associated with an author in their 30s. Authors in their 20s and 40s were mentioned by just over 40% of respondents, and the possibility of a teenage author was completely unmentioned. This 10-­year increase on the assumed 20-­something norm for the other unmodified texts relates directly to the discussions of alcohol in “Alcohol Advice.” Respondents commonly stated that writers under 25 were unlikely to have enough experience with drinking to have written the advice in the text. Due in part to this assumed impossibility of a younger author, the four styles of marked script use produced a heretofore absent set of contrasts on perceptions of author age. As with the other texts, kanji marking slightly raised the most asserted author ages. Increasing the script’s presence caused a majority of respondents to feel the author could be between 40 and 50 instead of 30–40 and reduced mentions of a 20-­something author from just over 40% to just under 30%. However, while kanji marking therefore had a somewhat “predictable” effect, the largest increase in assumed author age was actually produced by expanding the use of hiragana across “Alcohol Advice.” Evaluations of the hiragana-­heavy version included at least 10% fewer mentions of 20-­to 40-­year-­old authorship compared with the original text and increased support for an author over 40, 50, 60, and 70 to levels around 10% higher than that achieved by even the kanji-­heavy version. Katakana was the only script to bring about a decrease in the most assumed author age compared with the original text, with an author in their 20s becoming the only category to appear in over 50% of responses.

Using katakana like an oyaji 171 So what about “Alcohol Advice” caused hiragana to have an effect that differs from all prior findings across this book? After all, the indexical link between marked hiragana use and youth is arguably the most enduring we’ve seen. Prior studies of script have uniformly noted that hiragana is seen as childish, my analysis in Chapter 4 found manga authors using the script to index childishness, the responses in Chapter 5 showed the script increasing the chance a pronoun user would be seen as below college age in most cases, and marked applications of the script raised assumptions of teen authorship for both texts discussed so far in this chapter. Indeed, a link between hiragana use and younger authorship was even visible in comments on the hiragana-­heavy version of “Alcohol Advice,” as some respondents here again treated marked use of hiragana as a youth practice. However, in a manner distinct from evaluations of all the other texts, a large number of respondents to “Alcohol Advice” viewed the script use in the hiragana-­ marked version as labored. In other words, the perceived intentionality of the script use, as contrasted with the “honesty” (Campbell-­Kibler, 2008, p. 656) of perceived natural language, affected understandings of the index (Agha, 2005; Joseph, 2013). Consequently, the evaluations showed further evidence of a distinction between images of script in the abstract (e.g., hiragana is young) and more social and ideological understandings of who uses hiragana in what ways for which effects. This distinction is plainly visible in Comments 6.17 and 6.18 wherein “forced (無理している, muri shiteiru)” use of hiragana and emoji to create a youthful or friendly effect is treated as a habit of older writers trying (and failing) to connect with younger readers. (6.17) 50歳代の男性の若い人に対しての文章だと感じました。しかし、 若い人に無理に合わせようとしてなのか、漢字とひらがなの使い分けが 混乱しています。絵文字や星マークも無理している様子が伺えます。こ れらの点から、相手への思いやりは感じますが、相手との距離感に苦手 意識を感じます。 I felt it was a 50-­something man writing for a younger person. However, because they are trying too hard to connect with the young person or something, the use of kanji and hiragana is confused. I can also see a forced aspect in the use of emoji and star marks. From these points, I  feel their empathy toward the original poster, but also feel that they have a poor sense of distance. (6.18) 30代から60代前半くらいまでの若作りのおじさんを想像します。 ☆印や音符記号顔文字の使い方がいかにもな感じがします。意図的にひ らがなを使ったりしていることなどからも自分をソフトに見せようと必 死な感じがします。 I imagine an ojisan between their 30s and early 60s trying to appear young. The stars etc. cause me to feel this even more. The intentional use of hiragana also makes me feel they are desperately trying to appear “soft.”

172  Using katakana like an oyaji This interpretation of marked script use as spawning from imitative writing by an older author also appeared in responses to the katakana-­heavy text, although not to the same extent. As noted in Figure 6.6, most respondents directly associated the marked katakana use (or combined katakana and emoji use) in the edited document with younger authors. The direct statement “a young person: because of the emoji use and katakana use” stands as a clear example. That said, just as with marked hiragana use, some readers did not accept the marked katakana use in the text as authentic. One respondent felt the katakana use was a “dated (furukusai)” style popular in the 1980s, with the text therefore indicating an author between 40 and 50. Others simply felt the katakana resulted from older authors poorly aping youth writing, mirroring certain interpretations of the katakana-­heavy version of “Reptile Bullying.” Comment 6.19 shows a respondent engaging with all of these ideas, describing the “unnatural (不自然, fushizen)” katakana use in the text and choices like writing boku in katakana as indexing an older man attempting to connect with younger women. (6.19) 50~60代の男性。娘がいるか、身近に若い女性がいる。フレンド リーで世話好きな性格。投稿1と同じく、不自然なカタカナ使いから高 齢な印象。ボク(僕でも私でもなくボク)という一人称や顔文字などか ら、意識的に自分を可愛らしく見せようとする意図が感じられ、普段か ら若い女性に嫌煙されないよう気を使う中高年男性が目に浮かびまし た。 A man in their 50s or 60s. They either have a daughter or young women in their proximity. A friendly personality, someone who likes to help. Like with the first reading [“Health Worries”], I get an older impression from the unnatural katakana use. From the first-­person pronoun boku in katakana (not boku in kanji, not watashi in kanji, boku in katakana) etc., I see the image of an older man trying to not be disliked by younger women, intentionally trying to make themselves appear cute. As for the links between script use in “Alcohol Advice” and concerns other than age and gender, the remaining quantitative data echo prior discussions to some extent. For example, marked kanji use was linked to intelligence or education by two respondents but to arrogance and a “desire to appear smart (chiteki ni omowaretai)” by two others. Hiragana resulted in no assumptions of author intelligence but was linked to poor education only once. Increased use of the script therefore again removed all assumptions of intellectualism but failed to bring about a commonly co-­occurring increase in assumptions of low educational abilities. This may, again, relate to the general assumptions of older author age, as low educational abilities were often portrayed as a direct consequence of being a teenager in the responses to the other texts. In direct contrast, though, katakana led to three assumptions of lower education or intelligence as well as increased assertions that the text was poorly written. Four comments expressing negative evaluations of the text as a piece of writing were provided for the katakana version

Using katakana like an oyaji 173 compared with only one for the hiragana version and none for the original or kanji versions. Importantly, unlike the other texts, the increased assumption of lower erudition or writing ability that resulted from marked katakana use across “Alcohol Advice” was not simultaneously linked to delinquent identities. Reflecting the script-­independent assessment of the author of “Alcohol Advice” as kind, the katakana use in the text was linked to someone who was well meaning but “lacking in sincerity and seriousness (shinshisa ya shinkensa ni kakeru)” or simply “acting cute (kawaii kanji o enshutsu suru)” to appeal to their reader instead of a gyaru, punk, or other specific type of “delinquent.” The katakana-­marked document was attributed to an otaku identity by three respondents, though, and an ojisan writer by five respondents, with the script use not treated as unconnected from any labeled identities. The former link directly reflects Chapter 5’s discussion of katakana-­boku revisited in the prior section of this chapter, as the sole appearance of this identity during the katakana version of “Alcohol Advice” again indicates that the combination of the katakana and boku variants is particularly associated with otaku language use. Assumptions the author was an ojisan reflected the discussion of the term from the analysis of “Reptile Bullying,” as the respondents all linked katakana use that looked “old” to an older author “trying to appear young or fashionable (wakamono butteiru ka oshare butteru).” Finally, as with all other texts, some respondents thought perceived unnatural elements of “Alcohol Advice” were due to non-­native author status. The original text received no comments of this nature, but the kanji version received two comments asserting non-­native authorship, the hiragana version received five, and the katakana version received two. As a result, the overall ability of script manipulation to index non-­native status was minimal compared with “Health Worries” but echoed other texts in hiragana marking being particularly associated with non-­native writing. As with “Reptile Bullying,” the general assumption that the text was well written or contained “native” uses of language therefore appeared to prevent the mass linking of any style of script use to non-­native Japanese users. Only the hiragana-­heavy and katakana-­heavy versions of “Alcohol Advice” received any disparaging comments regarding text composition, with these comments limited to one and four responses for the two respective texts. By contrast, kanji was not linked to specifically Chinese authors, as we saw for “Reptile Bullying.” The only common explanation of why non-­native authorship was assumed for any version of “Alcohol Advice” was that the script use within evidenced poor Japanese abilities. However, katakana marking was specifically linked to a non-­native speaker who learned Japanese from Facebook by one respondent. This comment mirrors a response from “Health Worries,” with the script’s indexed author again arising from the idea that a non-­native speaker is poorly engaging in casual or online script use habits enjoyed by actual Japanese language users (Gottlieb, 2010a; Nishimura, 2003). Additionally, in two somewhat amusing cases, one respondent thought that marked script use was explained through the text’s being written to a non-­native Japanese user, with increased hiragana use arising from consideration of the assumed non-­native reader’s kanji literacy as per

