Playing with Language in E-Japan: Old Wine in New Bottles

Abstract

Taking as its premise the conceptualisation of the Internet as a virtual public space, this article focuses on the manner in which language play is manifested through the manipulation of linguistic (and particularly orthographic) conventions in informal Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) and in cell phone emails in Japan. The flexibility of the Japanese writing system, with its three official scripts often also combined with Arabic numerals and the Roman alphabet, lends itself very well to ludic use of orthography to create a desired effect. Users therefore play with standard orthographic conventions in cyberspace to an extent not possible for single alphabet users, subverting norms in order to create eye-catching effects which strengthen in-group solidarity through play and in some cases act as markers of subcultural identities. From time to time it is suggested that innovative use of orthography in cyberspace is a product of new electronic technologies. I argue, however, that language play of this kind, far from being new to Japan, builds on an already existing tradition of orthographic creativity facilitated by the nature of the writing system, the only real difference being that the practice has now moved into the much wider public arena of cyberspace.

Notes

¹Camp and Chien, ‘The Internet as Public Space’. For discussions of the Internet as public space from various perspectives, see, e.g., Saco, Cybering Democracy, Bohman, ‘Expanding Dialogue’, and Papacharissi, ‘The Virtual Sphere’.

²Dahlgren, ‘The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication’, 148.

³Ibid., 150.

⁴See, e.g., Miyake, ‘How Young Japanese Express their Emotions’; Sanuki, ‘Wakamono no keitai meeru no hyōgen’; Sasahara, ‘Keitai meeru ni okeru moji hyōki no tokuchō’; Satake, ‘Meeru buntai to sore o sasaeru mono’.

⁵Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 1.

⁶Ibid., 8.

⁷Raveri, ‘Introduction’, 1.

⁸Niesten and Sussex, ‘Ludicity and Negotiated Meaning’, 69.

⁹Crystal, Language Play, 1.

¹⁰Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 148.

¹¹The language of kogaru, a distinctive subcultural group of young women in Japan. The term kogaru is ‘the mainstream media label used to describe young women between the ages of 14 and 22 who project new types of fashion, behavior, and language’ (Miller, ‘Those Naughty Teenage Girls’, 225), which are often the focus of negative criticism from older people.

¹²Cook, Language Play, Language Learning, 103.

¹³Crystal, Language and the Internet, 5, 238.

¹⁴Sanuki, ‘Wakamono no keitai meeru no hyōgen’, 65.

¹⁵Daliot-Bul, ‘Japan's Mobile Technoculture’, 965.

¹⁶See Danet, Cyberpl@y, and Crystal, Language and the Internet.

¹⁷Nishimura, ‘Linguistic Innovations’.

¹⁸An eye-movement study comparing hiragana-only, katakana-only and kanji-inclusive texts found that katakana-only texts require the longest fixation periods of the three, partly due perhaps to the fact that katakana-only scripts are not common and therefore require more processing attention (Kess and Miyamoto, The Japanese Mental Lexicon, 93). Adding a katakana word or two for emphasis is not the same as reading a text entirely in katakana, of course, but the longer fixation period and increased processing attention explain the effectiveness of using this script to add emphasis. See Osaka, ‘Eye Fixation and Saccade’.

¹⁹Kataoka, ‘Affect and Letter-writing’, 114.

²⁰Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Information and Communications in Japan 2009.

²¹Matsuda, ‘Mobile Communication and Selective Sociality’, 124.

²²See Matsuda, ‘Discourses of keitai’.

²³Tanaka, ‘Keitai denwa to denshi meeru no hyōgen’, 109–110.

²⁴See, for example, Moran and Hawisher, ‘The Rhetorics and Languages of Electronic Mail’.

²⁶This practice is reminiscent of the premodern literary style known as hentai kanbun, written in characters only but with Japanese word order, not Chinese.

²⁷Sasahara, ‘Keitai meeru ni okeru’, 107–111.

²⁵Sasahara, ‘Keitai meeru ni okeru’. Message recipients were nine young women in their twenties (born between 1972 and 1979) who came from Tokyo and from Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures. Some were university and vocational school graduates; others were either undergraduate or postgraduate university students. Message senders were 50 men and women, most of them in the same age group, 20 percent of them men. Average message size was 49 characters.

²⁸A commercial Windows-compatible software package, Galmozilla, will also convert the user's text to gyarumoji and allow gyarumoji in incoming e-mail to be deciphered (see http://www.forest.impress.co.jp/article/2006/01/10/galmozilla.html, accessed 18 March 2010).

²⁹Tanabe, ‘Speech Patterns of Japanese Girls or Gals’, 6.

³⁰Cook, Language Play, Language Learning, 63.

³¹Daliot-Bul, ‘Japan's Mobile Technoculture’, 967

³²Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 13.

³³Miller, ‘Graffiti Photos’.

³⁴Halliday, ‘Anti-languages’.

³⁶Nishimura, ‘Establishing a Community of Practice’, 341, 345, 347.

³⁵Often translated into English as ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’, this term refers to reclusive individuals fixated on particular interests, e.g., anime, manga, science fiction or computer games.

³⁷Kasesniemi and Rautiainen, ‘Mobile Culture of Children’, 183, and Crystal, Language and the Internet, 147.

³⁸Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 9.

³⁹Crystal, Language and the Internet; Merchant, ‘Teenagers in Cyberspace’.

⁴⁰Crystal, txtng, 175.

⁴¹Fujimoto, ‘The Third-stage Paradigm’, 88–89.

⁴²Seeley, A History of Writing in Japan, 49, 52, 53.

⁴³Takanishi, ‘Orthographic Puns’, 247–248.

⁴⁴This was the classical spelling which was then still in use. Since the script reforms of 1946, this word has been written chōchō, as it is pronounced.

⁴⁵Gardner, Advertising Tower, 54, 66.

⁴⁶Tranter, ‘Nonconventional Script Choice in Japan’, 136, 139.

⁴⁷Levy, Sneider and Gibney, Kanban, 19.

⁴⁸Ibid., 139, commentary on plate 28.

⁴⁹Kinsella, ‘Cuties in Japan’, 222.

⁵⁰Ibid., 224. See also Kataoka, ‘Form and Function of Emotive Pictorial Signs’.

⁵¹Kataoka, ’Affect and Letter-writing’, 130.

⁵²Saiga, ‘Gendaijin no kanji kankaku to asobi’, 268.

⁵⁴Sasahara, ‘Keitai meeru ni okeru moji hyōki’, 114.

⁵³Avella, Graphic Japan, 15.

⁵⁵Kess and Miyamoto, The Japanese Mental Lexicon, 30.

⁵⁶Ibid., 113.

⁵⁷Nakamura, ‘Creating or Performing Words?’, 80. See also Baba, ‘Kanji no desain’, 300–301 on calligraphic styles in modern design characters.

⁵⁸This may not always be the case where some of the more extreme graphic effects are employed.

⁵⁹Baba, ‘Kanji no desain’, 284. Appendix One of Satō, Kanji kōza v. 10 contains many examples of kanji designed with special effects, some dating back to the seventeenth century, others contemporary.