174  Using katakana like an oyaji the NHK’s hurricane warning I mentioned in Chapter 1, while another posited that marked hiragana use indicated either a non-­native writer or a drunk native user of Japanese.

Script, context, and authorial identity In summarizing the findings of Chapter  6, I  will begin with the major effects each style of script modification repeatedly created across the three sets of texts. Looking at the data as a combined whole, increased kanji use regularly solidified assumptions of male authorship. This effect was especially pronounced in texts containing stereotypically male or “neutral” pronouns. The script also regularly “aged” the author, although this effect could manifest in multiple ways. Increased uses of kanji decreased assumptions that an author was a teenager, increased the most mentioned author age by about ten years, raised the number of comments positing an author over 40, or produced a combination of any of these three effects. Marked use of kanji also tended to increase the chance that a text’s author would be seen as educated. Hiragana, by contrast, tended to increase assumptions of female authorship and reduce the most listed author age range by a decade. In many ways, then, and echoing both scripts’ perceived histories and the data seen in Chapters 4 and 5 of Scripting Japan, the marked use of kanji and hiragana tended to produce contrasting effects (Yoda, 2000, 2004). In addition, katakana occasionally increased assumptions of male authorship, but not to the consistency seen with kanji. The script’s inconsistent effect on evaluations of author gender reflects the description of the script in prior research, as marked katakana use has been linked to multiple genders and sexualities (Frank, 2002; Kataoka, 1995; Maree, 2016; Nomura, 1981; Tochihara, 2010; Yajima, 1968). The most consistent effect of katakana marking instead primarily related to age, with increased use of the script consistently consolidating assumptions that a text’s author would be in their late teens or early 20s. The script was also the only one to regularly index otaku-­related identities and specific delinquent/disparaged juvenile identities in Japan. Finally, marked script use of all types could index a non-­native writer, although this effect was greatest when the script use co-­occurred with writing seen as unnatural or poor. More important than these general trends, though, was the fundamental finding that no effect was guaranteed. Differences in the context of a script’s employment and each respondent’s individual ideologies of interpretation vastly influenced the “reflexive social processes” (Agha, 2007, p. 146) that interpreted marked use of any individual script. Consequently, no style of marked script use created a consistent effect across the three documents. Increased uses of kanji, hiragana, and katakana all produced changes in author evaluations that contradict the common results listed in the prior paragraph. For instance, while kanji was often seen as an index of intelligence, it was also linked to pretention or affected erudition when it occurred without other perceived indexes of intelligence. Likewise, while hiragana marking tended to increase assumptions of female or youth authorship, it instead increased assumptions of male authorship when applied to

Using katakana like an oyaji 175 “Health Worries” and assumptions of an older author when applied to “Alcohol Advice.” Katakana indexed everything from “nothing,” when readers felt that the particularities of the script’s use were unnatural, to youth, delinquents, geeks, old men trying to be hip, and women with superiority complexes born between 1960 and 1970. The question of perceived “authenticity” was also key, as some felt certain styles of script use were clear indexes of one group, while others treated the same writing as poor attempts at imitating a group’s language practices. This multitude of observed effects does not mean that understandings of a script’s marked use are random or arise from “nowhere.” Rather, it is evidence that styles of marked script use are context-­dependent linguistic resources and, accordingly, subject to interpretations based upon individuals’ linguistic ideologies, understandings, and prior experiences with script users and script use (Irvine & Gal, 2000; Silverstein, 2000, 2003). The contrasting evaluations across this chapter are the product of “a mix of conditions of familiarity and novelty” (Collins & Slembrouck, 2007, p. 350) with Japanese script use and practices and further evidence the limits of relying entirely on discussions of script images to explain how script use creates meaning in Japan. Readers often engage with individual beliefs about who uses which scripts and why when attempting to understand script variation in context, with the diversity of their interpretations reflecting the variety of ways distinct social actors employ script throughout Japan. Indeed, the diversity of responses noted in the current chapter shows plainly that my matched-­guise experiment has taken only the first steps in cataloguing major linguistic ideologies about script use in Japan. In furthering our understanding of how Japanese readers engage with and view script practices, direct action to overcome some limitations of the current chapter’s methodology is required. The use of only four total versions of each text, for instance, prevented full engagement with the question of how the extent of a script’s use (and, consequently, the extent of a text’s markedness) influences its interpretation. I have no doubt that the comments I surveyed would look quite different if I had changed the representations of different terms or the overall amount of marking across the documents. Furthermore, I was unable to fully attend to the possibility I raised in Chapter 5 that “generic” script-­word combinations can potentially index social groups on their own. The current chapter did confirm that readers attend specifically to script-­pronoun combinations and showed evidence that representations of items like animal names or “simple (kantan na)” vocabulary can obtain explicit attention among text-­wide manipulation. Still, studies that focus on manipulation limited to specific vocabulary may uncover orthographic ideologies and interpretive processes I could not view here (Dahlberg-­Dodd, 2019). Finally, both the current chapter and Chapter 5 were unable to attend to if and how engagement with marked script use differs across Japanese readers of distinct backgrounds. Disparities in ideologies and beliefs about script use across demographic groups are an important area for future study, as both my respondents’ comments and prior studies note that specific script practices are enjoyed by different demographics to different degrees (Kataoka, 1997; Miller, 2004a; Ukita, Sugishima, Minagawa, Inoue,  & Kashu, 1996; Yoshimura, 1985). These limitations were

176  Using katakana like an oyaji all, of course, to some extent unavoidable for the current experiment given its exploratory purpose and consequent design. Nevertheless, they are areas important to attend to in future research and are likely to produce valuable findings that flesh out topics I could only cursorily engage with in the current chapter. Limitations aside, this chapter took important steps in confirming the social and indexical nature of script use in Japan, setting the groundwork necessary for any future research. Taken as a whole, the data make it clear that a Japanese reader’s interpretation of any particular style of marked script use often relies heavily on the registers and patterns of script/language use the interpreter is familiar with, the metalinguistic dialogues about script use they encounter or endorse, and the context in which the variant appears (Agha, 2007; Eckert, 2008; Ochs, 2012). While discussions of links between language use and identity construction/interpretation have tended to ignore purely graphic forms of variation, Japanese script use plainly possesses the same “dynamic social life” (Agha, 2005, p. 56) we see in variants originating in speech. Just as Miller (2004b) concluded that distinct contextual evaluations of stereotypically “feminine” language use in Japan result in situations in which “one person’s burikko [a woman performing ‘feigned naïveté’ (p. 310)] is another’s proper well-­bred miss” (p. 330), the current study has shown that distinct contextual evaluations of kanji use can turn one person’s learned scholar into another’s antisocial nationalist, Chinese-­background Japanese learner, pretentious older woman, or uneducated homebody affecting erudition online. As new actors represent language in new ways for new purposes, these understandings will continue to change, with contemporary online or cellphone-­based writing practices already establishing novel ideologies about script use(rs) throughout Japan. Certainly, these complications are all perhaps frustrating for our natural desire to clearly identify and explain the effects produced by marked use of each Japanese script. The current chapter’s findings may deny us the satisfaction of quickly asserting that a given use of a script we encounter is intended for a specific purpose  – or assuring Japanese language learners that a certain style of variation will be understood in a given way. That said, this diversity of interpretation is “a fundamental aspect of sociolinguistic variation” (Campbell-­Kibler, 2007, p. 55). The very complications that limit our ability to make snap judgments about how readers interpret variation also provide fascinating glimpses into how language creates meaning, and shed light on the complex ways readers navigate language ideologies when envisioning the author of a text.

Note 1 Rather than words, Japanese texts are traditionally counted in terms of the number of ji. Each hiragana, katakana, kanji, and punctuation mark is treated as one ji.

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7 The social lives of Japanese scripts

My first encounter with the idea that script use could contribute to the meaning of Japanese writing came during my undergraduate capstone. My project for the course was a translation of poetry by the Japanese writer Takahashi Mutsuo. During this translation process, I noticed quite early on that Takahashi had a predilection for using obscure kanji variants over more familiar representations. While I felt immediately that these choices were important, I struggled to understand how to best recreate them in my English translations. Reading English poetry had given me some frame of reference for deciphering other challenging elements of Takahashi’s writing, such as his penchants for employing esoteric vocabulary, using terms with double meanings, and playing with irregular spacing or paragraph shapes. I was not always successful in recreating these features in my translations, but on a basic level I recognized the practices. Takahashi’s kanji use, by contrast, was completely unfamiliar. His choices contrasted with the norms I had been taught to expect in class, and forms of graphic variation in English seemed poor parallels to the practice. Late nights spent poring over specialized dictionaries did assist in unravelling some of Takahashi’s orthographic decisions. The use of the rare variant 鹹 い for karai (normally translated as “spicy”), for instance, appeared to relate to 鹹い, indicating a sense of saltiness absent in the standard representation 辛 い (Weblio, 2019). However, for other instances of Takahashi’s atypical kanji selections I  could find no clear “meaning” that differentiated his choices from conventional representations. For instance, no source I  consulted gave me an explanation for why an author would use the kanji 何処 for doko (where) over the standard hiragana どこ. To illustrate how comparatively rare Takahashi’s kanji representation is in standard written Japanese, consider that searching the website of Asahi Shimbun (Asahi News) in 2019 produced 32,775 article hits for doko in hiragana compared with only 104 hits for doko in kanji. Many of these 104 hits also featured the hiragana for doko written next to the kanji in parentheses, indicating that the newspaper assumed many readers would lack familiarity with the representation. Similarly, I could not find an established motive behind Takahashi’s use of 匿す over the standard 隠す for the verb kakusu (to hide) or his use of 泛ぶ over the standard 浮ぶ for the verb ukabu (to float). These latter two variants are so rare that the aforementioned Asashi Shimbun website includes no

182  The social lives of Japanese scripts hits for either. In fact, even the kanji dictionaries I currently use on my phone lack 泛, and to this day my computer refuses to produce 匿す when I input kakusu. To get 匿す to appear in this very paragraph I was forced to type a different kanji compound that included the kanji 匿 (e.g., 匿名), delete the other elements, and then manually input the hiragana す. All in all, as an early Japanese learner these difficulties made it clear to me that Takahashi’s script use was not random, but they provided me with little further insight. I ended my translation capstone sure that Takahashi intended something through his uses of script but not exactly sure what he intended to convey. In my inexperienced eyes, the script use almost seemed to be a sort of contrarian gatekeeping  – an almost conscious effort to make the poems harder to read. My confusion regarding Japanese script use only deepened when I graduated and went to work in Japan. The moment I left the sheltered world of essays and sentence examples designed specifically for non-­native Japanese learners, I  was surrounded by script use that deviated from the rules I had learned in school. Loanwords like kōhī (coffee) and bīru (beer) appeared in all three scripts across the shopfronts, convenience stores, advertisements, and vending machines in the town where I lived. Billboards and fliers throughout Japan featured native words written in katakana rather than hiragana or kanji. Brand names, advertisements, menus, and other writing that was presumably expected to be legible to a general audience featured kanji characters that were not taught in schools. No matter where I went, I was surrounded by uses of script I had either never encountered or, in some cases, been explicitly told were wrong. At the risk of embarrassing myself, I  admit that in my youthful arrogance I  even initially wondered if some kind of epidemic of sloppy editing was running rampant throughout Japan. Hadn’t the Japanese authors of all this material been taught proper use of the Japanese scripts? As I spent more time engaging with Japanese writing, though, my initial confusion and prescriptivist frustration changed to fascination. I began to view the variation around me as part of the totality of what made up the Japanese language and to look for reasons behind the “odd” script use I noted all around. In short, understanding Japanese script use became part of my Japanese education rather than a frustration I  wished would disappear. To my delight, much had already been written on the topic. Native speakers also seemed interested in discussing script practices with a learner of their language. Taken together, these formal and casual sources provided new and interesting insights that helped me make sense of much of the variation I saw. Some of the variation I encountered certainly reflected the idea that advertisers used script for emphasis. Other selections appeared to align with the data showing that authors drew on images of a script to project affects, feelings, or certain atmospheres. And, yes, some variation clearly just happened, arising from differing personal preferences, the writing system’s history of inherent flexibility, and distinct levels of kanji knowledge among writers in Japan (Saiga, 1989). At the risk of again showing a strong youthful arrogance, though, as I  saw more and more variation I gradually began to feel that something was missing in

The social lives of Japanese scripts 183 all of the explanations I received. Script images did not seem enough to explain phenomena like the use of katakana in non-­native speech, wherein a graphic change was apparently able to convey all non-­native Japanese accents, nor did they cover the implications of practices like the use of katakana for the last names of Japanese people who no longer reside in Japan. Also, what about the aforementioned decision of Takahashi or other writers to use rare and generally illegible characters without any pronunciation guide? Takahashi’s kanji use, like his word choice, seemed like the result of purposeful selection from potential options rather than just a local style. For me, much orthographic variation in Japan was therefore difficult to explain by attending to only practical motives, the creation of atmosphere or word-­level effects, or chance alone. It instead seemed to imply that there was something social about language representation, with writers actively reacting to the language use around them rather than just considering images of the scripts themselves. In many ways, then, Scripting Japan has been a culmination of a long personal desire to better understand the reasons why variant script use occurs in Japan. My overarching goal has been to add nuance to the established idea that Japanese writers “consciously choose to place a specific word in a particular script type for the ‘feeling’ it evokes” (Kess & Miyamoto, 1999, p. 108) by bringing this concept into communication with the more global sociolinguistic understanding that wherever variation exists “there is in practice always social meaning” (Sebba, 2007, p. 32). To accomplish this task, my studies across this text have engaged with Japanese script variation from multiple perspectives that, while common in contemporary sociolinguistics, have not been applied extensively to the study of script use in Japan. The studies have also utilized a greater variety of data sources than found in prior research on the topic and analyzed the phenomenon using more “contextually rich qualitative research methods” (Jaffe  & Walton, 2000, p. 562) and theoretical perspectives to flesh out underexplored elements of the field. First, in Chapters 3 and 4, I engaged in text-­wide comparative examination of the variation across multiple series of Japanese manga. These chapters examined the contexts in which both novel and established orthographic practices appeared across the texts to evidence that ideologies about language users are greatly influencing the design and application of these techniques. In Chapter 5, I then looked at how orthographic and lexical indexes could interact to create effects dependent on the “situated use” (Eckert, 2008, p. 454) of both variables in tandem. This chapter differed from the earlier two in attending to both the selection and interpretation of these script-­pronoun combinations, changing to a focus on reader responses to orthographic variation halfway through. Finally, in Chapter 6, I reviewed how Japanese readers attend to script use when visualizing the author of a text. This study looked at how interpretation of script-­wide variation is affected by individual experiences with script use, the presence of co-­ occurring indexes, and the local context in which orthographic selections appear. In this final chapter, I will summarize and consolidate the findings of the prior chapters to discuss the primary, holistic conclusion of Scripting Japan – that script use in Japanese always has the potential to be a socially meaningful language act.

184  The social lives of Japanese scripts My review will begin by dividing the prior studies in this book by their analytical perspectives. First, I will assess the overarching findings of my research on the top-­down use of script as part of “the totality of semiotic means by which items and categories, individuals and social groups, along with their attributes and values, are identified, thematised, focused, shaped and made intelligible” (Coupland, 2010, p. 242) throughout fictional texts. Afterward, I will review the results of my studies on how Japanese readers engage with and understand styles of orthographic variation and practice. After attending to these two angles separately, I will then end the chapter by looking at their collective contributions to our understanding of the importance of orthographic variation in contemporary Japan. I will also address areas for future study and the implications my findings have for how we think about graphic language play.

Scripting identities In the first three analysis chapters of this book, I looked at the motives for script variation throughout multiple series of Japanese manga. These investigations started in Chapter 3, which evidenced that stereotypes and ideologies regarding non-­native Japanese speakers served as the primary motive behind katakana marking of non-­native dialogue across multiple texts. Chapters 4 and 5 then continued to focus on the influence of linguistic ideologies on script selection but expanded their range of attention to include variation across the use of all three Japanese scripts. Chapter 4 built directly upon Chapter 3, examining motives for text-­wide variation in the use of all three scripts across the dialogue in three series of manga. By contrast, Chapter 5 narrowed its concentration to identity-­related divisions in pronoun representation throughout the manga Usagi Doroppu. Taken together, the data from these chapters evidenced that authors were using interplays of multiple scripts to index and define identities, registers, and local stance-­taking acts. In doing so, they also engaged with major linguistic ideologies in Japan, with differences in how the authors indexed social identities through script reflecting contrasts in what they considered to be normative language use or behavior for a given context. Certainly, the findings from this first series of investigations contained some variation that aligned with prior discussions of the affective use of Japanese scripts. The results included data supporting the essential argument that some script variation results from a “sense of compatibility between the script type images and the mental representations of what [authors] want to write” (Iwahara, Hatta, & Maehara, 2003, p. 387). However, this sort of explanation was not productive for understanding anything other than one-­off selections conveying utterance-­level manifestations of affects such as confusion, sarcasm, or surprise. When attending to influences that stimulated contrasting patterns of script use throughout entire texts, surface-­level descriptions of script images only helped in understanding why a given script was chosen after the fact. They were never enough to answer the more fundamental questions of where marking would occur, why it occurred in a given context, or what a given instance of locally marked or contrastive script

The social lives of Japanese scripts 185 use was intended to convey. For example, awareness that katakana is often seen as “youthful,” “cool,” or foreign” helped explain why it was chosen over kanji or hiragana for purposes like marking teen male pronouns or non-­native speech. That said, this same knowledge of how the script is perceived in the abstract did not explain what its marked presence expressed within these contexts, nor did it provide full insight into the more basic question of how any information was conveyed through non-­standard or contrastive uses of the script, as demographic traits alone were never predictive of any marking style. At a bare minimum, questions of technique were also involved in how authors created meaning through script variation. Authors used the same scripts to convey different meanings by modifying the amount of the script that was present, contrasting different styles or amounts of locally marked selections, adjusting the specific contexts or words a script was applied to, and even utilizing different kanji characters in otherwise orthographically identical speech styles. While these practices each involve distinct considerations and are used to index distinct information, they all show that the creation of meaning through orthographic variation involves concerns beyond just which script one selects. More fundamentally, though, the most significant way that variant script use created meaning in the analyzed texts was through the contexts of its employ, with the choice of where to use any style participating in ideologies about language use and users throughout Japan. Out of these many sociolinguistic ideologies, the most influential was ultimately the author’s conception of which identities are incongruous with the language use(rs) indexed by a text’s local orthographic norms. To return to the example of katakana marking of non-­native or teenage male speech, this means that the marking style produced meaning primarily by indicating that the normative members of these two groups differ from the “unmarked” language users within the same texts. By causing certain speakers to stand out through any form of marked script use, the authors produced or reflected social understandings of which identities and social performances are normative. This creates a situation wherein even members of a group subject to normative marking appear distinct when they avoid the orthographic performances of their peers, as they can appear as non-­normative to their local group rather than simply unmarked social actors. Consequently, the most major finding of the first few chapters was that even the basic decision of whether to employ marked script use or orthographically flexible writing styles was a socially important and potentially influential act. Like spelling, word choice, accent, or other avenues for language variation, script served as a location where authors defined or emphasized what is normative, what is marked or “other,” and, at times, even the ways in which something should be marked and why (Agha, 2003; Wortham & Reyes, 2015). Simply put, this means that script manipulation was often much more than simply a method for creating a “special effect” (Nakamura, 1983, p. 38), evoking “emotional semantic information” (Iwahara et al., 2003, p. 378), or showing that something is an “emotional expression strongly tied to one’s feelings” (Satake, 1989, p. 65). Variation in language representation throughout the analyzed manga instead simultaneously indexed local information, engaged with major linguistic ideologies, and

186  The social lives of Japanese scripts recognized the legitimacy or even necessity of entire orthographic practices and marking styles. As a result, the authors’ script practices had implications beyond simply the information they conveyed in a given panel, story, or text. Their script use served as part of the metalinguistic discourse in mass media that can (re) define, reify, and disseminate understandings of language users and language use and functioned as a site where social or linguistic ideologies about language and language users were expressed, negotiated, contested, and validated (Agha, 2003; Bakhtin, 1986; Inoue, 2003). In short, through making concentrated choices regarding whether or where to employ orthographic techniques, the authors were disseminating some form of the very messages that led to their original decision to use a given orthographic style (Silverstein, 1976). Their script use served as one link in the construction and transmission of chains of “cultural messages” (Agha, 2003, p. 246) regarding language use, socializing readers into understandings of “the social, cultural and historical” (Blommaert, 2016, p. 11) rather than just ways of viewing the kanji, hiragana, and katakana scripts.

Scripting authors My second major set of research in Scripting Japan looked at how readers engage with and understand orthographic variation. Building on prior psycholinguistic research on views of individual scripts or representations of “neutral” vocabulary items (e.g., Iwahara et  al., 2003; Kess  & Miyamoto, 1999; Ukita, Sugishima, Minagawa, Inoue, & Kashu, 1996), my studies here changed tack to investigate responses to (1) variant representation of lexical indexes and (2) marked script use throughout distinct contexts. In the second half of Chapter  5, I  surveyed native speakers’ understandings of the identities appropriate to various script-­ pronoun combinations. Comparison of these evaluations evidenced that many interpretations were specific to interactions between the indexical fields of a given pronoun and script, as they did not appear during evaluations of either item in other combinations. Chapter 6 then surveyed the results of a matched-­guise experiment wherein respondents read three Japanese texts and then detailed their impressions of the authors. While each respective text was lexically identical across participants, the orthographic content varied, with each reader engaging with one of four versions of each text. Ultimately, comparison of readers’ responses noted that both individual experiences with script use and co-­occurring features in a text have a large impact on how marked script use is perceived, allowing for even directly contradictory understandings of what the marked use of a script implies within a given text. At the most fundamental level, the primary result of these two reader-­focused studies was that interpretation of a given script in use is not predictable. Respondents’ interpretations were the result of “reflexive social processes” (Agha, 2007, p.  146) instead of automatic ones. They arose not from understandings of a script alone but from complex interactions between the specifics of how a script was employed, individual ideologies about script use, and other indexes or content within the same text. This is not to say that my results show that no variant

The social lives of Japanese scripts 187 script use is interpreted in a direct manner. As I have mentioned before, my goal in writing this book has always been to expand, not overturn, our knowledge of why script variation occurs in written Japanese. Data produced by researchers like Hayashi (1982) and Ukita et al. (1996) showing that script images can change the perception of individual vocabulary are still valid, and some of my respondents directly engaged with script images during their evaluations. The existence of these interpretations therefore must continue to be recognized to grasp the totality of how Japanese readers engage with orthographic variation. That said, my findings here also showed that understanding local ideologies about language use is paramount for comprehending how script use is evaluated during more personal or performative language acts. In cases where writing is intrinsically involved in the expression or construction of self, such as the selection of a pronoun or the production of text intended to reflect one’s social voice, script use rarely produces a constant kanji, hiragana, or katakana-­linked effect. Rather, readers engage with script via “in-­the-­moment assigning of indexical values to linguistic forms” (Eckert, 2008, p.  463), basing their ultimate understandings on interactions and (in)congruities between the linguistic ideologies they engage with and the totality of indexes they recognize throughout a text. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, my research in the latter chapters showed Japanese readers linking specific orthographic habits with distinct populations. Script variation was not simply treated as a way of attempting to access or recreate variation that originates in human speech or as something understood entirely through engagement with the representation of social voices in media. Likewise, the marked use of a single script was not uniformly attached to a single group or purpose. Participants instead frequently engaged in distinct “ideologies of semiosis” (Blommaert, 2016, p. 14; Silverstein, 1992, p. 315) relating directly to definable orthographic habits and practices they had observed or discussed. As these ideologies were based on individual understandings and experiences, reflecting the “inevitable time lag between the indexing and the indexed” (Inoue, 2004, p. 39), different participants were able to connect the same orthographic selections to a range of diverse authors and motives. For instance, while multiple participants explicitly recognized that hiragana was considered a “cute” script, they expressed distinct conceptions of who uses hiragana to produce a cute effect. These conceptions then bifurcated further once we moved to the question of who uses hiragana to produce a cute effect within a given context. In the most extreme cases, script use some respondents felt to be just meaningless or odd was seen by others as clear evidence of multiple potential social identities, with respondents attending to minute contrasts between how different populations use a single script as part of their day-­to-­day linguistic practices. In short, the latter half of this book showed clearly that Japanese language users’ understandings of orthographic actions involve a level of complexity beyond what has been described to date. Prior research has certainly noted that Japanese users can have distinct “affective orientations” (Kataoka, 1997, p. 106) toward each script. What the latter chapters of this text evidenced, however, is that Japanese users also interpret script use by drawing on distinct experiences

188  The social lives of Japanese scripts with orthographic actions across a myriad of contexts and in combination with a myriad of other indexes. Readers therefore attend not only to the marked script use they notice but also to the locations where certain styles of script use occur as well as surrounding metalinguistic dialogues about why. As a result, they can possess distinct and constantly evolving understandings of scripts, script users, and sets of orthographic acts. This includes an awareness of differences between how individuals are represented through script and how they represent themselves, as evident in the fact that my data showed non-­native identities linked more prominently to marked hiragana use than katakana use. While Chapter 3 showed that non-­native identities are commonly indexed from above via katakana, in Chapter 6 non-­native authorship was instead most consistently assumed in cases where hiragana use was increased throughout a text or when marked script use of any type co-­occurred with poor writing. This contrast did not evidence a previously undocumented “foreign” image of hiragana, but rather that dialogues about how to mark non-­native voices co-­exist with observations and discussions of how early Japanese learners themselves actually produce written Japanese. Upon encountering marked script use, interpreters therefore navigate multiple understandings of how script is used throughout the linguistic landscape of Japan, addressing several possibilities before producing an analysis that best aligns with their perceptions of the other features they treat as socially meaningful throughout a language act. The existence of a dichotomy between the variants involved in self-­and other-­representation of a single group is, of course, not novel in contemporary sociolinguistic discussions of linguistic variation. Prior research on variant spelling, grammar, and lexical choice across languages has noted that formally non-­standard language use is used to index social identities in fictional texts in a manner that does not mirror how the represented language users construct and negotiate their own voices through written variation (Agha, 2007; Eisenstein, 2015; Hill, 1995; Jaffe & Walton, 2000; Preston, 1982; Ronkin & Karn, 1999). The same can also be said about the ability of language users to connect the use of a single variant to multiple social groups. The enduring and constantly fluctuating variation between how writers represent Japanese means that marked uses of each Japanese script can now be linked to multiple social practices and identities, with both initially localized uses and understandings of script spreading in a manner that directly mirrors how once-­dialect-­and sociolect-­restricted language variants regularly become adopted by, critiqued, and challenged in new communities around the world (Bucholtz, 1999, 2003; Bucholtz & Hall, 2005). What is important here, however, is that these fundamental sociolinguistic understandings about the social life of language resources have been commonly overlooked in discussions of purely graphic forms of linguistic variation. Dialogues about how Japanese script use creates meaning are especially guilty of failing to consider the question of how individual understandings of language practices or a text’s status as self-­or other-­representation might influence the way script use is perceived. The data in Chapters 5 and 6 show clearly that this oversight demands attention in future research, as Japanese language users are interpreting variation

The social lives of Japanese scripts 189 through engaging with distinct understandings of (and experiences with) who uses certain orthographic styles in which contexts and why.

Scripting Japan Looking at the studies throughout this book together, the central underlying message of their findings is simple: beliefs about language use and language users are influencing the selection and interpretation of script throughout Japan. Ideologies regarding script use and script users are, of course, major elements of these beliefs. My findings here show clearly that orthography-­related ideologies deserve attention as linguistic ideologies in their own right. But even when we expand beyond discussions of script images, restricting our dialogues about why script variation occurs and how it is understood to discussions of script alone is limiting. Doing so fails to represent the totality of beliefs, understandings, experiences, and contextual factors that affect how script is employed and understood throughout Japan. The ways in which written Japanese is being produced are affected by perceived divides between speech acts, social identities, and normative behavior as well as engagement with multiple overlapping indexes in tandem. Consequently, variant script use in Japan is both reflecting and contributing to broader social understandings of language users and language use. Indeed, even in the case of variation that is definitively not intended to index anything, the studies here have shown that we can never ignore the potential for an orthographic act to reflect social meanings and participate in their construction. A commonplace “neutral” action like using katakana for emphasis, for instance, does not occur in a vacuum. Regardless of an author’s intent, it is still part of the totality of experiences with script use that people have throughout Japanese writing, and it informs their judgments of who uses which variants where and why. As a result, even complete avoidance of any variation is an important act. Given the large amount of orthographic variation throughout Japan, standard Japanese script use has grown to possess a “hegemonic” (Silverstein, 2003, p. 219) role that allows the decision to closely follow national script norms to still contribute to the creation of a language act’s “total linguistic fact” (Silverstein, 1985, p. 220). While more extreme forms of marking obviously receive the most attention, they are not the origin or focus of all orthography-­related ideologies and metalinguistic discussion. In utilizing, reading, and discussing scripts throughout their daily lives, both avoiding and employing specific styles in specific contexts, all users of written Japanese are actively contributing to how social information is produced, reflected, and negotiated through orthographic acts. Although Japanese script use is currently in its most unified and stable state on a national scale, it is therefore arguable that the variant use of script throughout Japan is now more vigorous, dynamic, and socially meaningful than ever. Before orthographic standardization, Japanese writing showed the language or dialect-­ like divides common to many cases of script variation around the world. That is, distinct populations consistently represented the same language via distinct norms for script use (Frellesvig, 2010; Habein, 1984; Unseth, 2005). While variations

190  The social lives of Japanese scripts obviously existed within these norms and communities of practice, they were generally non-­interactive outside of them, as the separation between methods was so extreme that concentrated study was required to gain literacy in any new style (Konno, 2013, 2015). By contrast, the orthographic divides that currently appear throughout Japanese language users’ day-­to-­day lives are immediate, (re) active, and alive. Marked or variant script use is consumed and used by almost all social actors and appears throughout both asynchronous, one-­directional communication (e.g., novels or advertising) and more local and interactive language acts (e.g., text messages). Furthermore, as immense as the diversities across these ways of representing Japanese can be, they are all interacting with and bound by shared norms of a nationally standardized writing system. Marked script use therefore now has the potential to be recognized and discussed by all Japanese, and in a manner that can communicate with local cultures, historic dialogues, and overarching norms. As a consequence, ideologies about script use in Japan can now fluctuate rapidly as individuals are exposed to, discuss, reject, produce, and ultimately attempt to produce in-­context understandings of novel acts of orthographic variation throughout Japan. Ultimately, then, Scripting Japan has shown that complete understanding of script use in Japan requires an evolving awareness of practical, affective, individual, and social concerns. Due to the constant presence of orthographic variation in Japan, any selection of script potentially produces new understandings of script use directly and language use and users more broadly. As formerly context-­ restricted techniques find new homes, social voices once marked with one technique find themselves represented in new ways, and as (new) social actors develop new orthographic practices, the question of what is or should be orthographically (non)standard in a given context is placed similarly in a state of constant change. In the simplest terms, what all this shows is that script use in Japan is language use. It is not simply a form of graphic play that evokes meaning due to static understandings of scripts’ histories or visual shapes, nor is it something used to graphically indicate variation found in speech but unable to be considered “linguistic” in its own right. The findings throughout this book have made it clear that Japanese script use is without a doubt a living aspect of Japanese language use and therefore “cannot be understood without also attending to more widely circulating models of the social world” (Wortham, 2008, p. 94). Future studies of orthographic variation in Japanese that do not attend to this reality consequently risk overlooking major elements of how a given use of script contributes to the creation of meaning, the specifics of the meaning(s) it conveys, and the ideologies about language use(rs) in Japan that it interacts with or embodies. While not every orthographic selection in a Japanese text is intended as an index, each has the potential to be engaged with in context as a purposeful language act. That said, there is certainly much left to discover about variant script use in Japan. This book has evidenced the fundamental indexical potential of orthographic acts in Japanese and catalogued a number of ways in which definable orthographic practices are used and understood. But as I have commented in prior chapters, many studies in the current text were exploratory by necessity.

The social lives of Japanese scripts 191 Their fundamental design therefore did not allow for a full discussion of certain concerns. First and foremost, I  was not able to engage as deeply with questions of familiarity across my studies here as is necessary. I catalogued numerous practices and ideologies but not the exact frequencies at which they are recognized or occur. A full understanding of Japanese script use absolutely requires a greater awareness of which orthography-­related ideologies are most prominent within certain populations and any cyclical effects contact between contrasting ideologies has on the development and evolution of local script practices. Indeed, there are few findings I  have produced here that would not benefit greatly from being fleshed out by examining writers’ own (changing) understandings of the role of script in their writing across time and social contexts. More direct interviews with script users would be especially productive in this regard. Furthermore, there is still much to learn about how medium, text type, and other “material conditions” (Piller, 2019, p. 524) influence interpretation of script use. Questions of how “appropriateness” affects engagement with script variation, as researchers like Kunert (2017, 2020) have begun to attend to, are a particularly important complication in this vein, as is the influence of audience design and imagined readership recently raised by Dahlberg-­Dodd (2019). We cannot forget that language use is involved not only in representing individuals but also in making appeals to the presumed tastes or practices of one’s audience. Finally, my focus here on Japanese obviously risks implying that the concerns I have raised are limited to a writing system that happens to allow for a comparatively extreme amount of interactive graphic language play. As I mentioned in Chapter 2, the fundamental argument that readers pay attention to styles of graphic language variation is something that has implications for language use around the world, especially as technology opens new avenues for graphic variation across synchronous language acts. Still, the full validity of these implications necessitates further study. For all these potential expansions, though, I  hope the work in this current book serves as an important starting point, establishing primary findings that can assist new research and researchers in accomplishing their individual goals. In ending Scripting Japan, I would like to return to where this book arguably began. As I mentioned in the introduction, when I was an early Japanese learner attempting to translate poetry, I  first found the writing system’s orthographic variation frustrating. I viewed it as a barrier to understanding the language rather than a door. In re-­reading Takahashi’s poetry now, though, I feel as though his script use is an important action inherent in the ultimate meaning and importance of his work. In the defiant use of kanji most readers would find illegible, I see both attention to local poetic effects and a broad assertion of self as a poet – or at least as some kind of poet. Questions of how to best translate this assertion aside, Takahashi’s script no longer appears to me as some kind of orthographic gatekeeping. Rather, it is an act of participation in a community of practice that views itself as distant from standardized script use. From a more global perspective, one could argue that I am engaged in a similar ideological behavior now. Even if the norms of English provide me with less available variation from word

192  The social lives of Japanese scripts to word, I would argue that I am in part indexing my “academicness” by writing this book in fonts other than Papyrus, Curlz MT, or Comic Sans. The complexities of how script is used and understood in Japan that I  have raised throughout Scripting Japan therefore complicate how we must engage with graphic variation in writing moving forward. They prevent easy top-­down and functionalist analysis of individual instances of variant language representation, discussions that attend to a form’s visual impact alone, and claims that previously recognized motives for a style are certain to be applicable in new contexts. Most importantly, they show that we cannot continue acting as though writing-­ restricted practices do not serve as language acts that people discuss, avoid, (mis) interpret, participate in, and modify for their own interactional needs. Examining Japanese script use as part of language use, rather than just a way of representing language use, sheds light on ways that all forms of graphic variation can result from dynamic sociolinguistic systems “in which communities  – actual and real ones – appear as actors” (Blommaert, 2016, p. 13). Consequently, if we wish to understand the totality of how meaning is made through language, the vibrant use of script variation in Japan is a linguistic practice we cannot ignore.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italic indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. accent(s) 5, 32 – 33, 36 – 41, 43, 61 – 62, 64, 67 – 69, 72 – 74, 76 – 80, 133, 183, 185 adultness 116 – 118 African American Vernacular English 31 age 32, 75, 90, 92 – 93, 95 – 98, 103, 114, 118, 121 – 122, 125 – 129, 133, 141, 145, 148, 152 – 154 – 155, 160 – 162, 165 – 166, 168 – 169, 171 – 172, 174; see also adultness; author age; childishness alternate(ing) case 46 – 50, 47, 48 Asō, Tarō 59 ateji 4 Australia 32 – 33, 39, 47 author age 143 – 144, 148, 152 – 155, 153, 161 – 162, 161, 170, 170, 172, 174 author gender 122, 149, 150, 160 – 161, 160, 169, 174 authorial identity 141, 174; and script variation 141 – 176 Bashō, Matsuo 11 Canada 64 Cherokee (language) 44 childishness 50, 89 – 92, 94 – 95, 98, 171 Chinese (language) 4, 6, 69, 95, 167, 173, 176 Chinese characters 3 – 6, 44 Chokotan! (Chokotan!) 86 – 87, 89, 95 – 99, 96 Chūgoku Yome Nikki (Chinese Wife Diary; CYN) 63, 69 – 73, 76 – 78, 81

comics 51, 61, 64, 70, 72, 81, 86, 98; see also manga Comic Sans 43, 192 dialect 37, 39, 44, 49, 51, 104, 112, 129, 188 – 189; British 37; Chinese 4; cultural 46; eye 39 – 40; kansai 104 Dickens, Charles 37 education 37, 44, 64, 92, 131, 152, 156 – 157, 182; index of 40, 42, 159, 162 – 164, 172 emoji 45, 145, 167 – 169; and age 168, 171 – 172 emoticons 45 English (language) 2, 4 – 6, 12, 15, 19, 21 – 22, 29 – 32, 36 – 37, 39 – 40, 42 – 44, 46, 49, 61, 65 – 66, 82n2, 96, 111, 127, 130, 143, 145, 181, 191 Facebook 46, 173 femininity 16, 33 – 34, 119 – 120, 125, 150, 152 first-person pronouns 106, 110 – 136; and gender 112 – 113, 112, 123 – 134, 123, 126, 128, 130, 132; Japanese 110 – 113, 112; see also pronoun choice; pronoun representation; script-pronoun combinations font 2, 36, 41 – 44, 46, 48, 51, 96, 192; Curlz MT 192; Impact Bold 46; Papyrus 192; Times New Roman 43; see also Comic Sans; handwriting FPPs 9, 112, 150, 160, 169 French (language) 6 furigana 14, 147

196 Index gender 2, 13, 16, 30 – 31, 34, 100, 112 – 113, 119, 121 – 124, 126 – 133, 141, 143 – 146, 148, 151, 160 – 161, 169, 172, 174; ascription 123, 126, 128, 130, 132; trans- 125, 131, 133; see also author gender; femininity; masculinity German (language) 22, 64 Germany 39 grammatical errors 62, 77 – 79 graphic change 1, 183; see also orthographic changes graphic language variation 1, 29 – 30, 36, 51, 191 graphic manipulation 29, 48; as social practice 35 – 44; see also orthographic manipulations graphic play 190; as social act 29 – 52; see also orthographic play graphology 41; see also orthography haiku 11 hands 22, 42 handwriting 36, 41 – 44, 48; Antiqua 22; Fraktur 22; Palmer 42; Spencerian 22, 42; Sütterlin 22 Haruki, Murakami 11 Hataraku!! Indojin (Work!! Indian) 63, 76 – 77, 88 hiragana 3 – 6, 7, 8 – 9, 11, 14 – 16, 17, 18, 21 – 22, 23n4, 65, 69, 77, 81, 87 – 105, 96, 103, 107n1, 107n4, 122, 132, 134 – 136, 142, 145 – 146, 148, 168, 176n1, 181 – 182, 185 – 188; and age 127 – 129, 131, 152 – 155, 153, 161 – 162, 161, 169 – 172, 170, 174 – 175; and education 156, 162 – 164, 172 – 173; and gender 114 – 115, 118 – 119, 123 – 125, 123, 130 – 131, 133, 149 – 152, 150, 160 – 161, 160, 169, 169, 174 – 175; and intelligence 155 – 156, 162 – 164, 172 – 173; and non-native writer 136, 158 – 159, 167, 173 – 174 homophones 4, 8 homosexuality 127, 130 – 131 identities 23, 29, 37 – 41, 43 – 45, 48, 52, 63, 68, 88, 92 – 95, 98 – 99, 103, 105 – 107, 111 – 113, 118, 120, 123, 125, 127 – 128, 131, 133 – 135, 141, 158 – 159, 162, 165 – 166, 173 – 174, 184 – 186; author 23, 141, 149; character 88, 106, 113, 118;

contrasted 86; geek/otaku 165 – 166; indexing of 29, 37, 86, 110 – 111, 120, 134, 141; non-native 63, 136, 167, 188; and pronoun use 133; queer 139 – 131, 133; social 21, 30, 36 – 37, 94, 99, 105, 111, 184, 187 – 189; speaker 106, 111 – 112; see also authorial identity indexes 23, 30, 33, 40, 42, 71, 93 – 95, 98, 104 – 105, 120, 165, 175; of age 162; of femininity 150, 161; of gender 113; of education 40; of identities 29, 37, 86, 110 – 111, 120, 134, 141; of intelligence 90, 93 – 94, 126 – 127, 156, 162, 164, 172, 174; language 33, 119, 159; of masculinity 125, 150; of politeness 112 – 113, 112, 116 – 118; of sarcasm 46, 47, 49 indexical fields 35, 107, 110, 120, 133, 186 indexicality 23, 29 – 36, 142 indexical mutability 35 indexical order 32 – 33 Indo Meoto Jawan (Indian Couple’s Wedding Cups; IMJ) 61, 63, 72 – 78, 81, 86 – 89, 92 – 95, 98 – 99 intelligence: index of 90, 93 – 94, 126 – 127, 156, 162, 164, 172, 174 internet 45 – 46, 48, 52n1, 149, 156, 168 Japan 1 – 6, 11 – 12, 14, 17, 21, 23, 30 – 31, 34 – 35, 39, 41, 45, 51, 59, 61, 64 – 67, 71 – 72, 74, 76 – 77, 81, 87 – 88, 99 – 100, 104, 106, 110 – 112, 122, 126, 130, 133 – 136, 136n3, 146 – 147, 149, 151, 157 – 159, 165 – 167, 174 – 176, 182 – 185, 188 – 190, 192 Japanese (language) 2, 6, 12 – 13, 70, 112, 134, 142, 173, 176, 182, 187 – 188, 190; formal 65, 72, 105, 118; romanized 22; standard 12, 19, 61, 67, 71 – 72, 80, 90, 100, 102, 104, 107n4, 146, 189 Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) 70 Japanese phonology 4 – 5 Japanese scripts 4, 20, 23, 30, 37, 51 – 52, 81, 86, 92, 146; social lives of 181 – 192; see also hiragana; kanji; katakana Japanese speech 60, 65, 67, 78; native 63, 71, 86; non-native 23, 61, 69, 73, 76, 79

Index  197 Japanese writing system 2 – 3, 6, 8, 11, 13 jōyō kanji list 9 – 11, 13, 91 – 92, 97, 156, 162 jukujikun 4 kanji 3 – 6, 7, 8 – 11, 10, 13 – 16, 17, 21 – 22, 23n3, 61, 65 – 66, 69 – 71, 73 – 75, 77, 81, 87 – 88, 105 – 106, 107n2, 110, 122, 122, 135, 142, 146 – 149, 176, 176n1, 181 – 183, 185 – 187, 191; and age 89 – 99, 115 – 119, 127 – 129, 152 – 155, 153, 161 – 162, 161, 169 – 172, 170, 174 – 175, 185; and education 156, 162 – 164, 172 – 173; and formality 100 – 102, 104; and gender 114 – 116, 118 – 120, 123 – 126, 123, 129, 131, 133, 149 – 152, 150, 160 – 161, 160, 169, 169, 174 – 175; and intelligence 94, 155 – 156, 162 – 164, 172 – 173; kun-yomi of 4 – 5; and non-native writer 158 – 159, 167, 173 – 174; on-yomi of 4 – 5 kansai dialect 104, 131 – 133 kaomoji 45 katakana 3 – 6, 7, 8 – 9, 11, 14 – 16, 17, 18, 20 – 23, 51 – 52, 59 – 81, 86 – 87, 89, 91 – 92, 95, 96, 97, 99 – 105, 103, 107n4, 110, 114 – 120, 122, 123, 125, 127 – 133, 135 – 136, 142, 146, 148 – 149, 176n1, 182 – 189; and age 152 – 155, 153, 157, 161 – 162, 161, 169 – 172, 170, 174 – 175; and education 156, 162 – 164, 172 – 173; and geek/otaku identities 165 – 166; and gender 149 – 152, 150, 160 – 161, 160, 169, 169, 174 – 175; and gyaru subculture 157 – 158; and intelligence 155 – 156, 162 – 164, 172 – 173; and non-native speech 183; and nonnative writer 158 – 159, 167, 173 – 174 Kazakhstan 44 Know Your Meme 46 Korea 44, 71 Korean (language) 111 language play 1, 5, 11, 44, 64, 165, 184, 191 language variants 18 – 20, 31, 64, 75, 80, 110, 188 language variation 1 – 2, 23, 29 – 31, 35 – 36, 40, 50 – 51, 87, 185, 191; creation of meaning through 21, 35

legibility 12, 14 – 15, 17, 42, 73, 75, 146 lexeme 62, 86, 94, 97 literacy 6, 12 – 14, 41, 77, 90 – 91, 173, 190 loan words 6, 89, 92, 95, 97, 182 lowercase 5, 46 Malayalam (language) 74 Mandarin (language) 4 manga 23, 61 – 65, 67 – 73, 75 – 76, 78 – 81, 82n1, 86 – 106, 111, 113 – 120, 122, 127, 131, 147, 166, 171, 183 – 185; see also individual manga titles masculinity 16, 33, 115, 125, 150 matched-guise experiment 23, 141 – 142, 175, 186 McDonald’s Japan 61, 80; Mr. James 61 – 62, 80 – 81 meaning: creation of 20 – 21, 32, 35, 185, 190 Meiji period 13 memes 45 – 46, 49 metalinguistic dialogues 34, 40 – 41, 62, 129, 176, 188 Modified Hepburn system 21 Mōningu shō (Morning Show) 59 – 60 morae 4 – 5, 8 morphemes 1 Nagami, Rinko 61, 63, 86, 93 nationality(ies) 30, 37, 63, 71, 79, 81 non-native Japanese 6, 14, 23, 51, 61, 64, 66, 69, 71 – 73, 75 – 76, 79, 81, 131, 159, 167, 173, 182 – 184 non-nativeness 77 norms: behavioral 100; formal 49; language 32, 105, 117; linguistic 81, 100; local 88, 92, 99, 105; romanization 3; script 19, 103 – 106, 110 – 111, 189; speech 103; spelling 36 – 37, 39 – 40; see also orthographic norms; standards ojisangokko 165 online shorthand 45 orthographic changes 2, 121 orthographic manipulations 70, 87, 110, 142 orthographic norms 1, 14, 61 – 62, 80, 89, 93 – 97, 99, 106, 185 orthographic play 2, 11

198 Index orthographic variation 11, 15, 22 – 23, 50, 87, 99, 101, 105 – 106, 110, 119, 136, 141, 147, 183 – 187, 189 – 191 orthography 22, 77, 103, 105, 189, 191 Osaka, Naomi 59 – 62, 80 oyaji 141 – 176 Philippines 44 phoneme 21 phonetic script 4 – 5 phonological information 4 phonological phenomena 37 phonology: Japanese 4 – 5 politeness 30 – 31, 33, 97, 99 – 105, 114; indexes of 112 – 113, 112, 116 – 118 pronoun choice 101, 110 – 136 pronoun representation 111, 114, 116, 118, 123, 126, 128, 130, 132, 184 prosody 78, 96, 98, 107n4 Reddit 45, 47 – 50, 47, 48 Roman alphabet 3, 5, 21, 43 – 44 romanization norms 3 Russia 44, 66 – 67 samurai 4, 93 – 94, 98 sarcasm 184; indexing of 46, 47, 49 script choice 110 – 136, 154 scripted speakers 59 – 81 scripted speech 59 – 81 scripted voices 86 – 107 script play 17, 20, 120 script-pronoun combinations 106, 110 – 111, 117 – 118, 120 – 124, 122, 127, 130 – 131, 133 – 135, 166, 175, 183 scripts 1 – 6, 3, 8, 8, 11 – 12, 14, 16, 20, 22 – 23, 30, 35, 37, 43 – 44, 48, 51 – 52, 69, 71, 81, 86 – 87, 92, 95, 97, 99 – 101, 105, 131, 133 – 135, 146, 150, 154, 156, 165, 167, 174 – 175; Baybayin 44; hangûl 44; marked 15, 19, 23, 40, 51, 66, 76, 88, 105 – 106, 110, 142, 149, 154, 159, 167 – 168, 170, 172 – 176, 185 – 186, 188, 190; MongolianCyrillic 43 – 44; morphosyllabic 4; social lives of 181 – 192; for sutegana 103; see also handwriting; hiragana; Japanese scripts; kanji; katakana script selection 1 – 2, 19 – 21, 23, 88, 105, 184; as social act 51 – 52 script variation 2 – 3, 9, 12, 14, 21, 29 – 30, 35, 44, 51, 87, 106, 110, 120, 134 – 135, 141, 183 – 185, 187,

189, 191 – 192; and authorial identity 141 – 176 sentence-final particles 33, 66, 69, 71, 73, 76 – 77 snowball-sampling recruitment 121 – 122, 148 social divides 2, 21, 30, 40, 43, 51, 98 social identity(ies) 21, 30, 36 – 37, 94, 99, 105, 111, 184, 187 – 189 social meanings 1, 29 – 30, 32, 189 speech 21, 29, 33 – 39, 43 – 45, 48, 61 – 62, 65 – 81, 86 – 106, 96, 107n4, 113 – 119, 127, 134, 176, 185, 187, 189 – 190; acts 45, 48, 64, 68, 81, 86 – 88, 100, 103, 105, 113, 189; adult 89, 97 – 98, 116; children’s 89 – 93, 95, 102, 105, 115, 119; female 34, 71, 119 – 120, 151; male 34, 112, 114 – 117, 185; native 67, 70, 72, 75, 86; non-native 61 – 64, 67 – 68, 72 – 73, 76, 78, 80, 101, 158, 183, 185; queer 131; teenage 115 – 116, 185; see also Japanese speech; norms; scripted speech; styles spelling variation 36, 40 spoken language 20, 35 – 36, 42, 91 Spongebob 46, 48 – 50 stance performances 105, 114, 120 standards: language 104; literacy 13; local 95, 106; national 12, 37, 99, 104; orthographic 86, 99, 105; spelling 37, 41 stereotypes 31 – 33, 39, 61, 79, 81, 94, 104, 112, 119, 136, 164, 184 styles 22; behavior 118; formal 99; graphic 23, 45, 50, 87; handwriting 42 – 44; marking 81, 86, 105, 186; orthographic 189; pronunciation 40; script 13; speech 21, 33, 36, 98, 113, 185; spelling 37, 40, 44; text 46; writing 13, 15, 19 – 20, 41, 165, 185 suki 95, 96 sutegana 102 – 103, 103, 107n4, 119 syntactic patterns 1 Takahashi, Mutsuo 181 – 183, 191 Takemura, Kōtarō 60 – 61, 81 Takeuchi, Kozue 86 Tanpopo 34 teroppu 59 – 61 Thai (language) 111 Toshiba 61 Twain, Mark 37 Twitter 45, 50

Index  199 Unita, Yumi 86 United Kingdom 32 United States 37, 64 uppercase 5, 46 Urasawa, Naoki 63 Usagi Doroppu (Bunny Drop; UD) 86, 88 – 95, 98 – 106, 111, 150 – 151, 184; pronoun use in 113 – 134

verb endings 69, 76 Vietnamese (language) 111 Williams, Serena 59 written language 1, 13, 36, 50, 135 Yawara! 63 – 74, 77 Yue to Nihongo (Yue and Japanese) 63, 70 – 71